CLOSE-UP ON THE INSECTS OF NUNAVIK

• BY ANNIE LABRECQUE

With the arrival of summer, young people in Nunavik can again start catching insects, which are valuable indicators of climate change for entomologists. Getting to know Siaja Parceaud-May.

In the vicinity of the village of Kuujjuaq, where she lives, Siaja notes that insects now arrive earlier and stay longer than they used to. Last summer, as part of the Nunavik Sentinels program, she was kept busy catching, identifying and preserving close to 400 specimens (mosquitos, dragonflies, flies, butterflies, etc.) in order to document Nunavik’s arthropod biodiversity. All the specimens are then sent to Montréal to help researchers gain a better understanding of how climate change is impacting this diversity. Having always been interested in insects, Siaja is very grateful to have had this opportunity. The young Sentinels first complete a five-to-seven-day training session given by a small team from the Insectarium that travels to the North to teach them how to catch insects, use their special equipment and gently spread and pin the wings of butterflies.

The young Inuit woman would usually head out early in the morning or late in the evening to collect arthropods. But sometimes, she didn’t even have to go looking; the insects came to her. She remembers one day when she was walking at her father’s outfitting camp and a beetle flew into her glasses. “I would have liked to find more, but they mostly seem to hide under logs and in the earth. I was lucky to be able to catch one,” she says.

Her perception of insects has changed since she has been involved in the Nunavik Sentinels science project. “I didn’t associate them with climate change before,” she admits. She has also noticed that new species of spiders have been arriving in the North. “There are some spiders that I’d never seen before. They’re beautiful: brown or pale green.”

PRESERVING TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE

In the fall and winter, when there are no insects about, Siaja continued working with the Insectarium researchers on another project: she collected first-person accounts from elders in her community as a way of documenting legends and traditional knowledge to do with the world of insects. But when the nice weather returns, she’ll be very happy to be taking part in the program again, which is her dream job.