Canadian specialist in freshwater crustacean zooplankton taxonomy — exclusively

Hello. My name is Lynne M. Witty. I was bitten by the "taxonomy bug" during my undergraduate thesis, undertaken at Laurentian University, where I focused on the benthic macroinvertebrates of a local lake. After graduating, I enrolled in an Ecosystem Management program at Sir Sandford Fleming College. This was followed by an internship at the International Joint Commission, a Canada-USA binational environmental agency.
 

Upon my return to Greater Sudbury, I was employed as an Aquatic Invertebrate Taxonomist with the Cooperative Freshwater Ecology Unit, now housed in the Living with Lakes Centre. Due to the collaborative nature of this group of researchers, I had the opportunity to provide professional taxonomic services for projects ranging from the Great Lakes regions to the Far North of Ontario. From processing zooplankton samples for long-term monitoring programs, to species verification for genetic studies, to participating in Daphnia toxicology research, my focus has always been on producing the highest quality data. My sample processing and zooplankton taxonomy training supported many research projects which led to several peer-reviewed scientific papers. See the Supported Research page for a selection of these publications. 

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A significant portion of my time with the Cooperative Freshwater Ecology Unit was dedicated to training graduate students from Laurentian University, Queen’s University, and York University on how to process their own aquatic invertebrate samples. With the goal of making identifications more accessible to novices, I produced two practical guides, one for zooplankton and one for benthos. These guides are designed to complement scientific taxonomic keys and are available for download below. Both have been widely used worldwide for decades. See 'Taxonomy Resources' under 'Zoop Science' for more supporting material geared towards those interested in the finer details of aquatic invertebrate taxonomy.​