And she believes her friends might be in danger due to smoke from recent wildfires.

“The major question is, what does wildfire smoke mean for songbirds? And for the migratory birds, what does it mean for their ability to migrate?” she said.

An assistant professor of biology at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) College of Arts and Science, Ivy is leading a new research project that will examine the physiological effects of smoke intake on songbirds.

The project received support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Discovery Grant program, which supports longer-term post-secondary projects that aim to advance research in key areas.

Wildfires in Canada have been increasing in scale over recent years. The 2023 wildfire season was the worst on record in terms of area burnt, and the 2024 season was the second-worst on record since 1995 (behind only 2023). As Ivy puts it, there is more anecdotal evidence regarding birds being affected by wildfire smoke, but there isn’t much scientific research to accompany it. This study aims to identify the overall effects of long-term smoke inhalation for birds through lab research and tracking bird population migrations.

While they don’t think that one large wildfire event would cause serious smoke-related issues for birds, Ivy said the concern comes from repeated events and repeated exposure. If prolonged smoke exposure is affecting birds’ physiology, it could alter whether or not birds are able to migrate, which could also affect bird populations if young birds are unable to make the trip.

"It’s important for us to know because we can be cognizant of why population declines might be happening, or why we might expect declines,” Ivy said. “Even being able to say the magnitude to which (smoke) stresses birds is important.”

Ivy described the difference between bird lungs and human lungs as “tubes” versus “grapes.” Human lungs branch out from a main stem – the bronchial tree – which feeds air into the alveoli (which branch out like bunches of “grapes”) where gas exchange takes place. Conversely, bird lungs are more a series of straight tubes, which allows for a more efficient one-way respiratory system. A bird’s respiratory system must be as efficient as possible for intensive tasks like migratory flight, which Ivy called “more aerobically demanding” than running for animals.

In fact, the core of another project of Ivy’s NSERC Banting Postdoctoral Fellow research explored how songbird’s respiratory systems and overall physiology undergo seasonal changes to prepare for the long physical activity of migration. Some of these changes to physiology include slower, deeper breaths to enhance oxygen uptake.

“There’s a lot of things happening for birds between being a couch potato in the non-migratory season and becoming essentially an endurance athlete. What we’re really interested in is how wildfire smoke is going to interact with those changes,” Ivy said. “Another way of looking at it is, if I were to all of a sudden start smoking, would I still be able to run the marathon?”

The research team will explore the effects of wildfire smoke on birds in multiple ways. One is to examine birds at the individual level to see how smoke-exposed animals are physically affected compared to non-smoke-exposed animals, and another is through tracking migrating birds to see if their travel patterns change due to smoke.

As a newer faculty member at USask, Ivy said receiving NSERC support for this project was “huge” and allows her to bring in students and pursue a far-reaching research program.

She credited USask and NSERC for their support in getting this project off the ground.

“It’s huge. It means that I can take on students and get different parts of the project on the go,” Ivy said. “And it means they saw value in this research, and in supporting an early-career researcher.”

The following is a list of University of Saskatchewan (USask) researchers and projects that received Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant funding in 2025.

Dr. Sebastien Gauvrit (PhD) – Understanding vascular development in vertebrates

Dr. Timothy Mutsvangwa (PhD) – Enhancing nitrogen utilization through an improved understanding of the molecular mechanisms that regulate urea-nitrogen salvaging in ruminants

Dr. Jessica Sheldon (PhD) – Molecular mechanisms of histamine sensing and response in Morganella morganii

Dr. Hong Wang (PhD) – Plant cell cycle regulation and protein ubiquitination

Dr. Yuliang Wu (PhD) – Defining the molecular mechanisms of DDX41 helicase in antiviral innate immune responses

Dr. Wei Xiao (PhD) – Understand how a budding yeast transcriptional factor Fzf1 co-ordinates responses to multiple chemical stresses

Dr. Catherine Ivy (PhD) – The effect of wildfire smoke on songbird oxygen uptake and transport

Dr. Richard Bowles (PhD) – Theory and simulation of soft matter

Dr. Ian Burgess (PhD) – Solvent organization and dynamics at electrified interfaces

Dr. Stephen Foley (PhD) – Recycling of critical and precious metals using metal-specific ligands

Dr. Tara Kahan (PhD) – Understanding “messy” atmospheric matrices: linking molecular level properties to global atmospheric composition

Dr. Matthew Paige (PhD) – Structure-property relationships in surfactant monolayer films

Dr. Lucas Lehnert (PhD) – Reinforcement learning as a framework for easy-to-instruct, interpretable, and scalable machine intelligence

Dr. Debajyoti Mondal (PhD) – Efficient computation and analysis for geometric graphs and layouts

Dr. Natalia Stkhanova (PhD) – AI-assisted cross-platform traceability in blockchain environments

Dr. Andrew Leask (PhD) – The contribution of adhesive signalling to fibroblast behaviour

Dr. Sven Achenbach (PhD) – Synchrotron-based microfabrication technologies and applications

Dr. Khan Wahid (PhD) – AI/AR based tools and smart sensor system to improve gastrointestinal diagnosis

Dr. Kaidi Wang (PhD) – Formation and control of viable but non-culturable Arcobacter in the agri-food systems

Dr. John Pomeroy (PhD) – Snow processes

Dr. Luis Buatois (PhD) – The trace-fossil record of Paleozoic biotic crises

Dr. Graham George (PhD) – Extending the capabilities: X-ray spectroscopies of molybdenum and tungsten enzymes

Dr. Camille Partin (PhD) – Unraveling Precambrian Earth’s middle years

Dr. Erfan Hoque (PhD) – New models, methods and inference for complex and correlated data

Dr. Ebrahim Samei (PhD) – Harmonic analysis prospective into group actions, operator algebras and random walks

Dr. Dean Chamberlain (PhD) – Development of microtissues to study cellular microenvironments.

Dr. Mark Boland (PhD) – Future circular accelerators for lightsources and colliders

Dr. Adam Bourassa (PhD) – Remote sensing atmospheric composition to better understand the changing climate

Dr. Lénaïc Couëdel (PhD) – Diagnostic of plasmas: application to dusty and misty plasmas

Dr. Robert Green (PhD) – Demystifying the functional properties of correlated quantum materials

Dr. Glenn Hussey (PhD) – E- and F-region ionosphere space physics research using radio waves and radars

Dr. Jonathan Bennett (PhD) – The temporal dynamic of plant-soil feedbacks and its consequences for plant communities

Dr. Sean Prager (PhD) – Biotic and abiotic stress effects on insect, plant, microbe interactions

Dr. Karen Tanino (PhD) – Apoplastic permeability and tensile strength as central regulating factors enabling plant resilience to both abiotic and biotic stresses

Dr. Christian Willenborg (PhD) – The biology and ecology of seed predation by invertebrates: Further exploration of the mechanisms involved in seed selection

Dr. Tyler Wenzel (PhD) – Investigating how biological sex modulates responses of non-neuronal cells to cytokines, hormones and growth factors, and advancing the bioengineering of brain organoids

Dr. Helen Baulch (PhD) – From land to water - key drivers, interventions and interfaces for water quality

Dr. Markus Brinkmann (PhD) – Next generation xenometabolomics to advance risk assessment of complex mixtures of environmental chemicals

Dr. Jeffrey McDonnell (PhD) – Quantifying fire impacts on watershed runoff, storage and plant water sourcing

Dr. Bobbi Helgason (PhD) – Targeting microbial hotspots and hot moments for better prediction and mitigation of soil nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions and greater agroecosystem nitrogen use efficiency

Dr. Steven Siciliano (PhD) – Quantifying plant-mineral-microbe ecosystem services at high temporal and spatial resolutions

Dr. Olamide Adebiyi (PhD, DVM) – Understanding how oligodendrocytes support axons in response to energy demands.

Dr. Maud Ferreri (PhD) – The ecology of fear in a changing world

Dr. Ali Honaramooz (PhD, DVM) – The study and manipulation of male germline stem cells

Dr. Michael Wu (PhD) – Genetic and environmental modifiers of histone post-transcriptional processing

Dr. Tony Ruzzini (PhD) – Discovery and characterization of enzymes at the animal-microbe interface

Dr. Maarten Voordouw (PhD) – Population ecology of Borrelia burgdorferi, a multi-strain tick-borne pathogen

Dr. Yan Zhou (PhD) – Molecular mechanism of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus spills over to dairy cattle