Survival by Julie E. Czerneda

Julie Czerneda's Survival combines a fantasy-rich sense of wonder with good background science. I also enjoyed the west coast B.C. setting and the wacky world of research focused graduate students and their supervisors. One of the many details that I liked about the "near future" setting, was the way that strict conversationist rules are so much a given, for the era, that one can actually dislike the stuffy types in charge of seeing they get upheld. Her heroine, Mac, is a refreshingly serious-minded young woman who derives a lot of satisfaction from her work and really never wanted to know very much about aliens. Aliens, unfortunately for Mac, come looking for her. As does a dashing government agent who is not thrilled about the assignment until it starts looking like pay dirt. The characters and friendships of the book make it a warm place from which to explore a very alien biology with world-destroying quirks up its sleeve.

Survival is book one of the Species Imperative series. The next book, Migration, is due out this summer.