Student Spotlight
Parasite Research in Mongolia - Sydney Romps
I'm a senior from Canton, Michigan.
I spent my summer in Mongolia under the advisement of Dr. Galbreath on the Steppe Parasites Network (STEPP-NET) project, which was funded by the National Science Foundation. I worked in collaboration with professionals and students from the National University of Mongolia, the University of New Mexico, the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and Georgia Southern University. Our goal was to document small mammal diversity of western Mongolia by trapping and collecting various samples (tissue, blood, skeleton, pelts) for museum preservation. These samples can then be accessed by researchers around the globe.
Mongolia was of interest because of its rapid urbanization. This project continued efforts to learning about the life history of the small mammal diversity, which is useful in a world where we will need animal life history as we combat biodiversity loss. This experience allowed me to get hands-on field work and experience with international and national cooperation. These communication skills are vital to my future career, whether it will be in academia, natural resources, or zoological societies.
My future plans are to hopefully get into graduate school and become a professor down the line, but I'm also looking forward to what other experiences I will have along that way.
We are so proud of all Sydney has accomplished! She is an active and enthusiastic member of our club and we are all looking forward to all she does in her future! Congrats Sydney!
I spent my summer in Mongolia under the advisement of Dr. Galbreath on the Steppe Parasites Network (STEPP-NET) project, which was funded by the National Science Foundation. I worked in collaboration with professionals and students from the National University of Mongolia, the University of New Mexico, the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and Georgia Southern University. Our goal was to document small mammal diversity of western Mongolia by trapping and collecting various samples (tissue, blood, skeleton, pelts) for museum preservation. These samples can then be accessed by researchers around the globe.
Mongolia was of interest because of its rapid urbanization. This project continued efforts to learning about the life history of the small mammal diversity, which is useful in a world where we will need animal life history as we combat biodiversity loss. This experience allowed me to get hands-on field work and experience with international and national cooperation. These communication skills are vital to my future career, whether it will be in academia, natural resources, or zoological societies.
My future plans are to hopefully get into graduate school and become a professor down the line, but I'm also looking forward to what other experiences I will have along that way.
We are so proud of all Sydney has accomplished! She is an active and enthusiastic member of our club and we are all looking forward to all she does in her future! Congrats Sydney!
Past Student Spotlights
Analyzing hyena behavior
Rachel Marlatt is a senior at NMU majoring in Biology with a minor in political science. Her goal is to work with big cats, especially tigers in Sumatra and aid in their conservation through research. Her main areas of interest are policy, human-wildlife conflict, and population dynamics. After she graduates in the spring, she hopes to study big cats in graduate school at Virginia Tech or UW-Madison.
This summer she worked in Dr. Kay Holekamp’s Hyena lab at Michigan State University. She was a lab assistant for Julie Turner, a PhD candidate. The work Julie does in Africa focuses on boldness testing in hyenas. Essentially, a hyena-shaped target is set out and interactions hyenas have with the target are observed. One of Rachel’s jobs was to watch the videos of the hyenas interacting with and encountering the target and record every move and response the hyenas made. The work was tedious and required meticulous attention because much of the information could be missed even if one was distracted for a brief moment. Rachel learned a lot about hyena behavior, got to know the hyenas, and could tell which rank the hyenas were in by observing how they interact with the target. In the video of Rachel’s favorite hyena, Waffles, she could see the hyena think about the target and come to the conclusion that the target was not a threat. The gathered data will be used to determine if boldness is related to the complex ranking system that hyenas possess.
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Rachel Marlatt is a senior at NMU majoring in Biology with a minor in political science. Her goal is to work with big cats, especially tigers in Sumatra and aid in their conservation through research. Her main areas of interest are policy, human-wildlife conflict, and population dynamics. After she graduates in the spring, she hopes to study big cats in graduate school at Virginia Tech or UW-Madison.
This summer she worked in Dr. Kay Holekamp’s Hyena lab at Michigan State University. She was a lab assistant for Julie Turner, a PhD candidate. The work Julie does in Africa focuses on boldness testing in hyenas. Essentially, a hyena-shaped target is set out and interactions hyenas have with the target are observed. One of Rachel’s jobs was to watch the videos of the hyenas interacting with and encountering the target and record every move and response the hyenas made. The work was tedious and required meticulous attention because much of the information could be missed even if one was distracted for a brief moment. Rachel learned a lot about hyena behavior, got to know the hyenas, and could tell which rank the hyenas were in by observing how they interact with the target. In the video of Rachel’s favorite hyena, Waffles, she could see the hyena think about the target and come to the conclusion that the target was not a threat. The gathered data will be used to determine if boldness is related to the complex ranking system that hyenas possess.
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Hands on experience with aquatic ecology...
Shaley Valentine
Sophomore
Hometown: Hudsonville, MI
Shaley spent her summer in Jacksonville, Florida as a student intern for a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. While in Florida, Shaley studied aquatic ecology. For her research project she analyzed data to see whether various fish species were significantly associated with submerged aquatic vegetation. While in the field she hauled seine and trawl nets and counted and identified fish. She is a brave soul and claims that she had the "privilege" of jumping into the river near alligators and dolphins!
She states that this was by far the best experience of her life. Next semester she hopes to lead a mammal track survey to look at the difference in mammal activity between disturbed forests and late successional forests.
For spring break she will be studying abroad with NMU professor, Dr. Jill Leonard to study marine biology in the Virgin Islands and will also be traveling to Zambia with Dr. Lindsay next summer!
Keep up the great work, Shaley! We are proud of all of your accomplishments!
Sophomore
Hometown: Hudsonville, MI
Shaley spent her summer in Jacksonville, Florida as a student intern for a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. While in Florida, Shaley studied aquatic ecology. For her research project she analyzed data to see whether various fish species were significantly associated with submerged aquatic vegetation. While in the field she hauled seine and trawl nets and counted and identified fish. She is a brave soul and claims that she had the "privilege" of jumping into the river near alligators and dolphins!
She states that this was by far the best experience of her life. Next semester she hopes to lead a mammal track survey to look at the difference in mammal activity between disturbed forests and late successional forests.
For spring break she will be studying abroad with NMU professor, Dr. Jill Leonard to study marine biology in the Virgin Islands and will also be traveling to Zambia with Dr. Lindsay next summer!
Keep up the great work, Shaley! We are proud of all of your accomplishments!
Alumni Spotlight
Kristin Denryter
PhD. Candidate
University of Northern British Columbia
While Kristin was pursuing her masters degree at NMU, she became actively involved in our student chapter. She assisted our members with curriculum vitae and resume advice and telemetry workshops. She guest spoke about applying and choosing graduate schools and she became very invested in our special events, such as our annual Wolf Awareness Week and field trips to the International Wolf Center in Ely, MN. She graduated in May of 2013. We miss Kristin dearly, but today she is in the great(er) white(er) north working on a pretty cool study!
Kristin is working on a collaborative project between the University of Northern British Columbia and a non-profit, the National Council for Air & Stream Improvement (NCASI), on a caribou nutritional ecology project. Caribou numbers have been declining and we are attempting to understand what the role of nutrition is relative to their declines and the potential for benefits to caribou conservation. Her and her colleagues are using a herd of caribou that were hand-raised at the Large Animal Research Station at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2009. The animals are habituated to humans and they take them out to alpine and boreal forest research sites where we study what the animals eat, so they can determine their typical diets in different types of plant communities (habitats). In 2013 they used 9 different lactating cows and their calves for their foraging trials. It's important to use lactating animals because they have the highest nutritional demands of any part of the population as they need to produce milk and rear a calf, as well as replenish their fat stores for the next winter. The data they collect during their grazing trials allows them to determine a sample diet that they then collect and complete nutritional analyses to determine the nutritional quality of different habitats on the landscape. To support this work they also have a summer crew that samples vegetation for species and biomass, which allows them to determine diet preferences. A goal for this project includes describing the summer foraging ecology of caribou on natural and managed landscapes in northeastern British Columbia. There is very little known about what caribou eat in the summer, despite the importance of this season in determining the performance and overwinter survival of ungulates in temperate and boreal ecosystems. There has been work to describe winter foraging ecology and other work to identify factors contributing to caribou declines, but this is a unique undertaking that uses an innovative habitat assessment tool and may for the first time provide insight into the habitat selection and distribution of caribou herds, relative to forage availability and quality. Whatever she learns will benefit caribou conservation in the region and potentially throughout the boreal forests of Canada.
Congratulations Kristin! We are so excited for your new studies and adventures!
PhD. Candidate
University of Northern British Columbia
While Kristin was pursuing her masters degree at NMU, she became actively involved in our student chapter. She assisted our members with curriculum vitae and resume advice and telemetry workshops. She guest spoke about applying and choosing graduate schools and she became very invested in our special events, such as our annual Wolf Awareness Week and field trips to the International Wolf Center in Ely, MN. She graduated in May of 2013. We miss Kristin dearly, but today she is in the great(er) white(er) north working on a pretty cool study!
Kristin is working on a collaborative project between the University of Northern British Columbia and a non-profit, the National Council for Air & Stream Improvement (NCASI), on a caribou nutritional ecology project. Caribou numbers have been declining and we are attempting to understand what the role of nutrition is relative to their declines and the potential for benefits to caribou conservation. Her and her colleagues are using a herd of caribou that were hand-raised at the Large Animal Research Station at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2009. The animals are habituated to humans and they take them out to alpine and boreal forest research sites where we study what the animals eat, so they can determine their typical diets in different types of plant communities (habitats). In 2013 they used 9 different lactating cows and their calves for their foraging trials. It's important to use lactating animals because they have the highest nutritional demands of any part of the population as they need to produce milk and rear a calf, as well as replenish their fat stores for the next winter. The data they collect during their grazing trials allows them to determine a sample diet that they then collect and complete nutritional analyses to determine the nutritional quality of different habitats on the landscape. To support this work they also have a summer crew that samples vegetation for species and biomass, which allows them to determine diet preferences. A goal for this project includes describing the summer foraging ecology of caribou on natural and managed landscapes in northeastern British Columbia. There is very little known about what caribou eat in the summer, despite the importance of this season in determining the performance and overwinter survival of ungulates in temperate and boreal ecosystems. There has been work to describe winter foraging ecology and other work to identify factors contributing to caribou declines, but this is a unique undertaking that uses an innovative habitat assessment tool and may for the first time provide insight into the habitat selection and distribution of caribou herds, relative to forage availability and quality. Whatever she learns will benefit caribou conservation in the region and potentially throughout the boreal forests of Canada.
Congratulations Kristin! We are so excited for your new studies and adventures!