My name is Ellen, and I’m one of Dr. Young’s students in the Locomotion Lab at Saint Mary’s. I joined this lab mostly because I knew I would get to learn about and work with amphibians and reptiles, which I think are super cool. Through this lab I am working on my senior composition project for my degree in Biology. Last school year was spent figuring out what my project was going to be and doing a literature review. This summer I collected data for my research project, but I had a unique opportunity in doing so. This summer I spent ten weeks with 27 other students from a variety of schools at the University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Center (UNDERC) in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as part of the UNDERC East program. This program involved five weeks of modules and five weeks of independent research. The modules taught me a lot about the property, as well as vertebrate, aquatic, insect, and forest ecology. The program also included weekly seminars where we got to hear about some amazing science that our mentors and others on the property were doing or have done. The UNDERC modules gave me many unforgettable experiences. The first week, we had the adventure hike where we were dropped in the woods in pairs and told to find our way back using a compass. Since the property is so large, it took most of us a few hours. My partner and I took almost 5 hours to find our way back. It was an amazing, exhausting, and sweaty experience. We also took several field trips to learn about the forests, waters, and insects that make up the Northwood. Throughout the modules, I encountered some cool animals like turtles, snakes, a beaver, some nifty birds, and even a bear! The animal that I worked with most was definitely salamanders, since for the research weeks I worked on data collection for my senior composition project about salamander morphology and locomotion. My project looks at differences in tail morphology between two species of salamanders, Ambystoma laterale and Plethodon cinereus, and the impact that it has on swimming performance against different flow rates. Getting my project set up took a bit more time and effort than I anticipated, so the first 2 research weeks were mostly spent setting things up and helping other students set up their projects as well. With the help of my advisor at UNDERC, Dr. Michael Cramer, I rebuilt an artificial stream, assembled containers and cameras equipment, and made a swimming lane out of a PVC pipe. After I finally had everything together, I began collecting salamanders from around property. The next two and a half research weeks were spent catching salamanders, measuring their tails, and making them swim in an artificial stream. I had some help from my classmates finding and catching salamanders. We spent so much time “stealing” salamanders from the woods that we started calling ourselves “Herp Burglars” for fun. We even made T-shirts. Once we had some salamanders, we began the swimming trials. Even with the help of some of my new friends in the class, getting some of them to swim in the right direction was a bit frustrating, but it was fun seeing them swim along the lane. The last part of my research time was spent putting a presentation and paper about my project together for the end of program symposium. My paper I wrote for UNDERC will be posted on the UNDERC website fairly soon which is exciting. I still have to do and redo some statistics and rewrite some things before my paper is at the appropriate level it needs to be for my senior project. That’s what this fall semester is for, and next semester will be time for me to submit my senior comp, present a poster, and do a full presentation on it. Overall my project is coming along nicely and I’m excited to finish it up in the coming months. Kiana and Matt, 2 of my classmates, with the artificial stream and swim lane set-up. Bruce the ruffed grouse. He’s very protective of his territory which happens to include the path that leads to one of the main lakes on property. Making insect themed desserts for the seminar on stream insect ecology. From left to right: Erin, Xiomari, Amanda, me, Cole, and Caitlin.
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AuthorsAlok Agwick Archives
February 2024
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