Left High and Dry - Sophie Elliott
All my life I have had a deep interest in picking apart the mechanisms of the world around me and figuring out how everything is interconnected. So, when I discovered ecology as a field, I felt like I could finally channel my curiosities into something more tangible and structured. This summer, I was fortunate enough to complete my first field season collecting data for Dr. Pieter Johnson鈥檚 lab in pond ecosystems throughout the Bay Area in California. Not only did I manage to catch COVID during our season, I also caught the bug for field work. When I returned from California, Dr. Johnson took me to ponds at Shanahan Ridge in South Boulder to show me snail and salamander populations that are infected with interesting trematodes. For my thesis, Dr. Johnson and I worked together to come up with a plan that allowed me to sample these ponds and track the patterns of snails and trematodes over time. This was especially interesting because two of the ponds in my study system dried up at the beginning of September, while one has retained water, so I have been able to compare data from both types of ponds. Data collection for this project consisted of biweekly sampling of each pond over the course of two and a half months (which is a fancy way to say I spent two hours every other week carrying 16 half-gallon samples of dirt around a hiking area and effectively confusing and scaring innocent hikers). All the snails that I found were measured and dissected, and any trematodes found were identified. There was a total of six different species identified! I am most interested in testing the hypothesis that pond dry-down will cause a decrease in snail density as well as infection prevalence, but that certain species of trematodes will be more successful than others. I have hypothesized that the species of trematodes that produce rediae, which is a specific larval stage of trematodes produced by some species, will have less longevity than species that produce sporocysts because rediae are more destructive to their hosts and could kill the snails earlier. I am highly interested in this topic because, as our climate continues to change and, especially in the western United States, we begin to see far drier climatic conditions, understanding how drought can impact trematode infections will be extremely important given the importance that these infections have to wildlife and humans alike.
