Cassandra is a communications correspondent for the Fralin Life Science Institute at Virginia Tech. She holds an M.A. in English and a B.S. in psychology, both from Virginia Tech, where she also teaches writing and research. Her research interrogates how language is a form of social action that negotiates how science and education affect public policy. When she is not writing, she is wrangling her ever-growing St. Bernard puppy. (Don't tell the dog, but she loves her cat more.)
If arsenic were introduced into your drinking water, the chances are high that you’d never know. Arsenic is difficult to detect since it’s tasteless and odorless. Even in very small concentrations, when frequently consumed over long periods of time its effects can be damaging, including skin and circulatory impacts and even cancer. It’s possible that arsenic might already be in your aquifer (a permeable geologic unit that contains and transmits groundwater), just not in a state that’s harmful—at least not right now.
Arsenic can often be found in aquifers associated with an immobile solid phase, safely kept from creeping into groundwater. But when an oil spill occurs, that arsenic may dissolve into the groundwater.
Brady Ziegler, a Department of Geosciences Ph.D. student in the College of Science who is advised by Professor Madeline Schreiber, has focused his research on how oil spills induce changes in chemistry that can cause naturally occurring arsenic found in sediment to become a dissolved contaminant in groundwater. Until recently, though, nobody was aware of this potential long-term consequence of subsurface oil spills.
“There are these things that we’re exposed to all the time that we have no idea that we’re exposed to,” Ziegler said. “The common phrase is ‘Oh, what’s in the water?’ Sometimes it actually has some very serious implications.”
The process
So how does oil cause arsenic to be dissolved into groundwater? Arsenic can occur naturally in sediment, but it is often associated with a solid iron mineral phase and not in the groundwater. The arsenic is associated with the iron mineral through a process called adsorption. In the solid phase, the arsenic isn’t a threat to drinking water. However, if an oil spill occurs, the oil can induce significant chemical changes.
“If conditions are oxygenated, meaning there’s a little bit of dissolved oxygen in the groundwater, then life is good and [arsenic] is going to stay on the solid phase,” Ziegler explained. “But if you introduce oil, bacteria can eat oil and breathe oxygen in the groundwater.”
Once the bacteria use up all the oxygen, however, they can move on to breathing (respiring) other things, called electron acceptors.
“One [electron acceptor] is iron, which acts as a host for arsenic,” Ziegler said, “but when they [bacteria] do that, the iron gets dissolved into groundwater, and since that’s the host, arsenic, too, goes into groundwater.”
A figure displaying overlapping plumes of dissolved arsenic (top graph) and iron (bottom graph)—part of the evidence that where iron dissolves, arsenic can creep into groundwater. Credit: Arsenic cycling in hydrocarbon plumes: secondary effects of natural attenuation in Groundwater 2015, doi:10.1111/gwat.12316.
Part of what makes monitoring arsenic in groundwater so challenging is that it can go virtually unnoticed for so long, largely because arsenic is difficult to detect. Another contributing factor is that oil spills understandably attract attention to the oil itself and the long-term secondary effects, such as arsenic release, are not considered. Couple that with the difficulty in noticing when arsenic has dissolved into groundwater, and it’s not hard to see how the public might assume that once an oil spill has been cleaned up, the crisis is over and everything can return to background conditions. As Ziegler and others have discovered through their research, it can take a long time after an oil spill has been cleaned up for things to truly return to normal.
Why hasn’t this effect been noticed until just recently? It’s partially due to the fact that studying the long-term effects of oil spills is generally difficult. Ziegler is currently studying the site of an oil spill that occurred in 1979 in northern Minnesota. The site is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey.
“When there’s an oil spill, people try to clean it up as best they can, and try to prevent any further contamination,” Ziegler explained. “This oil spill was so remote that it wasn’t affecting anybody, so they took this environmental accident and turned it into a national research site.”
This research site, the National Crude Oil Spill Fate and Natural Attenuation Research Site, is a prime spot to discover long-term or secondary effects like the ones Ziegler and his research group have recently uncovered.
Ziegler with a sediment core.
It’s important that the public be made aware of research like Ziegler’s, because without knowledge of such harmful potential secondary effects, it’s impossible to accurately evaluate the risk of development projects that impact our environment. This is especially true when considering spills that tend to cause tunnel vision.
“In the past, if there’s been an oil spill, people’s main concern is ‘oh my goodness, the oil,’ but now what we’re seeing is the secondary effects,” said Ziegler. “Since we’re always concerned about the oil, people never look for these other types of contaminants that could be equally as harmful.”
Raising public awareness of such effects and promoting research like Ziegler’s is crucial to ensuring that the public can make informed decisions about projects with high environmental impact.
“Especially with the renewed interest in the development of oil pipelines in the country,” said Ziegler, “we’re putting potential oil spills all throughout our aquifer systems throughout the United States, so the fact that this is just now documented—that this process that occurs in oil spills can put arsenic into groundwater—it’s got pretty big implications for development of these major pipelines throughout the country.”
Policy implications
Ziegler pointed out that research like his may impact public policy, especially policy that’s based on some specific risk assessment. An interesting example stems from the recent increase in earthquakes in Oklahoma. In 2008, Oklahoma experienced fewer than two earthquakes that measured above 3.0 in magnitude; in 2015, Oklahoma suffered over 1,000 3.0-or-higher-magnitude earthquakes. This increase is connected to the disposal of wastewater from hydraulic fracturing. The increase in earthquakes may be occurring at a rate too fast for infrastructure regulations to keep up. Oil pipelines that met infrastructure regulations in 2008, before the increase in earthquakes, may not be built to withstand the new earthquake frequency or magnitude.
What role does Ziegler’s research play in this? If infrastructure regulations are adapted to reflect the need to withstand more powerful and frequent earthquakes, certain risks will need to be reassessed—for example, are oil pipelines more likely to rupture due to the increased frequency and magnitude of earthquakes? If so, there’s more risk to consider than we previously realized; not only is it important to consider the immediate harm an oil spill could cause, it’s now critical to also consider long-term impacts such as the ones Ziegler is researching. Public awareness of the increased risk associated with oil spills may well shape public policy and regulations.
What should the public know?
What should the public consider as they become aware of this research and its implications? First, it’s important not to panic.
“I would say if you find that there’s arsenic in the groundwater in the oil spill site, you shouldn’t immediately freak out,” Ziegler said. “Aquifers tend to have a pretty good capacity to mitigate any sort of human-induced effects like oil in the aquifer. Give it enough space and enough time and generally they can clean themselves up.”
In addition to the hypothesis that an oil spill won’t render an aquifer unusable forever, it’s also worth noting that the dissolving of arsenic into groundwater is fairly localized; the arsenic likely won’t travel for long distances through groundwater and spread to other areas.
However, while aquifers may potentially “clean themselves up,” this process, called natural attenuation, can take a long time. Ziegler mentioned that the oil spill in Minnesota occurred in 1979, and his research team has recently recorded concentrations of arsenic in the groundwater there that are still 23 times the drinking water standard. Therefore, the public should focus on action they can take in the meantime. If people live near the site of an oil spill and they are on a private well, one simple and effective action they can take is to have their groundwater tested for arsenic. Carefully monitoring the groundwater and testing it every few months after an oil spill ensures that individuals have information about the quality of their drinking water, and will allow them to switch to a new water source if arsenic or other contaminants are detected in their water.
Secondly, it’s important to be more aware of the potential secondary or long-term effects of disasters like oil spills.
“We need to have a broader scope beyond just the petroleum contaminants themselves,” Ziegler said. “We need to look at other things that might not even have been in the actual oil when [the spill] occurred. Because as we now know, the changes in chemistry from the reactions induced by the oil can lead to other naturally occurring contaminants in groundwater.”
This is good advice for those tasked with cleaning up oil spills, but more broadly, this research should encourage the public to pay close attention to research projects that explore other secondary effects, as that enhanced knowledge ensures that we can react appropriately in future crises. In Ziegler’s case, the research has gained some traction. Minnesota newspaper editorials have inspired discussion about the research and its implications, and some press releases helped raise awareness about the issue.
This increased awareness has even aided public activism regarding environmental issues, such as that surrounding the addition of a new pipeline through Minnesota.
“There was one that was planned to go through northern Minnesota, very near where this oil spill site actually occurred,” Ziegler recounted, “and the local newspapers picked up the paper that we published and they said, ‘Look at these problems that are created from oil spills!’ so there was a public response from what we had published. Now whether or not that’s actually going to lead to them stopping the pipeline, who’s to say?”
While it may not yet be clear how ongoing projects will be affected by this research, it’s evident that public awareness is critical to reacting appropriately in a crisis such as an oil spill. Such research ensures that, in the event of a spill, the public knows what action they can take to help keep their drinking water safe. A public understanding of the risks posed by oil spills and thoughtful discussion on the topic also aid regulators in performing accurate risk assessment. Research like Ziegler’s, and the awareness it provides, enable all of us to make informed decisions.
Article written by Josiah Pierce while participating in ENGL 4824: Science Writing in Spring 2017 as part of a collaboration between Fralin and the Department of English at Virginia Tech. Learn more.
Have you ever heard someone say, “There’s so much carbon outside today,” or “I’ve been inhaling too much carbon lately”?
Of course not. We can’t see carbon, and we might not even know it’s in the air. Most of us likely also don’t know how it functions, though we might know it’s essential. You might be surprised to know that too much carbon in Earth’s atmosphere is linked to an increase in the planet’s temperature. Plants need a certain level of carbon to successfully absorb nutrients and photosynthesize. Because many plants rely on a steady climate function, the risk of too much carbon could potentially throw off the whole carbon cycle and be detrimental to the environment.
That’s where the research of Steven McBride comes into play.
One of Steven’s experimentation jars.
McBride spent his master’s at James Madison University studying the occurrence and antibiotic resistance of enterococci in turkey litter. McBride is eager to discover how the structure of microbial communities—more specifically, the microorganisms that inhabit it—affect the carbon cycle in certain ecosystems. In simpler terms, McBride wants to know how the presence of bacteria and viruses within decomposed leaf litter affect soil, and why some microbials produce more carbon than others. In an attempt to explore this, McBride has now dedicated his research to uncovering which bacteria are likely to produce varying levels of carbon and why.
McBride’s research is primarily focused on soil. To begin his experiments, McBride uses four separate jars that will each receive their own individual soil sample: three with a unique volatile organic compound (VOC) and one controlled substance with no additives. In his most recent lab study, the compounds McBride used were ethanol, methanol, and acetone.
“The cool thing about these volatile compounds is that they are these small, easy to eat compounds that don’t need water to go from one part of the soil to the other,” said McBride.
“They can diffuse through the air because they are volatile or easily evaporated. Then the bacteria or fungi can pick it up and eat it, so it’s an interesting source of food for these soil microbes that hasn’t been paid much attention to in the past.”
These VOC’s stimulate activity in soil without the presence of water, which makes laboratory tests much simpler for McBride, as well as his peers who work with Michael Strickland, a soil biologist formerly at Virginia Tech but who is now at the University of Idaho. Their research is primarily focused on microbial communities and their effects on ecosystems.
So what does McBride’s daily laboratory process entail?
McBride uses regulated temperatures to identify how the addition of independent compounds (ethanol, methanol, and acetone) in soil samples will affect the soil’s ability to respirate and produce carbon. After letting them incubate overnight in coffee mug sized jars, McBride uses a gas-extracting machine that will tell him how much CO2 has been released from the soil over that 24-hour period.
“So that’s the first thing: we measure the CO2, and that will tell us whether the soil is respiring more under the different treatments,” said McBride. “But that doesn’t give us a mechanism, it just tells us that there is a difference in respiration. It doesn’t tell us the ‘how’ or the ‘why.’”
McBride has some ideas about where the future of his research is heading, and how he can attack the problem.
Since beginning his research in the fall of 2015, McBride has uncovered that the interface of microbial communities and litter substrate can lead to higher rates of decomposition. Additionally, the inclusion of VOC’s undeniably increases soil respiration and the release of carbon. The study now aims to detect why this occurs, and where exactly carbon goes.
Gas-extraction machine.
On a bigger scale, the study attempts to look at why certain ecosystems produce more carbon than others, and what steps can be done to prevent this harm from occurring.
“There’s a possibility that we can manipulate either the microbial community or add amendments to our agriculture fields that would suppress these pathogens that are increasing carbon release in the atmosphere,” suggests McBride. “It’s far-fetched, but I think we may have an inkling about how this done in the next 5 years or so.”
Article written by Matthew Crisafi while participating in ENGL 4824: Science Writing in Spring 2017 as part of a collaboration between Fralin and the Department of English at Virginia Tech. Learn more.
Ph.D. student Carl Wepking and his team research the effects of added antibiotics in local farming soil ecosystems.
Research endeavors of all types are constantly ongoing in the labs across Virginia Tech’s campus. Walking up to the lab and office of Carl Wepking in Derring Hall provided an interesting first impression and one of mild displeasure: the room smelled like cow manure.
After meeting Wepking and discussing his current research, I realized it was indeed the smell of cow feces circulating through the air via the soil samples being analyzed on the table in front of us.
Wepking, a Ph.D student in biological sciences in the College of Science and an Interfaces of Global Change Fellow, currently studies the effect of antibiotic use in livestock production on soil microbes and the ecosystem functions that they regulate. This research mainly focuses on the effects of antibiotics on the environment. Specifically, Wepking works to determine the effects on soils and how antibiotics can influence microbes, which can therefore effect the greater cycling of important nutrients like carbon and nitrogen.
The project is a timely endeavor as the science for the research only started roughly 5 years ago because of regulations created by the FDA and CDC. A call for stricter legislation led to these regulations to protect the families and individuals living near antibiotic-fueled agricultural sites.
In order to bring greater attention to the issue of antibiotic resistance, Wepking has published a nationwide study on soil from areas with large cattle presence versus those with none. This study addresses one of the largest problems the team is facing in their research: understanding the effect of the manure itself separately from the effect of the antibiotics. High input sites, such as those observed in their local farm collections, versus low input sites used as the control in the study, helps to decipher the outcomes of the various elements of this microbial ecology research.
These communities, similar to those found in the greater Blacksburg community, can experience antibiotic resistance and additional major health concerns. Wepking and his team are working to learn more about the role the antibiotics play and trying to document the effects that agricultural antibiotics are having on soils in this region.
“This project is important from two angles,” Wepking explained. “It’s worrisome from a human health perspective but also the microbes in the soil have to work harder, which causes them to burn through soil organic matter inefficiently. This can have negative effects on the long term sustainability of soils.”
The team, comprised of Wepking along with a handful of undergraduate researchers and advisor Mike Strickland, a soil biologist now at the University of Idaho, performs field work locally at Kentland Farm.
Along with collecting soil samples, Wepking and his team must also evaluate the ecosystems in the spring during peak plant growth season. The project has been ongoing for two years and is projected to conclude within the next academic year.
“Ultimately, we need to ask ourselves what effect these antibiotics can have on the ecosystems as a whole,” Wepking said. “Antibiotics in general are a pretty modern tool but their role in soils and the idea of antibiotic resistance as a result isn’t always thought of right away. Through our research, I’m hoping to come to some concrete conclusions of how this cycle can have a longstanding impact on the natural and agricultural systems.”
Article written by Ali Marhefka while participating in ENGL 4824: Science Writing in Spring 2017 as part of a collaboration between Fralin and the Department of English at Virginia Tech. Learn more.
The auditorium was packed. Several people stood in the back, while others sat in the main aisle leading into the conference center at the Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech.
More than 150 students, faculty and members of the university community had come to hear Dr. Tyrone Hayes, a developmental biologist from the University of California at Berkeley.
Hayes was invited by the Biological Sciences Diversity Committee, and co-sponsored by the College of Science Diversity Committee, the Women and Minority Artists and Scholars Lecture Series, the Office of Inclusion and Diversity, the Virginia Tech Life Sciences Seminars and the College of Natural Resources and Environment, as part of the university’s weeklong celebrations in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
A major goal of Hayes’ visit – and the week – was to honor King’s legacy by framing ideas and movements so that we can create a more diverse university community, rich in history, understanding and dialogue across personal, cultural, and educational divides.
“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically,” said College of Science Dean Sally Morton, quoting King, as she introduced Hayes.
“We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”
Her words invoked King’s writing, “The Purpose of Education,” published in the Morehouse College student paper, The Maroon Tiger, in 1947. In the article, King encourages a view of education that enables discerning “the true from the false,” and acquiring “worthy objectives upon which to concentrate.” King’s notion of education, then, was to inspire logical and moral thinking, one based on “not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.”
And achieving this education, Dean Morton reminded us, requires a diversity of ideas and backgrounds.
This was the sixth science-based seminar in celebration of King’s legacy. The Biological Sciences Diversity Committee in the College of Science initially hatched the idea for the series.
“The idea was to integrate scientific research with diversity activities because people tend to divorce these kinds of activities from other things they do in their academic life,” said Anne McNabb, professor emerita and current co-chair of the committee, along with Florian Schubot, an associate professor of biological sciences. She and former department head, Professor Bob Jones, initiated the committee several years ago.
The audience was immediately engaged as Hayes began his talk, “From Silent Spring to Silent Night: A Tale of Toads and Men,” which also kicked off this semester’s Virginia Tech Life Science Seminars.
“As a kid I loved frogs,” he said excitedly, showing pictures of where he grew up and where he played.
I couldn’t help but be excited, too.
He then told the story of how his journey began: starting at a young age, he was always curious about frogs and salamanders. He loved frogs so much, he said, that as a kid he spent time in the woods and the swamp. He even shared how his parents, especially his grandmother, encouraged his curiosity.
As I watched his story unfold, and how it transitioned from the personal to the scientific (and back again), it became clear that he had a knack for storytelling, and for engaging faculty, students and all people alike – even those who may not have known much (like me) about biology, hormones, and the reproductive physiology of amphibians.
Listening to him, we became immersed in his story, and by default, immersed in the world of amphibians and how the environment affects them and those who live near them.
I sat down with Hayes later that afternoon. I asked him about how he engages audiences and students so that we could learn from him as we continue moving towards effective inclusion and communication in research.
Here’s some of what he shared with me on communicating science and opening himself up to and for students (and others):
Tyrone Hayes: To me it’s important to be able to communicate not just science, but academia beyond the campus. I think too often a campus is like this gated little place that’s not accessible to the people around it; it’s sort of ivory tower-ish. It’s this feeling that you’re in this little inaccessible community.
When I talk with people, I try to have a common language and not slip into the academic jargon. I try to explain the importance of research, not necessarily as it relates to biomedical research, but to explain, even with a joke that people can understand, that somehow what we’re researching is based somewhat in inherent curiosity.
CH: One thing you did today that was really engaging was to tell a story, including your initial interest in frogs, and I noticed you used personal anecdotes during your talk. How did you learn to communicate in such an effective way?
TH: I attribute this to my grandmother. She was a great storyteller. My father was also a great storyteller. He could tell a story about going to the bathroom.
I’m also a very visual person, so I spend a lot of time working on slides, like choosing pictures that include people. At lot of young people in the sciences, for example, aren’t used to graphs and things, so I spend a lot of time thinking, if I make a big motion with my hands and say, ‘Look how BIG that is!’ Or, ‘look how small that is,’ then I find an effective way to use imagery and motion that can help with the story.
I also think being able to tell a story with little pieces of your own life makes it more real to people, rather than, let me tell you about this chemical, which doesn’t mean much to most people, and about this frog that you’ve never seen before, and about this chemical equation that may not mean anything to you. If you put yourself as the scientist in the story, then it makes it a more real thing – that thing is really happening.
I do the same thing in my lecture courses. I don’t use PowerPoint, just chalk. And, for example, when I talk about osmoregulation (salt and water balance) and why you dehydrate certain things, I use the example of taking my daughter camping in the desert. The lecture is even called, ‘Why my daughter doesn’t pee in the desert.’ As I tell the story, I go through all the hormones that change, and why if you’re small, with a high surface area to volume ratio, you lose more water, so the hormones change to prevent you from losing more water, and so forth. And it becomes a more interesting story about me going on a trip with my daughter, rather than just drawing a picture of the kidneys and showing you how they work to regain water and salt.
To some extent, you have to gain confidence in your abilities, especially as a minority. There can be self-induced pressure, and sometimes there’s pressure from the outside to wear the right kind of suit and have the right kind of slides, and so I realized that I could be myself and make this information more interesting so then people would listen to more of what I had to say than fit into a mold that I wasn’t going to fit in anyway. So, I could wear a tweed jacket and cut my hair, but I think you have to get to a level of comfort where you can express yourself and do something that’s a little different than how most people do it.
CH: Did you feel like you needed to distinguish yourself?
TH: I felt like I could speak more and present more in my own style. And I think doing so actually gets the information across even better because then it’s my story. It’s not just me presenting data slide after slide with a monotone voice. Sometimes I’m excited about things, sometimes there’s a joke, and sometimes I’m sad about things – I show it as I talk.
Most of the time, I rarely see someone presenting science when they’ve actually put themselves in it. People tend to remove themselves from it and present data that are separate from them. But they’re not. I don’t think they are for anybody, but we have this culture in science that that’s how you do it. It’s like a rule.
CH: Have you spent much time talking and working with folks outside the university?
TH: I present at a lot of places that don’t necessarily count for tenure. For example, I did the keynote at the Presbyterians for the Earth conference, I’ve given talks at a food preparation conference, at the Steel Workers Union, and in several local high schools. These are things that don’t necessarily count on your resume for tenure, so some people would say they are non-traditional venues. But I think it’s probably more important to speak at these kinds of events, like Kids Tech at Virginia Tech. [Hayes has visited Virginia Tech on several occasions for this conference.]
CH: When you visit with younger age groups, what do you do with the kids?
TH: Depends on the age, but my goal is to present the same data or story to everybody, so if I’m speaking to a breast cancer group, or a herpetology group, or an ethics group, then the focus is a little bit different. What I’ve found with little kids is that you can’t talk to them for a whole hour; they’re not going to sit there that long. So, I might use the same slideshow, but I’ll show them a picture, and ask, ‘Who can tell me what this is?’ And they’ll all guess. Then every five slides or so I’ll have them discuss what they think happened. So, there’s a lot more participation during the talk. It’s interesting because when you’re at the college level and ask a question, no one wants to say anything. But when you’re in a fifth grade class, everybody wants to talk.
So that’s one thing too – what happens to everybody that they no longer want to raise their hand? Are they picked on enough that they’re worried about being wrong? It’s just like every little kid could be an artist or like science, but somehow it gets chiseled away from them. It’s like dancing; any little kid will dance, and then they get to a point where they won’t try it.
CH: I’ve gotten the impression that you’re quite a mentor with graduate and undergraduate students…
TH: Yes, I’ve always had a pretty close group. But I’m also very gregarious, and though I have a separate office, I don’t use it. I have a desk in the student office so I see my students everyday. We all share a space, and we all work together. We have lab meetings once a week, and 2-3 formal social functions once a year. I had a very important mentor when I was an undergraduate, so it’s very important for me to try to do this with students.
CH: Can you tell me about a time when you’ve worked with a student who’s had a hard time? Were you able to bring them in and learn from that? And, how could we learn to work with our students more effectively, too?
TH: That’s a hard question. There are varying levels of appropriateness to maintain a professional relationship and that can be tricky, but in many cases, it’s developing a rapport with the student that makes them comfortable by saying, look, these things are going on and figuring out where you can help.
Sometimes student issues are financial. Fortunately, I have an endowment and funds that can help buy students math and science textbooks.
Some of it’s just being understanding when students need flexibility. I’ve had students that were single parents, that have had multiple family issues back home, students with parental issues, and others that have lived in their cars. When I think about what some of my students have had to do just to get to Berkeley, let alone get through Berkeley, and then move on to the next step, it humbles me.
Sometimes you do think that students are making things up, like surely not that many bad things have happened to this student. But sure enough, those things did happen.
CH: It seems like it’s really important to you to interact with students so that you learn their stories and their backgrounds. Can you tell me how that helps you as a mentor?
TH: I’m still learning, too, and everybody’s different, but learning what barriers there might be to getting an education is key. One is books. I remember when I needed a neurobiology textbook, and it was something like $300.00. At the time my parents were paying $200.00 in rent, and I remember thinking, how can I ask my parents for a month and a half of rent for one book? I think it was the only upper division class that I didn’t get an A in. So, being able to now purchase books makes it less of an issue for other students.
Ultimately, understanding what these barriers are is important, and then helping them be able to excel and succeed. I think also being in an environment where you’re rewarded and expected to express your individuality rather than the more general environment at a university where you just want to blend in and not stick out. In my space, I think people are encouraged to express their individuality and express their culture.
CH: Do you find that students come to you and share their background, or do you find that you’re learning those things as you develop relationships with them?
TH: It depends. Some students are really private. There are some students that I really don’t know much about at all. Others really like to talk and express themselves. And that may be the difficult thing too, which is to build an environment where students feel comfortable doing either one. You have to make sure everybody is comfortable with things. You know, every relationship is not going to be the same. It’s important to understand that.
CH: It sounds like you’re good at judging the scenario or the person.
TH: I’m still learning. I think it becomes dangerous when you think that you’re good at something. When you’re good at something then you stop trying.
CH: My experience in the humanities, for the most part, seems more overtly focused on empathy than some areas of science. Has this been your experience?
TH: Yes, I think the sciences can be more like that. Even if you think about writing, you have to unlearn how to write more creatively because it doesn’t matter if it’s choppy, and you shouldn’t use flowery phrases. You know, it’s short: you did this, you did that, these were the results. This is also sort of indicative of how the field is in general, how being a scientist is.
CH: Do you think it’s the culture of what you do as a scientist, as part of the material aspect of lab work?
TH: I would say it’s different from, say, poetry or dramatic writing where you’re trying to express how you feel about something. Whereas as a scientist, how you feel about something, or your hunches or your beliefs, don’t really matter. It’s pulling all that stuff away, which maybe why it’s more unusual to present the scientist as, here’s my story and I’m a part of it. Not just, here are the graphs, so make up your own mind about it. Even a discussion in a scientific paper is about what the data suggests. It’s not what I think, it’s not what I feel.
CH: There does seem to be evidence that emotion is divorced from science, but you seem to put the personal (and emotional) back into science. Do you have any advice for students and faculty to practice a sense of empathy, or for those who get entrenched in this system of working hard to get ahead?
TH: I think some of it again depends on your personality and how comfortable you feel reaching out. I know other faculty who have really good relationships with their labs, so it’s not all that unique. But, I think sometimes we take risks with students who have a lot of things going on, and it takes a little more time to understand what’s going on and work with them.
You know, you might have a student who might not have all A’s, but they’re enthusiastic and excited. And they ask, ‘why does this happen?’ when something goes wrong, so you help them fix it.
CH: In thinking of other students, have there been times you’ve been in their shoes?
TH: I was lucky enough that I found a mentor early on and I also met my wife around that time, and she was very supportive. So I certainly had that feeling of do I belong, was I a mistake? You know, the imposter syndrome. But based on many of the students I’ve interacted with, nothing like what some of them have had to deal with just to get to college, let alone to finish and move on.
Many of my heroes are students who I’ve met.
CH: Do you find that any of these student experiences are based on race specifically, i.e., in terms of disparities of who has historically had access to college?
TH: The joke in my lab is that I’ve never had a minority because I’ve never had enough of anybody to be a majority. But I think a lot of it has to do with feeling like you’re the only one, and looking for your group. And, the more of a minority you are, then the more difficult it is to find somebody like you with some kind of connection you can identify with.
I’ve also seen it like: I had a white grad student, who first had to adjust a little bit because he didn’t know which jokes were appropriate. Then, one time we were having a potluck, and he said he couldn’t bring anything. And I said, ‘what do you mean you can’t bring anything?’ And he said, ‘I’m not ethnic so I can’t bring anything.’ You know, the Chinese student was bringing Chinese food, the Vietnamese student was bringing Vietnamese food. So I said to him, ‘Diversity doesn’t mean everybody but white people. If you were in your hometown, what would you bring?’ And so he brought a dish that I guarantee no one had had before.
That was an amazing experience. Always one of my jokes is that white people don’t know how to be minorities, because you’re rarely in a situation where you’re the only white person. This was probably the first time ever that this student had been in a situation like this.
CH: At the end of your talk today, you started to touch on some environmental justice issues. Could you tell me more about that?
TH: I first learned the term environmental justice with Keith Ellison in Minnesota when he was campaigning against the chemical atrazine. It was the first time I started to think about these kinds of things, and they’re things that my students whose families work in agriculture have experienced. They’re now things that I’ve experienced. You know, my father put down carpet and I remember he would come home everyday with his hair white and make a joke about how old he got a work. But it was because he was sanding asbestos.
But certain agricultural communities are separated by language and economics. Living in these communities, you get into the mindset where if everyone else has it, then you don’t realize there’s a problem. Like if everyone you know has diabetes, then you might not realize it’s something that’s disproportionately affecting your community because of environmental things that are happening in your community.
My wife, for example, works with a Native American community with a high incidence of diabetes. It’s a community in Northern California, where all kinds of organic produce is grown, but it all gets shipped out, so people there don’t have access to it. There tends to be nothing but processed food, and I think the nearest real grocery is almost 40 miles away from where they live.
If you live in that community, though, you don’t see the problem because everyone has diabetes. My focus is on the reproductive affects from pesticide chemicals, and statistics show that the chemicals we know to be associated with adverse health outcomes are more likely agricultural communities, in which 90 percent of the communities tend to be Hispanic. I’m not even talking about superfund sites that tend to be near low-income neighborhoods and so forth.
Right now, my lab is doing work in South Carolina where I grew up, in the place that turned me on to frogs and biology, which is now the Congaree National Park. So you think great, we at least now have a place that’s not going to be cemented over. But it turns out that the park is contaminated with atrazine. It’s also contaminated with ethinyl estradiol from birth control pills because the surrounding community has leaky septic tanks since it is a low-income, and therefore a predominantly African American, community with weak sewage infrastructure.
These are the kinds of things I think more about now, including what happened to the other black kids I went to school with growing up in South Carolina, who were from these low-income communities. The outcomes for different groups of kids, depending on educational tracks and so forth, was very different. Overall, it was like the black kids weren’t even in the same school. It was even segregated at lunch.
CH: What does it mean to you to be here with us as part of the MLK legacy?
TH: I often get invitations that are for MLK Day or around Earth Day. Both of these mean something because there’s an added meaning to me to get to talk about my interest in frogs and environmental justice.
I’m not sure if a lot of people in science are talking about these issues. And it’s important almost equally to be invited to the Earth Day events, because for me as a minority appreciating nature and to now be researching it, it’s almost like a way to give back. And these things that I talk about here are things that I talk about no matter where I’m invited. But it’s almost more special because I’ll get invited to talk about things that I think are important intertwined with the science.
This interview has been edited and condensed for readability.
By Casey Lowe, a Virginia Tech senior majoring in Humanities, Science, and the Environment in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
Kasia Dinkeloo, a fourth-year Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech, holds her test subject transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana in Latham Hall.
Between 1845 and 1849, the Irish Potato Famine destroyed crops and ultimately killed more than 2 million people in Ireland. The culprit? A highly destructive oomycete pathogen called Phytophthora infestans. Oomycete pathogens are a class of eukaryotic microbes that are similar to fungi and are well known for their destructive history.
Relatives of the oomycete pathogen that destroyed Ireland’s main food source in the 19th century are being studied at Virginia Tech today. Unlocking their genetic secrets could provide powerful benefits to agriculture worldwide. Plant disease causes a 15-20% yearly reduction in global crop productivity, and in today’s growing world food stability is volatile. By 2050 the world’s population is projected to have risen by 30% indicating the rising importance of food production efficiency and stability. That’s where plant pathologists come in.
Kasia Dinkeloo of Delaware, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the department of plant pathology, physiology, and weed science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, is working with John McDowell and Guillaume Pilot, both professors in the department, as well as four fellow graduate students, to analyze the manner in which oomycete plant pathogens invade plant hosts and extract nutrients.
Kasia found her interest in plants as a high school student. Her original plan was to attend art school, but after reading many books on plants for an art project she found a new passion to become a scientist, a route she also believed would be much more beneficial for her life. While completing her undergrad at the University of Delaware, Kasia took a class on plant pathology and immediately knew it was the direction she wanted to take.
She and her team, directed by McDowell and Pilot, operate in two different labs in Latham Hall investigating the mechanisms by which oomycetes alter the host plants metabolism to fit their nutrient requirements. Some oomycetes are challenging to study because they are biotrophic, meaning the organism must remain in the living host to complete its life cycle, and therefore cannot be cultured or grown away from the plant in order to be studied.
Kasia works hard in the lab analyzing water droplets containing spores of Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis for pathogen testing.
Much like humans, plants have complex and efficient immune systems consisting of a network of thousands of proteins working together. However, plant pathogens can still successfully invade and extract resources from the host plant by overcoming the plants immune responses. The mechanism by which oomycetes suppress plant immune responses is well studied and increasingly understood, but little research or knowledge exists that explains how pathogens trick the plant into giving away its nutrients. For Kasia, this unknown is the most exciting part of her graduate research, but also the most challenging.
For the past three years, Kasia has been developing a method which will eventually allow the team to isolate the specific cells that contain the oomycetes feeding structures from the bulk plant tissue. Once Kasia’s molecular technology is complete, the team will have access to RNA data that should contain genetic evidence of how oomycetes are capable of their takeovers. This information will bring the team much closer to their end goal: to create genetically modified versions of these plants that will resist nutrient extraction by the pathogen.
The test subject is a plant known as Arabidopsis thaliana, a commonly used model organism for pathology studies. The oomycete Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis is a natural pathogen to Arabidopsis thaliana, making it a perfect candidate for the studies. By understanding how oomycetes successfully hijack nutrients from Arabidopsis, Kasia will be able to isolate the enabling traits and then create modified plants that suppress or are unaffected by the pathogen interference. This will help create plants that won’t give up their nutrient sources, cutting the supply line to the pathogen.
Kasia is well aware of the economic value of her research beyond its scientific implementations. “The value of our science is a dollar value,” said Kasia. “If we can create healthier plants with a higher yield, it will decrease food prices, something the consumer will see in the grocery store and directly benefit from.”
Using pesticides for the chemical control of pathogens has been successful in some ways, but they have caused irreversible environmental damage as well as generated new pathogens resistant to pesticides. By creating modified plants with a genetic defense against oomycetes, the need for pesticides could be eliminated altogether.
According to Kasia, genetically modified plants will be essential for feeding our growing population. She believes creating more food on less land will only be accomplished by working on the plants themselves, not just the environments in which they are grown and produced.
“I’m going to feed the world, that’s the dream! Food is security,” she said.
Arapidopsis thaliana, a commonly used model organism for plant pathology studies
Q&A: Meet Kasia
Hometown: Wilmington, Delaware
Major/Year: Fourth-year Ph.D. student
Fralin Advisors: John McDowell and Guillaume Pilot
Other Degrees: Bachelor of Science from the University of Delaware
Why do you want to be a scientist?
I really enjoy plant science because it’s a really beautiful way to see the world. I like knowing that the work I do is not only very fulfilling to me as a person, but can be used to help feed our population.
What created your interest in plant pathology?
I knew that plant science/plant pathology was for me after a freshman year course at U.D. called “People and plants: feast or famine.” I loved learning about how plant pathogens and plant growth shaped so much of history, and how understanding plant disease is a key part of food security for the future. After that class, I guess I was hooked.
Career goals after graduate school?
As far as ultimate career goals after the Ph.D., it’s hard to give a clear answer since I am so undecided. But whether I am in academia or industry, I would really love to keep exploring different aspects of plant-pathogen interactions and stay as close to a research lab setting as possible.
Favorite hobby outside of school?
I have a dog; he’s the best ever. I really like having a dog because it reminds me to go home and not spend all day in the lab. I love hiking and outdoor activities as well as powerlifting.
Favorite thing about Blacksburg?
People here are so nice! I thought I was nice when I moved here, but I was just nice for Delaware. There is such a good sense of community here.
This past year, a new undergraduate course was successfully introduced at Virginia Tech: Phage Hunters, BIOL 1135 and 1136.
Housed in the department of biological sciences in the College of Science, the two-semester course, offered beginning each fall, gives students the chance to undertake a genomics project from start to finish, while gaining experience beyond the typical coursework in introductory laboratory classes.
During the fall semester, students were tasked with finding bacteriophage, or viruses that infect bacteria, using wet lab isolation techniques.
Bacteriophage, or phage for short, are often studied in clinical research settings for their ability to target bacteria. While in the class, the students cultured the phage using Mycobacterium smegmatis, which is similar (though non-pathogenic) to the strain of bacteria that causes tuberculosis.
After the phage were isolated, they were sent for genomic sequencing at the University of Pittsburgh, which works in tandem with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science Education division to administer the SEA-PHAGES program, in which Virginia Tech is now a part.
Once in Pittsburgh, the genomes of the phages were sequenced and then sent back to Virginia Tech to be annotated – or in layman’s terms, thoroughly described – during the spring semester.
From there, the students had to describe each genome, and argue for each gene’s location based on outside research. Finally, they had to present the function of each gene as they understood it based on their research of gene functioning in other phages, as well as what they had learned with their instructor, Stephanie Voshell, and in other biology courses.
Stephanie Voshell (pictured right) teaches VT’s Phage Hunters course. Here she’s pictured with students Steven Black and Elle Humes (far left) at the SEA-PHAGES symposium held last month at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia.
“The annotating was incredibly difficult to grasp at first,” said Tetyana Senchyshyn, an undergraduate majoring in biological sciences who took the second semester of the course first.
“Once you get the hang of the software and the annotating, it’s not as hard as I thought it might be. It’s actually a lot of fun. Every gene is a new puzzle piece you’re trying to fit into the genome and the entire phage as a whole.”
Initially, the students got a feel for the techniques used to annotate genes. They then spent the rest of the semester working in teams to annotate the genomes of the three sequenced phages, with each having 89-112 genes.
Using computer software designed at the University of Pittsburgh, they began identifying the genes in order to identify their location on the phage genome and, ultimately, each gene’s function.
“The students had to look at each site where the computer thought a gene was, and use logic to reason through and take all the pieces of evidence into consideration to decide if that was the correct call,” said Voshell, an instructor of biological sciences who teaches the two-semester sequence along with Kristi DeCourcy, a research associate at the Fralin Life Science Institute, in the fall.
“You want to find the genes so you can determine the amino acid sequence, because if you don’t know what the specific start and stop sites are, you can’t study the translations to learn about their structure and function,” said Voshell.
By the end of the semester, the students fine-tuned their descriptions for every single gene for each of these three genomes. Their work culminated in a final report that will be published in the Actinobacteriophage database, which is run and maintained by the Pittsburgh Bacteriophage Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and GenBank, a genetic sequence database at the National Institutes of Health. Both include annotated sequences from other participating students and scientists so others can reference them in future research. This includes when scientists are studying bacteria that cause disease.
“Because their work builds on what others have done, the students always had to be thinking, is this logical or could someone have perpetuated a mistake?” said Voshell. “They really had to think about what’s happening in the phage, what it’s doing in the host when it’s replicating itself, and use that knowledge to decide what functions these genes might have.”
In addition to Voshell and DeCourcy, Kyle Szwetkowski, a master’s student in biological sciences who studies mycobacteria, and Holly Packard, a graduate student also in biological sciences, joined the students. Both served as the course’s graduate teaching assistants, with Packard helping guide the students in the fall, and Szwetkowski helping throughout the entire yearlong process.
Recently, I had the chance to get an inside look at Virginia Tech’s new class, Phage Hunters: BIOL 1135 & 1136, housed in the College of Science.
Dawn Wright, a junior majoring in neuroscience, shared some thoughts from the year now that she’s a bona fide Phage Hunter. Thanks, Dawn!
Q: How did the second semester of doing the genome annotations change your thinking after the first lab-based class?
DW: I’m a more hands-on learner, so the change of pace for me was slightly uncomfortable at first. However, you have to develop the mindset that what you are doing in the second semester is taking a specimen that was isolated and looking at its most fundamental parts. Every codon in the genome of the bacteriophage is used to examine the greater functions of the gene products, and this information is necessary to further the applications of these viruses in future research and medicine.
Q: How did the second semester change or contribute to your thinking as a student studying science?
DW: The second semester really elaborated on the more analytical side of biological sciences. I think that the common misconception is that research is a series of experiments that yield results that are then published. This is more often than not the case – there is a lot more to research than just performing experiments, and the second semester exposed us to the critical thinking that is necessary to accurately annotate a genome. As a neuroscience student, this taught me that you have to examine all the small pieces that make up a bigger picture.
Dawn Wright (pictured right) presented her findings at the spring course poster session in Fralin Hall. She’s pictured here with Neil Feste, a junior biochemistry student and fellow phage hunter.
Q: What was it like getting to be involved in the research from start to finish (from finding the phage to annotating it over both semesters)?
DW: Having the experience from both semesters really developed a sense of pride, as we were able to watch the project evolve from a mere soil sample to a fully sequenced genome. Since we got to name our bacteriophages, we were given a sense of identity since we were associated with our findings. It was truly surreal to see the pictures of our phages on the computer screen next to the electron microscope and each of its constituent parts mapped out on the software that we worked on for fourteen weeks.
Because of Phage Hunters, I was able to secure a research position in a microbial genetics research lab that would eventually lead to me receiving a fellowship to continue this research. While this research project is not close to the finish line, I fondly reflect on all of my mishaps in the wet lab portion of Phage Hunters and remember to persevere because the end result is well worth the frustration in the middle of the journey.
Q: Do you have a different perspective of research now that you’ve completed the whole year of work?
DW: After completing a full year of work in the lab, my interest in conducting research has increased drastically. I was strictly pre-med track before taking the course, but after becoming involved with this project, I am now more aware of the close relationship between research and medical applications. I think that research is a very rewarding experience to become involved in, because you never know if you are going to walk into the lab someday and discover something that has yet to be seen. There is so much out there that we do not know the answers to, and I find it magical that research allows you to be a part of finding the solution.
Q: What advice would you give now to fellow undergraduates who don’t have any research experience and who haven’t taken the class?
DW: For the fellow undergraduates, I highly recommend reaching out to professors and becoming involved. Research experience provides you with technical and teamwork skills that are invaluable in the workplace. There are plenty of opportunities at this institution that are geared towards providing experience to students who are interested. In addition, keep an eye out for special study (SS) programs that are offered through the Biological Sciences major and can be seen in the timetable of classes when the time to create your schedule comes around.
Type 2 diabetes strains people’s lives and the U.S. health care system. More than an estimated 29 million people in the country have the disease.
In addition, currently 86 million people in the U.S. have an early stage of type 2 diabetes, known as prediabetes. This is a state in which the body’s blood sugar levels are elevated, indicating the possibility that the body could progress to the full state of the disease. However, roughly 9 out of 10 people in this early stage don’t know it.
In the last few years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Medical Association developed the Prevent Diabetes STAT (Screen, Test, Act Today) campaign to increase awareness of prediabetes so people with elevated blood sugar can begin remedying their health to reduce further health risks.
“These organizations called the whole nation to be aware of prediabetes screening because we don’t have a cure for type 2 diabetes,” said Zhiyong Cheng, an assistant professor of human nutrition, foods and exercise in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
“Since we don’t have a cure, we have to diagnose those with prediabetes as early as possible to prevent more people from having the disease.”
As a nutrition scientist, Cheng works to develop a diagnostic system for early risk factors, such as certain molecular and cellular changes, which could ultimately help identify risk sooner.
Recently, he and a team of collaborators at Virginia Tech, Carilion Clinic, and the University of Nebraska Medical Center found that changes in mitochondria, the main energy producer in cells, may be a better biomarker of early prediabetes than other diagnostic tools currently in use.
Their results were recently published in the open access journal Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity.
Nutrition researchers have found that changes in mitochondria, the main energy producer in cells, may be an effective biomarker for early stage prediabetes. Red arrows point out the mitochondria; the yellow arrow points to the cell’s nucleus. Image courtesy Zhiyong Cheng.
They recruited 87 participants across three health conditions: healthy, prediabetic, and those diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
Using blood samples from the participants, they evaluated the levels of fasting glucose and glycated hemoglobin (also known as A1c), which are two parameters recommended by the American Diabetes Association to determine whether a person has type 2 diabetes or prediabetes.
Overall, they found that these measures inconsistently represent the diagnosed health conditions.
“When we used the two major parameters, we found a wide variation between how they represent the health of patients,” said Cheng, who is an affiliated researcher with the Fralin Life Science Institute and the Fralin Translational Obesity Research Center.
“These two variables tell different stories, so there’s something missing. The goal to pursue a consistent diagnosis prompts us to identify a new biomarker for people with higher risk.”
The body relies on mitochondria – tiny organelles that produce energy and underpin cellular functions. Healthy people have 800-1200 mitochondria in their cells, but this number is significantly reduced for obese people with prediabetes, according to a 2015 study by Cheng and collaborators.
Since then, Cheng and his team have been exploring why prediabetic individuals had fewer mitochondria. In doing so, they found the molecular process of making mitochondria changes as people become resistant to insulin. This process is known as mitochondrial DNA methylation, which takes place in a region of the mitochondrial genome that mediates mitochondrial duplication.
In this new study, the researchers identified changes in the DNA methylation in another region of the mitochondrial genome, the region which controls the production of a mitochondrial protein that affects how mitochondria function.
The researchers found that these mitochondrial changes were poorly linked to fasting glucose and hemoglobin A1c levels, which tend to predict risk of type 2 diabetes only one to two and a half years before its onset. Instead, these changes were strongly associated with impaired insulin sensitivity, which can be tracked up to five years before disease onset.
Since these changes in mitochondrial DNA methylation are significantly correlated with insulin resistance – an early stage predictor – they may be a potential indicator or biomarker of early stage prediabetes.
“If we have a more effective diagnostic system, we would be able to help people better understand their risks,” said Fabio Almeida, a former Virginia Tech investigator who is now in the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
“Increasing evidence shows that epigenetic changes such as DNA methylation can reflect the human-environment interaction and risks of disease. The good news for people who have higher risk for developing diabetes is there’s a very good chance to reverse the disease risks if we can identify the individuals as early as possible and implement lifestyle interventions.”
This project was part of a larger parent study in the diaBEAT-it program, which is designed to raise awareness and help prevent onset of type 2 diabetes. The study was supported in part by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch Project (1007334) and by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (5R18DK091811-02).
The wind whipped tiny mist droplets across our faces as we zipped up our jackets against the chilly air. It was unusually quiet, a surprisingly stark contrast to the constant drum of life in the lowlands.
The vegetation consisted of pale shades of tan and grey green, colors seemingly faded by the thick glaucous coating and fine hair like structures covering the stems and leaves of the succulent plants.
Rudy, our guide, explained how the fuzzy wool like fibers on the puya plant, a high altitude bromeliad, is used by hummingbirds to build nests to protect growing nestlings against the frigid year round temperatures.
Carpets of fine long grass waved back and forth like a horses mane against the fog shrouded peak of Pichincha. The city of Quito spanned the valley below, nestled between the volcanic Andean mountains.
It was a breathtaking experience to conclude our visit to Quito!
What initially motivated me to go on this trip was my fascination with herpetology. Reptiles and amphibians are often misunderstood and underappreciated creatures, and the opportunity to visit the Ecuadorian rain forest where biodiversity of these creatures is abundant has been incredible to say the least.
It rained all night and sporadically during the day, so that special day at Shiripuno was an especially lucky one for finding frogs and snakes. On our day hike we saw two crested forest toads that camouflage so well they’re easily mistaken for fallen leaves, and a red backed dendrobatid (poison dart frog). When Erin Dailey and I were setting up our research project we saw an Amazon horned frog, also known as a pacman frog, that can grow so large it will feed on mice! It had beautiful markings on its back to help it camouflage with the leaf litter around it, so it can sit and wait for prey instead of searching it out. The yellow lines curving throughout its face looked electric and mesmerizing.
At dinner I showed Dr. Moore the pictures of the pacman frog, and he just about jumped out of his seat from excitement and jealousy. We went out for a night hike to look for it and other critters lurking in the night. We didn’t find the pacman frog again, but found other amazing amphibians and reptiles. First we saw a caecilians (the third and often forgotten group of amphibians after frogs and salamanders) feasting on a large earthworm in the middle of the trail. It was one of the strangest and most interesting things I’ve seen on this trip. It resembled a snake but was more tubular and very slimy. Those who tried to grasp it couldn’t hold it in their hands for longer than a few seconds. As we continued, we found 3 giant monkey tree frogs, bright green frogs with serrated-like sides and pale gray eyes with a prominent black slit. We were extremely lucky and got to watch it wax itself with its legs for a moment. As we approached a stream filled with fallen leaves, we began to search for Pipa pipa (an aquatic frog) and Mata mata (an aquatic turtle). Dr. Hopkins amazingly enough was able to find a Pipa pipa within all the leaf litter underwater. I could hardly even see it before he pulled it out from its hiding place. It still baffles me that he even spotted it in the first place. Under the leaf litter it resembled a brown crab, but once it was brought to the surface it looked prehistoric. It had a flattened head as if it had been stepped on and very long slender front toes. Last time Dr. Hopkins visited the lowland rainforest finding a Pipa pipa was his goal and now I can see why.
Walking back from the stream we saw two snail eating snakes, one of which was a banded calico snake with a beautiful pattern of white and black bands that faded into a browner banded pattern. This was one of my favorite night hikes yet due to the diversity of herps we saw. It’s amazing how these animals have these perfect adaptations to blend in in their special niche within the rainforest. With these incredible features that allow them to camouflage so well, it makes me wonder what other creatures are looking back on us as we venture through their home.
~ Virginia Tech student Caroline Tribble
Follow the Adventure! You are invited to follow the VT Ecuador students as they report back from South America during their 3-week journey, May 16-June 7. They will be blogging @VTResearch and posting to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram using the hashtag #VTEcuador. – See more at: http://blogs.lt.vt.edu/ResearchBlog/#sthash.g5Fc56wz.dpuf
