Biology

Len Reitsma, graduate student Sam Parks and undergraduate Autumn Heil just completed Sam’s second and final field season collecting data for his MS in Environmental Science and Policy. Both mainly focused on Sam’s thesis work: response of bird communities to experimental group harvests in Canaan and Lyme, NH. Data collecting combined point count censuses with marking and mapping territories of six target species in Canaan. They also assisted Reitsma in his 18^th consecutive year monitoring a population of Canada warblers. Reitsma is also advising Katelyn Courtot on her thesis work looking at habitat overlap between American martens and snowshoe hares. And he is editing graduate student Sierra Marchacos’ thesis on wood turtle habitat use in the North Country, where Katelyn is also focused.

The Beebe River Long Term Environmental Monitoring and Education Project continues on, from its inception in the summer of 2016. Our team consists of graduate and undergraduate students in biology, environmental science & policy, and biochemistry, and several PSU alums. Our work focuses on an integrative view of this watershed – an approach we like to call from genes to GIS.

We spend each spring/summer season (after the spring semester wraps up) out on the river, working as a multidisciplinary team and partnering with groups outside of PSU.  In the field, we continuously monitor stream temperature and flow, and sample aquatic macroinvertebrates (mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies dominate our samples). Once per month from May until September we use electrofishing to collect wild brook trout with our partners: NH Fish and Game and the Pemigewasset Chapter of Trout Unlimited. During these sampling events, we collect wild brook trout and measure body size, scrape scales to age individuals, clip the small adipose fin of each individual to better create a genetic profile/genotype, and sample gill filaments to assay levels of stress proteins. We are interested in understanding wild brook trout demographics, growth, movement, stress levels, genetic structure, and more with these data. Our aim is to tie together these disparate datasets and bridge across different scales to better understand and protect wild brook trout for future generations.

Because horseshoe crab blood is used to ensure the sterility of vaccines and because the COVID-19 vaccine is of particular importance to us, the 2019 article has garnered a lot of regional and national interest including interviews for PBS, Quebec Science, and the Union Leader. The recent 2020 article on Biomedical Bleeding is expected to receive a lot of attention as well. His lab is currently investigating The effects of environmental toxins on Horseshoe crab behavior as well as the development of horseshoe crab biological rhythms. While COVID-19 precluded some of the summer activity in the Chabot lab, four undergraduates and a graduate student are returning this week to begin their research on these and other topics in the lab and in the field.