Happy Spring from the Rollins-Smith Lab!
Like always, time gets away from me and here we are with spring upon us! And we have a bit of exciting news to share; some of our recent work has been recognized by ecoNEWS Vermont, an online portal that disseminates the latest information in ecological research around the state of Vermont. We are thrilled to find that they have shared our study measuring leopard frog immune function in response to drought. This study was part of a larger body of work looking at the relationship between future climate change and disease susceptibility in amphibians.
This project was part of a collaborative effort among researchers from all over the United States, ranging from Nevada to Tennessee to Vermont (and several places in between!). This study involved a lot of hard work and many long hours in the field gathering data so we are very proud to share our findings. Congratulations, to our very own Emily Hall Le Sage, PhD, co-lead author (along with Michel Ohmer, PhD) of this study! And thanks, Anna Marchessault, for including our work in this edition of ecoNEWS Vermont. The article is short, so take a minute and check it out. The results are quite interesting.
In other news, the Rollins-Smith Lab is excited to host another Aspirnaut high school student this summer. This organization, developed by Julie and Billy Hudson, places high school students in labs for a summer of research. Students not only learn the basics of scientific research, they also spend a great deal of time attending other seminars and workshops to assist them as they prepare for college and a future in science. The program also recruits undergraduate students who want to pursue a career in the sciences, and they work in research labs during the summer as well. This is a fantastic program that does a lot of good work, so make sure you check out their website for information, especially if you know a young person who may be interested in pursuing science as a career.
Lastly, we are chipping away at our current projects and hope to get some manuscripts pulled together in the near future detailing our work with the Coqui frogs of Puerto Rico. We’ve gathered a lot of information and we're thinking about how to best present it. So keep an eye out for that to come.
Until next time, be well!
