If someone asked you to describe a shark, I imagine most folks would report a ten-foot long body, rows and rows of razor sharp teeth, and the ruthless nature of a (literal) cold-blooded killer. If you asked Master’s student Reilly Boyt to describe a shark, she would likely describe a salmon shark. Before you look at the photo below, I urge you to close your eyes and picture a shark that looks a little shy and vaguely embarrassed. Okay now open, is this what you pictured or is it even better?
Pictured: Reilly Boyt helping conduct an ultrasound on a shark, all photos taken during permitted research
Reilly (she/her) is a second year Master’s student in the Big Fish Lab in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, studying the diet and habitat use of salmon sharks using multi-chemical tracers (e.g. eDNA metabarcoding and fatty acid analysis) across size classes and sex). Not only are salmon sharks adorable, but they are also one of the many fascinating shark species that are located right off the Oregon coast. Although salmon sharks are fish, they are actually warm-blooded or endothermic, meaning they can regulate their body temperature like mammals. Salmon sharks are apex predators, and they therefore impact the ecosystem from the top-down and have an incredibly important role throughout the entire food web. Despite this, scientists are still unsure of exactly what they are eating and where. That’s where Reilly comes in!
Reilly’s work aims to combine multiple methods that look for feeding signatures within fatty acids, isotopes, and DNA. These techniques can provide an understanding of both short- and long-term diet choices. In order to get these types of data, Reilly gets the simultaneously awesome and disgusting job of sorting through shark stomachs and vomit. I think true science nerds understand how cool that is!
Pictured: Reilly Boyt examining the contents of a shark stomach.Pictured: Reilly Boyt working in the lab.
From conducting diet analysis on coyote stomachs in high school to working for NOAA on shark diet studies, Reilly really has done it all. She is the founder and CEO of Disabilities Within Ocean Sciences (DWOS), an organization dedicated to “building a network and resource hub for disabled marine scientists at every career stage.” She has done prolific advocacy work that focuses on promoting inclusivity and equitable access within the field of marine science.
To learn more about DWOS and the adorably awkward salmon shark, you can check out the interview wherever you get your podcasts, including on our KBVR page, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else!
If you’re not a fan of ‘The Office’ then that title probably made no sense to you. But, if you are, then you’ll know that Michael Scott famously said that mercury poisoning is one of the five Goliaths that America faces (though we never actually find out what the fifth one is…). Regardless, this Sunday you’ll be able to learn all about this Goliath as our guest on the show, the newly minted Dr. Cailin Sinclair, will discuss his doctorate and post-doc work investigating mercury cycling in freshwater systems. Mercury chemistry and availability are very complex and the way mercury moves through food webs is also highly complex, which can make it difficult to know how much mercury is in a system and what its impacts might be. However, measuring biological tissue is a good way to determine risk associated with mercury, which is why Cailin uses dragonflies, which are exposed to mercury through their diet, as indicators for mercury in freshwater systems.
For his PhD dissertation, Cailin conducted field studies, lab experiments and a comprehensive literature review, to get to the bottom of some fundamental questions about mercury in the environment. So, join us for this week’s show as we sit down with Dr. Cailin Sinclair to discuss his research, his path to OSU, what he’s working on next, and maybe a factoid or two about musical theatre.
Tune in to our live show with Cailin this Sunday (February 9th) at 7 pm PST on KBVR 88.7 FM! If you miss the show, you can check out the interview wherever you get your podcasts, including on our KBVR page, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else!
Have you ever been on a walk or a hike and encountered the feather of a bird or the scat of a deer? Most likely, you tried to avoid stepping on the scat and you maybe admired the feather for a few moments before moving on. But did you know that those left behind animal parts are actually full of genetic data that scientists use to answer all kinds of ecological questions? Nowadays, many ecological studies strive to be as non-invasive as possible since physically handling animals can be logistically complicated as well as potentially cause stress to the animal. Hence, being able to make use of biological samples such as feathers or scat that are already left behind is incredibly non-invasive!
On this week’s show, we talked with PhD student Emily Dziedzic about her multitude of projects that she is working on for her research in the Levi Lab in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences. Emily is a molecular ecologist who focuses on bioinformatics, which means that she uses computer-based methods to analyze genetic data. Her work spans a wide variety of taxa, from freshwater fish to scarlet macaws, from bats to Humboldt marten, and has implications for improving ecological monitoring for management as well as assisting in the fight against wildlife disease.
If you’re curious to hear more about Emily’s research as well as learn about how she went from being a young child who organized all the kids in her neighborhood to save snapping turtle hatchlings on bikes to a molecular ecologist working on conservation management projects at OSU, then listen to our episode with Emily wherever you get your podcasts, including on our KBVR page, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else!
The Oregon Coast is known for its ruggedness and harsh weather, but also offers a prime opportunity to spot gray whales on their migratory paths. These majestic marine mammals undertake one of the largest migrations of any animal, traveling from the Arctic to Baja California to breed before heading back north along this “whale super-highway.” Despite having the mechanisms to feed in the water column, these benthic specialists prefer bottom feeding, scooping up sand from the seafloor and filtering out invertebrate prey through their baleen, likely targeting locations of high caloric content. However, along the coast of the Pacific Northwest, a behavior known as ‘prey switching’ has been observed, where gray whales feed in the water column instead of their preferred benthic prey, amphipods. Our upcoming guest, Taylor Azizeh, a first-year Ph.D. student at the Marine Mammal Institute, explores what may be driving this prey switching behavior.
Polar regions are among the top locations to be impacted by climate change, which Taylor suspects may be responsible for grey whales switching from benthic to pelagic prey. Changes in bottom water temperature and sediment grain size may result in habitats less favorable for amphipods, leading whales to seek food elsewhere. In response to warming, the distribution of other predators may shift to where they compete for the same food source, or the reduced sea ice cover could result in more productive pelagic waters. How do gray whales, these benthic specialists, adapt to changing food availability?
Gray whale populations often experience boom and bust cycles or unknown mortality events, with the most recent one currently underway. Taylor’s research on the foraging plasticity of gray whales is not only timely, but also employs a holistic approach using a combination of methods to assess the big picture. She plans to use stable isotopes to provide information on what whales are feeding on, but only when combined with GPS tags tracking movement and drone photogrammetry measuring body conditions can one understand where and why. Taylor plans to utilize this combination to ask big picture questions such as whether they’re feeding in areas of high biomass, if they return to those same areas, and how much adaptability can individual gray whales display?
At its core, Taylor’s research delves into the adaptability of gray whales. Gray whales have survived the ice ages, proving their ability to deal with harsh conditions, and Taylor hypothesizes they may be more flexible than we currently understand.
To learn more about Taylor’s passion for these charismatic animals of ecological, social, and cultural importance, the adventure which led here to grad school—from Costa Rica to Ecuador, Denmark, and London—tune in to KBVR 88.7 FM this Sunday, Nov. 3. You can listen to the episode anywhere you listen to your podcasts, including on KBVR, Spotify, Apple, or anywhere else!
Dams, climate change, habitat loss, predation, anglers. Wild salmon must contend with all of these challenges during some point in their lifetimes. But an additional challenge may be having a negative impact on wild salmon that we don’t yet quite understand: hatchery salmon. The main purpose behind rearing and releasing hatchery salmon into the wild is to increase the number of fish available for anglers (both recreational and commercial) to catch since wild salmon populations are too low in many areas to yield sustainable catches. However, when hatchery fish are released into the wild, some individuals stray. The term straying describes when hatchery fish go where they are not supposed to go. While some degree of straying can be positive because it helps maintain or increase genetic diversity within wild populations, too many hatchery strays could lead to problems for wild salmon. Investigating the impacts of hatchery salmon on wild salmon is no easy feat, and it’s not made easier when you’re trying to do it in possibly one of the most remote and wild places in Oregon…
But that’s exactly what our guest this week is doing! Emily Treadway is a first year Master’s student advised by Dr. Seth White in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences at OSU. On top of being a graduate student, Emily is also an employee at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife working within the East Region Fish Research Office. By wearing these two hats and through support from the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan, Emily’s Master’s research aims to do three things: (1) establish baselines for the Wenaha River, (2) determine how a remote region like the Wenaha can be monitored cost-effectively into the future, and (3) hopefully implement certain mitigation efforts or designs that will help support healthy wild salmon populations.
Map of the Grande Ronde watershedMap of the Wenaha Riverh
If you want to hear more about Emily’s research, which involves kayaking on the Wenaha, scouting for river hazards, hiking into remote regions with huge solar panel-powered stationary antennas, then tune in to our live show with Emily this Sunday (October 20th) at 7 pm PST on KBVR 88.7 FM!
If you miss the show, you can check out the interview wherever you get your podcasts, including on our KBVR page, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else!
On our last episode for winter term, we interviewed Kayla Fratt, who is currently a PhD student in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences. However, aside from being a graduate student, Kayla is also one of the founders and trainers for K9 Conservationists, an organization that unites highly trained conservation detection dog teams with researchers to collect scientific data. For her graduate research, Kayla is working with her canine colleagues, Barley & Niffler, to understand island biogeography effects on diet and movement for sea wolves in southeast Alaska and basic natural history of pumas in El Salvador.
BarleyNiffler
If you’re curious to hear all about how Kayla became a certified dog behavior consultant, how and why in the world you train a dog to sniff out poop, and the plans for Kayla’s PhD dissertation, check out the podcast episode anywhere you listen to podcasts, including on our KBVR page, Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Getting to the bottom of what top predators in an ecosystem are eating is critical to understand how they may be influencing dynamics in the entire system and food web. But how do you figure out what a predator is eating if it’s hard to catch and collar or watch continuously? Easy, you use their poop! Ellen Dymit, a 4th year graduate student in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences advised by Dr. Taal Levi, is our guest on the show this week and she is a poop-tracker extraordinaire!
For her PhD research, Ellen uses primarily non-invasive genetic methods to study large carnivores in two projects in Alaska and Central America. While the systems and carnivores she studies for these two projects are pretty different, the techniques she uses to analyze the collected scats are the same. The Alaska project is focused on determining what different wolf populations and packs across coastal Alaska are consuming, whether individuals are specialized in their feeding habits, and how large the populations are. The Central America project, which is based out of Guatemala, looks at a whole host of predators, including jaguars, pumas, and ocelots, to gain a better understand of the food web dynamics in the ecosystem.
One of Ellen’s extremely remote field camps in Alaska
Both of these projects involve some unique challenges in the field that Ellen has had to learn to tackle. DNA can deteriorate pretty quickly, especially in warm Guatemalan temperatures, which is problematic when you’re trying to analyze it. Yet, Ellen’s lab has perfected methods over the last few years to work with neotropical samples. Ellen’s Alaska field work is incredibly remote as it’s just Ellen and one field technician roaming the Alaskan tundra in search of wolf scat. Accessing her field sites involves being flown in on a small fixed wing plane, where they are extremely space and weight-limited. Therefore, every single piece of gear needs to be weighed to ensure that the pilot has enough fuel to get to the site and back. As a result, Ellen isn’t able to collect the entire scat samples that she finds but can only take a small, representative sample.
Ellen sub-sampling a wolf scat
Ellen’s incredibly adventurous field work is followed by months spent in the lab processing her precious scat samples. So far, her results have revealed some pretty interesting differences in diet of wolf packs and populations across three field sites in Alaska. The Guatemalan project, which occurs in collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society Guatemala, is one of the first to analyze a large sample size of ocelot scats and the first to attempt DNA metabarcoding of samples collected in the neotropics.
To hear more details about both of these projects, as well as Ellen’s background and some bad-a$$ stories from her Alaskan field work, tune in this Sunday, October 15th live on 88.7 FM or on the live stream. Missed the show? You can listen to the recorded episode on your preferred podcast platform!
Lots of terrestrial invertebrates have bad reputations. Spiders, bees, flies, wasps, ants. They’re thought of as pests in the garden or they are perceived as threatening, possibly wanting to sting or bite us. I’ll admit it, I’m terrified and grossed out by most invertebrates every time I see one in my house. But this week’s guest may have successfully managed to get me to change my tune…
Scott (left) and his intern/doppelganger Tucker (right) in the field.
Scott Mitchell is a 4th year PhD student in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences advised by Dr. Sandy DeBano. His overarching research goal is to understand how different land management practices may impact beneficial invertebrate communities in a variety of managed landscapes. Yes, you read that right: beneficial invertebrates. Because while many invertebrates have a bad rep, they’re actually unsung heroes of the world. They pollinate plants, aerate soil, eat actual pest invertebrates and are prey for many other species. In order to tackle his overarching research goal, Scott is conducting two studies in Oregon; one focuses on native bees while the second looks at non-pollinators such as wasps, spiders, and beetles.
(See captions for images at the end of the blog post)
The first study occurs in the Starkey Experimental Forest and Range which is managed by the US Forest Service. The initial research at Starkey in the 1900s was about how cattle grazing impacts on the land. Since then, many more studies have been undertaken and are ongoing, including about forest management, wildlife, plants, and recreation. For Scott’s study, he is collaborating with the Forest Service to look how bee community composition may differ in a number of experimental treatments that are already ongoing at Starkey. The two treatments that Scott is looking into are thinning (thinned vs unthinned forest) and ungulate density (high vs low). The current hypothesis is that in high ungulate densities, flower booms may be reduced due to high grazing and trampling by many ungulate (specifically elk) individuals, thus reducing the number of available blooms to bees. While in the thinning treatments, Scott is expecting to see more flower blooms available to bees in the thinned sites due to increased access to light and resources because of a reduced tree canopy cover. To accomplish this project, Scott collects bee samples in traps and handnets, as well as data on blooming plants.
(See captions for images at the end of the blog post)
Scott’s second study explores non-pollinator community composition in cherry orchards in the Dalles along the Columbia River Gorge. Agricultural landscapes, such as orchards, are heavily managed to produce and maximize a particular agricultural product. However, growers have options about how they choose to manage their land. So, Scott is working closely with a grower to see how different plants planted underneath orchards can benefit the grower and/or the ecology of the system as a whole.
To hear more details about both of these projects, as well as Scott’s background and several minutes dedicated solely to raving about wasps, tune in this Sunday, April 23rd live on 88.7 FM or on the live stream. Missed the show? You can listen to the recorded episode on your preferred podcast platform!
Figure captions
Image 1: This bright green native bee is foraging on flowers for nectar and pollen. It is probably in the genus Osmia.
Image 2: A brightly colored bumblebee foraging on a rose.
Image 3: This is one of the most common bumblebee species in western Oregon – the aptly named yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii).
Image 4: Most native bees, like this small mining bee are friendly creatures and will even crawl onto your hands or fingers if you let them. No bees (or human fingers) were harmed in the making of this photo.
Image 5: While Scott doesn’t know what his favorite wasp is, this large furry, friendly bee is his favorite native bee species. It is known as the Pacific digger bee or Anthophora pacifica. This is his favorite bee because they are very agile fliers and fun to watch foraging on flowers. They are a solitary species that lives in the ground.
Image 6: Not only are wasps beautiful, but sometimes the signs they leave behind can be too. This is a gall from a gall forming cynipid wasp. Wasp galls are a growth on plants that occurs when a wasp lays its eggs inside of a leaf or other plant structure.
Image 7: This is a pair of wasps in the family Sphecidae. The wasp on top is a male wasp (males are often smaller than females in wasps and bees) and he is likely guarding a potential mate by hanging onto her back.
Image 8: This is a beautiful bright metallic jewel wasp, probably in the family Chrysididae. This wasp was mentioned in the episode.
Image 9: This sphecid wasp is foraging on nectar on flowers. Many insects, including wasps, use nectar as an energy source in their adult life stage – even if they act as predators when foraging for their young.
Image 10: This is a tiny wasp on a flower. This wasp is around 1.5-3 millimeters long.
During winter months, a few days after the full moon, thousands of fish make their way to the warm tropical waters off the west coast of Little Cayman, Cayman Island. Nassau Grouper are typically territorial and don’t interact often, but once per year, they gather in the same spot where they all spawn to carry on the tradition of releasing gametes, in the hopes that some of them will develop to adulthood and carry on the population.
Our guest this week is Janelle Layton, a Masters (and soon to be PhD) student in Dr. Scott Heppel’s lab in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences. Janelle’s research focuses on this grouper, which is listed as near threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Overfishing has been the largest threat to Nassau Grouper populations, but another threat looms: warming waters due to climate change. This threat is what Janelle is interested in studying – how does the warming water temperature affect the growth and development of grouper larvae?
Janelle with a curious sea turtle
Each winter Janelle travels to this aggregation site in the Cayman Islands, where these large groups of grouper (grouper groups?) aggregate for a few days to reproduce. During this time, she collects thousands of fertilized Nassau Grouper eggs to take back to the lab and study. These eggs will develop in varying water temperatures for 6 days, where each day a subset of samples are preserved for future analysis.
Spawning groupers
So far, Janelle is finding that the larvae raised in higher temperatures tend to demonstrate not only an increase in mortality, but an increase in variability in mortality. What does this mean? Basically, eggs from some females are able to survive and develop under these stressful conditions better than eggs from other females – so is there a genetic component to being able to survive these temperature increases?
The answer may lie in proteins
Aside from development and mortality, Janelle is investigating this theory by measuring the expression of heat shock proteins in the fertilized eggs and larvae. Heat shock proteins are expressed in response to environmental stressors such as increased temperatures, and can be measured through RNA sequencing. The expression of these proteins might hold the key to understanding why some grouper are more likely to survive than others. Janelle’s work is a collaborative effort between Oregon State University, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Reef Environmental Education Foundation and the Cayman Islands Department of Environment.
To learn more about Nassau Grouper, heat shock proteins, and what it’s like being a Black woman in marine science, tune into Janelle’s episode this upcoming Sunday, March 12th at 7 PM! Be sure to listen live on KBVR 88.7FM, or download the podcast if you missed it. You can also catch Janelle on TikTok or at her website.
This week we have a Fisheries and Wildlife Master’s student and ODFW employee, Gabriella Brill, joining us to discuss her research investigating the impact of dams on the movement and reproduction habits of the White Sturgeon here in Oregon. Much like humans, these fish can live up to 100 years and can take 25 years to fully mature. But the similarities stop there, as they can also grow up to 10 ft long, haven’t evolved much in 200 million years, and can lay millions of eggs at a time (makes the Duggar family’s 19 Kids and Counting not seem so bad).
Despite being able to lay millions of eggs at a time, the White Sturgeon will only do so if the conditions are right. This fish Goldilocks’ its way through the river systems, looking for a river bed that’s just right. If it doesn’t like what it sees, the fish can just choose not to lay the eggs and will wait for another year. When the fish don’t find places they want to lay their eggs, it can cause drastic changes to the overall population size. This can be a problem for people whose lives are intertwined with these fish: such as fishermen and local Tribal Nations (and graduate students).
The white sturgeon was once a prolific fish in the Columbia River and holds ceremonial significance to local Tribal Nations, however, post-colonialization a fishery was established in 1888 that collapsed the population just four years later in 1892. Due to the long lifespan of these fish, the effects of that fishery are something today’s populations have still not fully recovered from.
White Sturgeon
Can you hear me now
Gabriella uses sound transmitters to track the white sturgeon’s movements. Essentially, the fish get a small sound-emitting implant that is picked up by a series of receivers – as long the receivers don’t get washed away by a strong current. By monitoring the fish’s journey through the river systems, she can then determine if the man-made dams are impacting their ability to find a desirable place to lay eggs.
Journey to researching a sturgeon’s journey
Gabriella always gravitated towards ecology due to the ways it blends many different sciences and ideas – and Fish are a great system for studying ecology. She started with studying Salmon in undergrad which eventually led to a position with the ODFW. Working with the ODFW inspired her to get a Master’s degree so that she could gain the necessary experience and credentials to be a more effective advocate for changes in conservation efforts that are being made. One way to get clout in the fish world: study a highly picky fish with a long life cycle. Challenge accepted.
Gabriella Brill holding a smaller sturgeon while on a boat.
To hear more about these finicky fish be sure to listen live on Sunday February 26th at 7PM on 88.7FM, or download the podcast.
