Students currently doing research in Janovy's lab

(Along with a brief description of their problems.)

Eight students--two graduate students and six undergrads--are working on parasitology projects in our lab during the summer and early fall, 2008. The hosts of interest differ among these students, as do the conceptual bases of their research projects. As for some of the recent researchers' current situations: Ben Hanelt received his PhD in August, 2002, and is now on a post-doc at the University of New Mexico, Jaclyn Helt graduated in 2003 and is now teaching high school in Ohio, and Jill Detwiler, who graduated in 2004, is now at Purdue in a PhD program. Megan Wise is now a post-doctoral researcher at Colorado State University; Adam Brosz, Terri Keber, Jill Pecha, Molly Weichman, and Kate Hutchens have graduated from the University of Nebraska College of Medicine and taken residencies, or are now practicing physicians; Heidi Baumert recently graduated from Georgetown Medical School and Wendy Allen is still at Georgetown; Megan Collins received her MS in Bill Font's lab at Southeastern Louisiana University; Jenn Schawang spent some time as a PhD student in Al Kocan's lab at Oklahoma State University and is now working at the OU medical school. Dustin Sorenson and John Steuter both gained early admission to the University of Nebraska Medical Center, as did Jodi Schreurs and Chelsea Bloom. Matt Bolek, PhD, 2006, spent the past school year as a faculty member at the University of Nebraska at Kearney but now is on his way to a faculty position at Oklahoma State University.

The fall, 2008 Crew:

Alaine Knipes (PhD student)

Alaine Knipes joined us as a PhD candidate in the summer of 2004 after receiving her BS from the University of Massachusetts. She took Field Parasitology at Cedar Point, quickly becoming interested in parasites of small fish. Her thesis project involves community dynamics of gill monogenes in several species of minnows. As a result, she's become quite well acquainted with various sites in the South Platte River, especially the Paxton beaver dam, and a number of places in the Salt Valley Watershed in Lancaster County, NE. She has been the TA for Field Parasitology (BIOS 487/887) at Cedar Point since 2005. Alaine has spent a great deal of time in France and is fluent in French. She is also a very serious classical violinist. In addition to her artistic talents, Alaine is a distance runner; she ran the Lincoln Marathon in 2005 and took second in her division, qualifying for the Boston Marathon. She also won the best student paper award at the 2007 Rocky Mountain Conference of Parasitology. See Alaine's web site for more information.

Gabriel Langford (PhD student)

Gabe started his UNL career with the Field Parasitology course at Cedar Point Biological Station during the summer of 2005. He comes to our program with a masters degree in herpetology from the University of South Alabama. There he took Jack O'Brien's parasitology course and got hooked on the helminths of frogs. At CPBS he started some survey work on pinworms in various tadpole species, as well as on Rhabdius spp. in frogs and toads. At the 2005 American Society of Parasitologists meeting in Mobile, Alabama, Gabe was part of the local committee, and even though the hotel and airport closed as a result of Hurricane Dennis, he (the hurricane veteran) assured us all that there wasn't much to worry about! Like all new teaching assistants, Gabe was in BIOS 101, General Biology, in the fall. Gabe won the David A. Becker award for best graduate student presentation at the 2006 SWAP meetings. His paper was entitled Life cycle and host specifity of Rhabdias joaquinensis (Nematoda: Rhabdiasidae). He is also the recipient of a NOAA-NEER Fellowship with his project entitled Parasite biodiversity of amphibians and reptiles of the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, thus was on full time research during the fall of 2006 and 2007.

Lindsey Manzel (Honors Undergrad, UCARE Student)

Lindsey is a veteran of Field Parasitology at Cedar Point where she worked with the parasite communities of Enallagma civile, studying the diversity, growth, development, and other demographic features of mainly gregarines. She started her research at UNL during the spring semester, 2006, and is continuing this fall with some preliminary studies on gametocyst development in gregarines. She’s a double major—Biological Sciences and English—and if she doesn’t get into medical school then there’s a real possibility she’ll produce the Great American Novel.

Shay Hampton (Honors Undergrad, UCARE Student)

Shay also is a veteran of Field Parasitology at Cedar Point where she worked with the parasite communities of Ischnura verticalis, studying the diversity, growth, development, and other demographic features of mainly gregarines. She started her research at UNL during the spring semester, 2006, and is continuing this fall with studies on systematics of gregarines, especially some in the tiniest beetles any human ever tried to study parasitologically (we believe). Shay spent last summer as a tour guide at Wind Caves National Park in South Dakota. Needless to say, her "what I did last summer" stories range from pure excitement to pure horror, but she's back in the same job in 2008 (so it couldn't have been too horrifying!).

Mark Bi (Honors Undergrad)

Mark is an undergrad biology major who's actually (technically) in the College of Engineering and comes to the lab from the J. D. Edwards computer science/business program. So, naturally, he's working on morphological variation among monogenes from a variety of local habitats, including creeks in the Salt Valley watershed.

RECENT GRADUATES:

Matt Bolek (PhD, May, 2006)

Matt received his MS from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee then spent a year at Purdue as a veterinary science grad student before deciding to explore opportunities at UNL. He started during the summer of 2000 at Cedar Point Biological Station, immediately making his presence known as an inveterate collector with a massive storehouse of wonderful literature. Matt spent some time exploring a problem involving the movement of parasites through an ecosystem; his study site was the Salt Valley Watershed that flows into Lincoln from the north and west. His dissertation work was a large project involving second intermediate host specificity and transmission dynamics in frog lung flukes. He's spent the last three years studying the role that various odonate species play in transmission. This work involves the movement of parasites through ecosystems. During his stay at UNL, Matt has won two Best Student Paper competitions at SWAP, one paper and two poster prizes at the Rocky Mountain Conference of Parasitology, and received an Honorary Mention at the ASP meetings in Halifax. He also won the student paper competition at the annual UNL School of Biological Sciences Graduate/Faculty Retreat Symposium. Matt taught BIOS 381, Invertebrate Zoology, at UNL in the fall of 2004, BIOS 385, Parasitology, in the spring semester, 2005, BIOS 101, General Biology (large lecture) in the fall of 2005, and BIOS 112, General Zoology (large lecture) in the spring of 2006. He won the American Society of Parasitologists student paper competition in July, at the ASP meetings in Mobile. Matt passed his final oral defense on April 14, 2006, graduated in May, 2006, and is now Dr. Bolek! CONGRATS, MATT! He's also now employed as Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Nebraska in Kearney. More congrats!!!

Jodi Schreurs (Honors Undergrad, UCARE Student)

Jodi started working in the lab during spring, 2005, then took Field Parasitology at Cedar Point the summer of 2005. Like most of the undergraduates who work in the lab, she started on a project with gregarines. In Jodi's case, she was looking at some of the effects of host intestinal environment on gregarine metabolism and survival. After the session at Cedar Point, however, it was a little difficult to keep her out of the local rivers (she and Erica Peterson did their class project on the host specificity of Trichodina spp. in several species of minnows). Jodi's undergrad thesis on carbohydrate storage in gregarines has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Parasitology, and she gained early admission to UNMC.

Samana Schwank (MS 2004)

Samana came to UNL from the College of Charleston at the recommendation of an alum, Isaure de Buron, with whom she'd done undergraduate research. Samana is from Cologne, Germany, which, while she was here, a great relief because even though Ben Hanelt was gone, we had someone who could translate that ancient classical gregarine literature! Samana started at Cedar Point during July, 2002, with some preliminary studies on gregarine life histories. She also was a TA in BioSci 101 in the fall and has since been a TA in Biodiversity (BioSci 204). Her thesis project dealt with the factors that influence cyst shedding in gregarine parasites, with particular focus on infection intensity. She presented some of this work at the Southwestern Association of Parasitologists meeting at Lake Texoma in the spring of 2003 and 2004 and at the national American Society of Parasitologists meeting in Philadelphia in 2004. She graduated in December, 2004, and is now in a doctoral program at the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Jaclyn Helt (MS 2003)

Jaclyn received her BS from the University of Miami, then joined us, in the summer of 2000, at Cedar Point for masters degree research. She immediately started on a problem we'd explored somewhat in 1999, namely the host specificity of an undescribed species of Phyllodistomum found in the plains topminnow, Fundulus sciadicus, in Cedar Creek north of Paxton, Nebraska. She spent quite a bit of her research efforts adding to her collections, her data set on host specificity, pursuing her attempts to complete the life cycle in the lab, staining and measuring worms, and making bladder sections. This project turned out to be a very interesting problem, mainly because F. sciadicus is evidently the only species in Cedar Creek that is infected. The first intermediate host, a species of Pisidium, turned out to be a better pet than maybe any of us realized, so much of Jaclyn's time was been taken up with rather creative experiments. In the fall of 2002 she served temporarily as assistant to Al Kamil in the Cedar Point office. She graduated with an MS degree in May and is currently getting certified as a secondary science teacher. She also coached swimming at Northeast High in Lincoln and is working on the Journal of Parasitology scanning project in Scott Gardner's lab.

Kari Neill (Honors Undergrad, graduated in 2008)

Kari was an undergrad biology/biochemistry major whose project dealt with the host histology and histopathology associated with gregarine infections. She worked as a textbook assistant on the 8th Edition of Foundations of Parasitology, and spent time in a molecular lab at the University of Illinois during the summer of 2007. Kari also was a teaching assistant in Organismic Biology, as well as an administrative assistant to BIOS 101 (she ended up reading a LOT of student writing!) Her presentation at the 2008 SWAP meetings--entitled "The effects of host (Tribolium destructor) epithelial gut condition on gregarine parasites (Gregarina confusa): do starved beetles make good hosts?"--won the David A. Becker Award in the student competition. CONGRATULATIONS Kari!!

Jill Detwiler (MS 2004)

Jill (arrow) did her senior thesis on a rather intriguing project involving the accumulation of carbohydrate reserves by gregarine parasites, with a particular emphasis on two aspects of the problem: (1) species differences in glycogen accumulation, especially with reference to differences in gamont pairing behavior, and (2) the effects of host starvation on parasite carbohydrate storage. She added this research to her already full days of music. She was one of several students who took the Field Parasitology course in 1999, between their freshman and sophomore years (Laura Grother and Adam Brosz were also in that class as sophomores-to-be). Jill spent the summer of 2000 as an intern at the California Academy of Science, and the summer of 2001 as part of a rodent parasite crew that trapped all throughout western Nebraska. We keep telling her it's time to write her book! Jill started as a TA in BioSci 101, and as a parasitology graduate student in the fall of 2002. Her MS project was on host specificity of gregarines in tenebrionid beetles. Jill won the Best Student Paper award at the Rocky Mountain Conference of Parasitology in both 2003 and 2004. She finished her MS degree in August, 2004, and is now at Purdue for doctoral work.

Erica Peterson (honors undergrad)

Erica began work on her undergraduate research in the spring of 2004, and after a summer of travel throughout Europe, is continued in the fall with her research on the biology of gregarines. Erica was also a double major, Biology (major #1) and International Studies (major #2). She has the honor of being admitted to medical school as a sophomore. She presented at the 2005 SWAP meetings and received an honorable mention for her paper on carbohydrate accumulation in gregarines. In the spring of 2005, Erica was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. She finished up her study in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico, and presented her work as a poster at the International Congress of Parasitology in Glasgow, Scotland, in August, 2006. She is now in medical school at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

Kati Brazeal (honors undergrad)

Kati started working in the llab during the spring of 2004, then took Field Parasitology and a local flora class at Cedar Point the summer. Kati is now in her third year of experience as a research assistant to Charles Brown, of the University of Tulsa, on his long-term study of cliff swallow behavior. Kati did her Field Parasit class project on the ecology of swallow feather mites, and she's continuing that project for a full summer, at Cedar Point, as her Honors Thesis in 2005. She won the Marc Dresden Award with her presentation of this work at the 2005 SWAP meetings, and she won the same award the following year with a much more extensive paper entitled The ecological role of feather mites (Pteronyssoides sp.) on their cliff swallow host (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota). Kati was also one of the BIOS 103 (Organismic Biology) teaching assistants both in the spring, 2005, and spring, 2006, semesters. Kati is now a graduate student in animal behavior at the University of California-Davis.

Mackenzie Waltke (honors undergrad)

Mackenzie also started working in the lab in the spring of 2004, then took Field Parasitology and Bob Kaul's local flora class at Cedar Point the following summer. Mackenzie was part of the Biodiversity Honors group that studied beetle phylogeny, and she worked with Kati Brazeal on the Field Parasit class project on the ecology of swallow feather mites. She spent the summer of 2005 at the University of Nebraska Medical School where she did research, studying the expression levels of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs)in cultured cells. (There are four different strains of cells that express varying levels Marfan Syndrome. MMPs are a factor in the formation of abdominal aortic aneurysms.) Mackenzie taught laboratories in BIOS 103 (Organismic Biology) in the spring semester, 2005. She is now in graduate school in the virology program at UNL.