Weeks Lab Update 2020

Boreal Toads, an endangered high elevation species, and a CMU student were benefited by the BIOSINQ award in 2020. My lab received funds for a mini centrifuge, parafilm, and a DNA extraction kit. These supplies were requested to support project opportunities for students working with a deadly fungal pathogen, the chytrid fungus, that affects the skin of amphibians. Boreal Toad populations have suffered greatly in Colorado from this pathogen and they are now locally endangered with only one known remaining breeding population left in the Grand Mesa National Forest. In early 2020, dozens of Boreal toads emerged from hibernation in a captive breeding facility with this fungal infection and needed treatment. In collaboration with Colorado Parks & Wildlife, they were brought to CMU to be monitored and treated using an anti-fungal bath regiment. To ensure that the treatment worked, the skin of the toads needed to be swabbed and analyzed in the lab. The supplies provided by this BIOSINQ award allowed a CMU student to be a part of this process. During this time, she was prepared for a summer internship program in biological research (SIPBR) by learning husbandry & handling of the animals, how to collect swab samples, and how to analyze the data. These toads were cured of the fungus and 73 of them were released into the wild. 

The BIOSINQ financial support for the supplies helped to create the opportunity for student enrichment and saving the lives of sick animals. 

Thank you to the donors who made this possible!

 

Connors Lab Update 2020

As a new faculty member at CMU, the funds from last year’s BIOSINQ helped lay the foundation of my undergraduate research program here in the Biology Department. Broadly, my research lab is investigating the ecological physiology of small mammalian herbivores. Specifically, I am testing the commonality of temperature-dependent toxicity, or the phenomenon whereby warmer ambient temperatures increase the potency of plant toxins ingested by woodrats or packrats.  BIOSINQ funds were used to purchase consumable supplies for field work and remote HOBO temperature dataloggers.  These supplies were used by my research students, Jacob Kernc and Jada Mulford, to profile environmental temperatures in biologically relevant microhabitats of local woodrats.  My previous research suggests that access to cooler microclimates could mitigate negative physiological effects of increased plant toxicity.  Therefore, these BIOSINQ funds were instrumental to successfully start a long-term ecological study while also providing field-work experience to multiple undergraduate students.

Thank you, donors, for supporting authentic research experiences for students and basic research activities in biology here at CMU!

 Weeks Lab Update 2019

The funding received from BIOSINQ in 2019 led to the purchase of a micropipette starter kit, vortex mixer, and Erlenmeyer flasks that were used by Heidi and Emily for multiple projects. These supplies were used in DNA extractions and quantitative polymerase chain reactions during summer SIPBR research where Heidi and Emily surveyed the canyons of western Colorado for a deadly amphibian disease. Previously, the status of this disease was unknown for western Colorado, but thanks to this summer project, students helped local agencies determine that it is present in Mesa County. This information will be important for development of future management plans for native amphibians habitat. The findings of this research have been presented orally at the SIPBR annual symposium and in a report to BLM and USGS.

Additionally, both of these students carried out independent projects in lab in which they used this equipment to maintain cultures of our focal study organism, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), and execute microbiological experiments. Both of these projects aimed to determine if a common bacteria can inhibit growth of Bd, which is a pathogenic fungus of amphibian skin. Data from these projects will be presented as posters at Student Showcase in 2020.

This equipment will continue to facilitate research undergraduate experiences for years to come.

The Weeks lab would like to thank the donors for their support!

 

Hansen Lab Update 2019 

To study the effects of a gizzard shad introduction in Highline Reservoir BIOSINQ funds were used to purchase equipment to collected and process phytoplankton samples, a fluorometer to measure chlorophyll a from the phytoplankton samples, and to purchase a net for collecting zooplankton.  Deme McDowell has been using this equipment in the research.  She has been working in both the field collecting samples (Figure 1A-B) and the lab analyzing samples (Figure 1C-D).

Figure 1. Research student Deme McDowell collecting phytoplankton (A), concentrating zooplankton (B), filtering phytoplankton (C), and reading chlorophyll a using the fluorometer (D).