Summer 2019 Recap

Summer 2019 was a busy one for both in lab and field research!  The first half of the summer was spent collaborating with fellow Bolnick lab and JMSF postdoc, Amanda Hund, on a new experiment aimed at improving understanding of host response to G. aculateaus. This involved the development of some new methods for testing host-parasite interactions in this system that we're really excited about!

In the later half of the summer I ventured to Alaska to help out with data collection for the World's Greatest Eco-Evo project (as some of the PIs like to call it). In June a large team of researchers surveyed populations of G. aculeatus from the Mat-Su and Kenai peninsula valleys of Alaska. They then collected fish from these lakes and transplanted them to new lakes which had recently been treated for removal of pike. This is an exciting long term project, and while fires prevented following up sampling at donor lake, we still accomplished some exciting data collection.  Stay tuned for more news about the results of our collections as I think they'll be pretty darn exciting!