While growing up, my father was in the Air Force, so I have lived in many different areas of the United States. I went to high school in Portland, Oregon, did my bachelor's degree at Utah State University, and received my master's degree at Washington State University in Pullman. I love teaching, but am also a big fan of science research. While at Utah State, I had the amazing opportunity to go to Puerto Rico for a summer research project, where I studied large freshwater shrimp, Macrobrachium carcinus. These shrimp are often a foot long, and the largest one ever found was 22 inches! They lay their eggs in streams, and the eggs wash down to estuaries near the ocean. As the shrimp hatch and grow, they migrate upstream, crawling over waterfalls on the wet rocks to get to high mountain pools where fish cannot hunt them. My study involved trapping and tagging these shrimp to see whether the adults were still migrating.
For my master's degree, I studied the invasive New Zealand Mud Snail, which has invaded many streams and rivers in the US, including areas of Yellowstone National Park, the Columbia River, and Lake Tahoe. Just over a year ago it was found in Capitol Lake in Olympia. These snails can reach densities of over 100,000 snails per square meter, and eat so much that they crowd out beneficial species and insects that provide food for fish. Their populations grow very quickly because they can reproduce asexually, so only one snail is required to start a new invasion.
Whether or not you plan to do research as part of your career, it is important for you to understand how science works and where our knowledge comes from, so we will be doing some research of our own for this class. Last quarter my students did some fantastic projects, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with this quarter!
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