Dittmar presents: Evolution and Ecology of Bat Parasites

Dr. Katharina Dittmar

 

 

As part of the requirements of FOR496 Women in Environmental Careers, students share the responsibility of reporting on the presentations of the Women in Scientific and Environmental Professions.  The following was prepared by Julia Hart and Becca Sheetz.

Ever wondered about the genetic variation in the microorganisms in ectoparasites of bats and what impact that has on people? Evolutionary Biologist Dr. Katharina Dittmar of SUNY Buffalo addressed this topic on March 5 on the SUNY ESF Syracuse Campus.

            

 Dr. Dittmar’s lecture focused on the three tiered interaction of blood feeding parasites of bats, bat flies and microbiota in the flies. These relationships that exist between these organisms were previously vastly under-researched. Her research focused on the phylogeny of the bat flies, microbiological communities and interactions, and horizontal gene transfer within microbiota in the bat flies.

Investigating the development of the pupal stages of the bat flies brings forth the ability to research how the flies develop their internal biota. This is important because it helps to determine the function of the bacteria within the bat fly’s system. This sheds light on how the bacteria are passed down between generations of the flies and help define interactions between bat flies, microbes and mammals.

SEM of Megistopoda, courtesy K. Dittmar

Understanding these functions is not only important for the echological contributions to science but also the human health aspect that goes along with these organisms (for example, when people talk about bats being causal agents of disease). It's hard to imagine these seemingly illusive mammals as significant vectors of disease, even though bats may carry different human pathogens. Dr. Dittmar’s research makes the transmission of the diseases in ectoparasites in bat flies relevant to us in not only a scientific way but also a far more intimate fashion.

Dr. Dittmar currently serves as the director if the Graduate program in Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at SUNY Buffalo.  Her main focus is the evolutionary history of blood-feeding arthropod vectors, specifically the orders Diptera and Siphonaptera. She also collaborated with Prof. Joyce Hwang of the SUNY Buffalo Architecture Department on the “Bat Cloud”, which won the 2012 Animal Architecture Award In addition to her academic research, Dr. Dittmar teaches courses on Evolutionary Genetics; Medical Entomology and Parisology; Microbial Genomics; and a Colloquium in Ecology, Evolution and Behavior.  She also collaborated with Prof. Joyce Hwang of the SUNY Buffalo Architecture Department on the “Bat Cloud”, which won the 2012 Animal Architecture Award. She holds a DVM, and was a practicing veterinarian prior to earning a PhD in Parasitology from the University of Leipzig.  She has completed postdocs in Ecology, Evolution, Systematics, and Population Biology at Bingham Young Unversity and the University of Wyoming.

Dr. Dittmar’s presentation was a joint presentation of the Adaptive Peaks and the Women andScientific and Environmental Professions Speaker Series.  Her visit was sponsored by the ESF Women’s Caucus and the Department of Environmental and Forest Biology. 

Access and Safer Spaces

Last summer, the college interviewed  for a (postponed, pending improved budgets) position in our office of Multicultural Affairs. The open sessions with the candidates--and some timely but unrelated listserv discussions about hostilities abroad--gave me a lot of food for thought,.

Access without support is not opportunity.   
         Tinto 2008 

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb in his skin and walk around in it.
   Atticus Finch to his daughter Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. 


Those people who bear the brunt of oppression should not be required to also take responsibility for eliminating it.  At the same time, it is self-evident that people in the subordinate group can take the lead in setting the world right.  For one thing, if people in the dominant group had access to and were able to hold a perspective that allowed them to change systems and patterns of domination, they would have done so already.
    In: Love 2010.  Developing a Liberatory Consciousness.  In:  Readings for Diversity and Social Justice, edited by Maurianne Adams; Warren J Blumenfeld; Carmelita Rosie Castañeda; Heather W Hackman; Madeline L Peters,Ximena Zúñiga.  Routledge.


Promoting an environment of class/gender/race/etc neutrality hasn't been productive.  Just opening the door a tiny bit and forcing interested parties to push their way to the table isn't exactly a welcoming invitation.  It's also contrary to millennia of conditioning that its downright rude to treat authority figures that way (and unladylike.)  I'd much rather see inclusion, with the expectation of multiple of ways of knowing, and appreciation for all types of contributions.  Neutral has been melting pot analogy--and there are so many of the majority view that they drown or push away the wonderful flavors, and creative additions, that everyone else brings to the table.  Can we bring back the salad bowl?  

This isn't a new idea:
It sucks how the entire burden of making the classroom a safe space can fall on the shoulders of queer students. I would think that a classroom that feels like a safe space would be a more comfortable environment for everybody. I don’t know whether my TAs and professors are scared of dealing with this stuff or if they just have the privilege of not thinking about it.
   In:  Interrupting Heternormativity, The Graduate School of Syracuse University 2004

And even our own internal climate report (Heffernan 1992), noted that
 "... while the women students recognized a personal responsibility to establish the boundaries of acceptable behavior, they found this chore to be unfairly distracting from their studies."

--he

Validation and respect

Boxes appeared in a few high traffic areas on campus, laden with individually wrapped sanitary pads, labelled "Free samples (for ladies)."  On each sign, some alert soul changed "ladies" to gender inclusive wording:  "people with menstrual cycles", or "people who bleed from sensitive places."  One of these, someone went a step further, adding a post-it note thanking this individual for "validating me a a person" signed "someone who menstruates but is not a lady."  More post-it notes appeared, in support of the improved wording or the acknowledgement.

I applaud this person who turned questionable wording into a respectful reminder of not just tolerance, but inclusion.  And the respectful conversation that followed was also touching.  Well done, good people.  Well done!

--he

Encouraging our daughters, dads, and businesses.

I like this ad, asking parents to let their daughters get their clothes dirty in their pursuit of knowledge. (Even better, this is more about the kids, than about the product and service this manufacturer provides.  I think I'd love the commercial if I didn't also know that girls tend to think poor grades is a failure in themselves, rather than simply material that takes time to master as boys are socialized to do, and thus that it is better to praise effort than inherent intelligence.  But I digress.).  Girls can be just about anything they can dream, with encouragement and access, in the absence of biases, . Those social penalties of that bias are high stakes, too. Women that ask for higher salaries, as men often do, can be perceived as unlikable which erodes the perception of their competence rather than as go-getters as those male counterparts would.  Women and people of color with impeccably written letters of introduction and interest were systematically less likely to get responses from the prospective major professors than were white men, and less likely to get positive responses from those that did reply. Wither these are the result of biases, or favoritism which restricts access to many support mechanisms as recently posited scarcely matters.

Our sons also need a societal shift so they can be engaged fathers and partners, in the home and at work, rather than broody, unfeeling workaholic providers.  Will last week's Working Father' Summit, which acknowledges the economic reality of dual income families (but not necessarily that very few of those workers can limit their workloads to a mere 40-hours a week), and the upcoming working families summit, pave the way so that all our children can be all that they can in whatever fields they choose to pursue, while also nurturing their own families, and making positive contributions to their communities?  It makes good business sense--a 2014 evaluation  found that the newly implemented policies for paid sick and family leave (for all workers, not just mommies) found improved worker morale, a  reduction in the spread of illness, lower turnover, which likely all attributed to the increase productivity that was also identified.  Imagine what would happen if we also embraced paid vacation and capped the number of hours in a workweek like so many other nations have done?  Heck, businesses might have happier, more productive workers, and with the savings in overtime pay, maybe could afford to bring back a few of the highly skilled folks that have been layed off since 2008 and that pesky downturn in the economy.

ESF women take first and second place in the Slepecky Undergraduate Research Competition

The experimental green roof, located on
top of Con Edison's The Learning
Center.  Image credit: Tiziana Susca, Columbia University

Katy Austin, an EFB undergraduate honors student has won first prize in the Slepecky Undergraduate Research Prize.  She was awarded the prize for a manuscript based on her honor's thesis "Effects of Nitrogen Deposition on Nitrogen Acquisition by Sarracenia purpurea in the Adirondack Mountains, New York, USA".  The study is in review at the journal
Botany.  Austin is first author.  Her co-authors include Mark Teece, and Jesse Crandall from ESF's Chemistry Department, and Amy Sauer and Charley Driscoll, from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Syracuse University.

Cambria Ziemer, an ERE undergraduate honors student tied for second place honors.  Ziemer completed her honor's thesis the past summer on "Boundary Layer Conditions of a Shrub Willow Evapotranspiration Cover Syracuse, NY". She worked with Wendong Tao, in ESF's Department of Environmental and Resource Engineering, and Tony Eallonardo, a Scientist with O'Brien and Gere.

The award presentation followed a lecture by Dr. Patricia J. Culligan of  Columbia University, on Green Roofs and Urban Stormwater Management, which featured projects under evaluation at Columbia University and around New York City.  Dr.  Culligan is a leader in the field of water resources and urban sustainability.  In addition to being a Professor, she co-directs the Columbia University Earth Institute’s Urban Design Lab and is the director of an innovative, joint interdisciplinary Ph.D. program between Columbia Engineering and the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation that focuses on designs for future cites, including digital city scenarios.

The Slepecky Lectureship and Undergraduate Prize has been endowed by family, friends and colleagues to honor Syracuse University professor Norma Slepecky, who died in 2001. Dr. Slepecky was a distinguished auditory neuranatomist and member of the Institute for Sensory Research.  She was a passionate researcher and an advocate for undergraduate student research. Dr. Slepecky hoped that her legacy, with the support of the endowment, would continue to encourage young women to conduct research. As stewards of the Lectureship and Prize, SU WiSE annually coordinates the undergraduate award and lecture by a noted woman scholar and a celebration in Dr. Slepecky’s memory.

The Great Lakes – Today’s Issues and Tomorrow’s Concerns

As part of the course requirements for FOR797, Environmental Career Strategies for Women, students share responsibility for reporting on  WiSE Professions Events.   The following was prepared by Becki Walker, a MS student in the Graduate Program in Environmental Science.  Becki's studies are focused on Environmental Communication and Participatory Processes.

On Tuesday, March 25, 2014, members of the ESF campus community listened in fascination as Professor Helen Domske described a truly “hands on” experience with one of her research subjects – a sea lamprey.  Her lecture, “The Great Lakes – Today’s Issues and Tomorrow’s Concerns,” was part of SUNY ESF’s Women in Scientific and Environmental Professions Spring Seminar Series.

In order to learn more about the invasive eel-like creature from a parasitized fish’s perspective, Domske submerged her arm in a tank of cold water for twenty minutes (in order to mimic the body temperature of a cold-blooded creature) and had an associate place a lamprey on her arm.  “You could see the indentations from each of its individual teeth!” Domske said, with the excitement in her voice that is the hallmark of a scientist truly immersed in her research.   Sea lamprey were only one in a parade of invasive creatures Domske discussed in her presentation.  

The Great Lakes are a special ecosystem, but they are threatened by a number of factors.  Invasive aquatic animals such as quagga and zebra mussels, round gobies, and water fleas (as well as the aforementioned sea lamprey) are wreaking havoc in the ecosystem.  Invaders compete with native species for food and habitat, and are even capable of altering the nutrient composition in the Lakes. 

Some of the emerging threats to the Lakes are thanks to another species – humans.  A recent study of water quality in 139 streams conducted by the US Geological Survey identified 82 contaminants in the water column.  Contaminants included a number of prescription drugs, ranging from anti-seizure medications to estrogens from birth control pills.  Personal care products such as face and body washes are also part of the problem – many of these contain tiny plastic “microbeads.”  Because these microbeads appear similar to eggs, many fish may consume them by mistake.  Microbeads also tend to attract other contaminants, posing additional problems for aquatic species.

Domske’s presentation wasn’t all doom and gloom, though – she provided some concrete ways we can all work to protect the Great Lakes.  We should remember we all live in a watershed, and avoid flushing any prescription medications that could wind up downstream.  She also suggested seeking out natural alternatives to personal care products containing plastic microbeads.  Through relatively simple actions such as these, we can help to insure that the Great Lakes remain worthy of their name.

Helen Domske is a Senior Extension Specialist for New York Sea Grant/Cornell Cooperative Extension and Associate Director of the Great Lakes Program at the University of Buffalo.  She is also the Education Coordinator of New York Sea Grant and the New York leader for the Center for Great Lakes literacy. She holds an MS degree from SUNY Buffalo, and has completed post-graduate coursework at Ohio State University and the University of Buffalo.  Her lecture was sponsored by the Great Lakes Research Consortium and the ESF Women’s Caucus. 

For more information about the WiSE Professions Speaker Series, please visithttp://www.esf.edu/womenscaucus/speakers.htm

Perceptions of women and power

The Society of Women Engineers Greater Syracuse Section, The Baobab Society, ESF Office of Multicultural Affairs and ESF Women's Caucus gathered for a showing of Miss Representation.  
The 2011 documentary was written, directed, and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom about the perception of women in mainstream media--TV, movies, magazines, and advertising--and its impact on young people.  Commentators also discussed how these portrayals impact the representation of women in positions of power and influence in America.  Film is rated TV-14 by the OWN network, and is recommended for 13 and up by Common Sense Media (their parent panel suggested 16 and up, because of some strong language and portrayals of sexuality.  

Its a disheartening look at the increased pigeonholing of half the population as bitches or sexy bimbos, with nary a role in between, and a reminder that not only do our children, all of our children, need to see more women in positions of influence in real life, but also at every life stage as the heroines and the everyday folk in fictional portrayals rather than only beauties in their reproductive prime as part of the scenery or the punchline (if portrayed at all).