Elizabeth Angell: From the Office to the Outdoors
After spending a few years working in a business career upon graduating from Texas Tech University with my M.B.A., I decided to take a leap and follow my passion for nature. Becoming an EBIO student meant that I could gain the experience I needed to follow my dream of a career in ecology and conservation. Knowing that my time in this degree was limited, I set out during my first week of class at CU to find a lab to work in where I could gain hands on experience. Through contacting my TA, Geoff Legault, I soon landed a position in Dr. Brett Melbourne鈥檚 lab, assisting Dr. Caroline Tucker with an experiment analyzing maternal effects and temperature variation on the zooplankton, Daphnia. It is here that I first learned what it was like to work in a lab centered on ecology.
After volunteering two semesters with various experiments concerning Daphnia, I applied for a BURST grant. Being awarded this grant allowed me to participate in further field and lab research. Working with Dr. Tucker, Geoff, and another undergraduate assistant, Reese Beeler, we netted invertebrate species from different freshwater ponds along an elevation gradient in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains over the summer of 2015. With these samples, Reese and I learned how to identify zooplankton species and to culture field samples for lab experiments. What I soon discovered, through this experience, was an interesting relationship between zooplankton and a ciliate known as Vorticella. In a few ponds, this species was found attached to the zooplankton. By hitch-hiking on the zooplankton, the Vorticella had better access to food in the water. The discovery of this interaction became a key inspiration for my honors project which investigates how population dynamics are affected by temperature and competition. The fall of 2015 led to continued work on this project, including several follow-on experiments that were funded through a UROP grant. With the help of Reese, and a new lab assistant, Austin Hampton, we collected large amounts of data designed to further explore the nature of the relationship between Daphnia and Vorticella.
As I move into my last semester, here at CU, I am amazed at the opportunities I have had thanks to getting involved with research on campus. I am now finalizing my honors thesis, while also working in Dr. Kendi Davies鈥檚 lab helping to sort samples of insect species from the Wog Wog habitat fragmentation study in Australia. These opportunities have both shown me the exciting world of biological research and have prepared me for the next phase of my career change.
