Senior biology majors Rebecca Knipp, Ethan Ayres and Matthew Combs presented at the annual meeting of the Helminthological Society of Washington, the nation’s oldest parasitology research society.  The Society met on April 27 at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Ashleigh Smythe also attended.

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In December, Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Ashleigh Smythe joined nine other scientists for two weeks of field research on the Pacific coast of Panama. The team was based at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s marine research laboratory on Naos Island in Panama Bay on the outskirts of Panama City and near the entrance to the Panama Canal.

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Parasitic species can help control their hosts’ populations and add to an ecosystem’s biodiversity. This summer Kristin Forgrave ’12, Christopher Kline ’12, James Liebow ’13, Jaclyn Specht ’12, and Abby Koppa ’12 worked with Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Ashleigh Smythe on a project to explore parasitic worms in natural habitats.  The group worked on three separate projects that dealt with different worm species and hosts.

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Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Ashleigh Smythe gave an invited talk titled “Molecular Phylogeny of Enoplia: Implications for Classification and Stoma Evolution” at the 50th anniversary meeting of the Society of Nematologists held July 17-20 at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore. Her talk was presented in the symposium “Freshwater and Marine Nematodes.”

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Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Ashleigh Smythe was invited to be a keynote speaker in a symposium titled “Meiofauna – Comparative Morphology and Evolution” at the second International Congress on Invertebrate Morphology, held in June at Harvard University. Smythe’s presentation was titled “Marine Nematodes:  Unfathomable Diversity or a Sea of Opportunity?”

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Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Ashleigh Smythe spent 10 days in July working at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.  She is currently describing a new species of nematode that she collected from sediment off the coast of Florida. More ...

Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Ashleigh Smythe spent one week in January on the southern Caribbean island of Tobago (Republic of Trinidad and Tobago) collecting marine nematodes. Her work was sponsored by the Buccoo Reef Trust, a non-profit agency whose goal is to promote research and education about Caribbean coral reefs and marine habitats. More ...