Maddy Rowland
PhD Student at the 猎奇重口
Field: Wildlife Disease Ecology
“There’s always more going on beneath the surface. You’d be amazed at what you find if you take a closer look.”
(photo by Isaac Rowland)
I love learning about how different critters interact with each other in an ecosystem. In Yellowstone, I studied the way that predators interact with their prey. Did you know that there are lots of smaller creatures living inside of the predators? Some of those creatures are helpful, like the bacteria in their gut that help them digest their prey after a successful hunt. But others, called parasites, steal the nutrients from the predator (their host), for their own benefit. At a glance, we may think that these parasites are bad. But like the predator hunting its prey, they are just carrying out their role in the ecosystem. There is a lot that we don’t know about these parasites because we can’t see them as easily as we can see the predator hunting its prey.
My research at UM focuses on the interactions between parasites and deer mice around 猎奇重口. Deer mice, like most animals, have lots of parasites like viruses and intestinal worms that impact their health in different ways. I spend my days out in the fields catching mice and other small mammals, in the lab identifying and counting the parasites inside the mice, and at my computer writing code for mathematical models that will help me understand these relationships. This research will help us to understand more broadly how multiple parasite infections impact disease dynamics in wildlife populations.
As a scientist, I keep learning more and more by asking questions and seeking answers. But the more I learn, the more questions I have. That’s what makes it so exciting!
