For Saint Anselm College biology professors, summer fun means visiting the shore, spending time on a golf course and passing days at a river.
These professors are not vacationing, however. They are instead conducting research of seals and sea slugs, as well as an endangered mussel and a flower once thought to be extinct in New Hampshire.
For marine biologists Lori LaPlante and Brian Penney, much of the summer has been spent studying marine animals – seals for LaPlante and nudibranchs or sea slugs for Penney. They are each working with a student through the Research Experience for Undergraduates program at the Shoals Marine Laboratory on Appledore Island.
LaPlante is working with her student to study grey and harbor seals off of Duck Island, which provides unusually close proximity to the animals, who are watched about six hours a day. The study is yielding detailed information about when and how the seals pull onto land – “haul out” - to rest raise their body temperature, sleep and generally recharge.
LaPlante is also interested in how human behavior affects the seals’ haul out patterns. “For instance, if a party boat sees a population of seals and goes for a look, what does that mean for the seals?” she asks. “If they all flush (return to the water), they have lost the opportunity to rest, they have lost the opportunity to sleep, and pups have lost the opportunity to nurse. How does this impact the physiology and survivorship of individuals?”
Penney works with the nudibranch, which he calls a "snail that lost its shell." Found along the seashore in tidal pools, under rocks and on dock posts, this animal captivates Penney for its ability to steal the toxins and stinging cells of its prey.
“To take a part of another animal and control it and use it for your own purposes – that fascinates me,” Penney said.
Penney’s student is helping to test the general assumption that the nudibranch uses its unusual skill to defend itself. Just how these tiny creatures – they are about the size of a pinky fingernail – take a piece from another animal without rejection issues is another question that Penney will be working on in his own lab at Saint Anselm. The Shoals Marine Laboratory is run by the University of New Hampshire and Cornell University.
When the Suncook River changed course suddenly during the flood of May 2006, a bed of brook floater mussels was left without sufficient water in the abandoned riverbed. The mussel is a state endangered species and a federal species of concern.
Over two days, U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials and volunteers, including biology Professor Barry Wicklow, moved the 1,200 stranded mussels to the Nashua National Fish Hatchery. There they resided in a habitat devised by hatchery manager Kyle Flannery and his staff until Wicklow directed their relocation to another bed of mussels he found upstream.
This summer, Wicklow spends much of his time studying that new bed, the largest in the state. He wants to know how the relocated mussels are faring and how they are affecting the mussels that resided there first. A computer logs the river temperature all year, and a drift net provides evidence of when and how abundantly the mussels release their larvae.
“It’s very exciting and a great opportunity to get this kind of information on this rare mussel,” said Wicklow, who has studied the brook floater in the Piscataqua River for the last 12 years. “It is important to gather data on the ecological needs, life history and population dynamics of these organisms that are not well understood and are disappearing.”
Botanist Eric Berry, assistant professor of biology, is also interested in rare and endangered species. He is spending his summer with the wild senna, a wildflower native to New England. The plant was thought to be extinct in the state until biologists at the New Hampshire Natural Heritage Bureau documented a population at the Amherst Country Club.
Berry and two students are conducting a short-term pollination experiment to study the affects of inbreeding on the population. Inbreeding occurs frequently in small and isolated populations of rare plants such as wild senna, whose bright yellow flower Berry describes as an exaggerated pea flower. The professor is interested in the affect of inbreeding on the population's overall growth and reproduction.
The Amherst Country Club is designated as a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary, and uses little pesticides in maintaining its grounds. Berry suspects that the moisture-loving plant, which is usually found along riverbanks, finds the golf course congenial because it flooded in the past couple of years.
Berry says the fate of the wild senna is important for a number of reasons. It is a key food source for pollen-gathering bumble bees, as well as for ants that feed from specialized nectar glands on its leaves. “One good organism functions as part of a system,” he said.
Also, the flower contributes to diversity in nature. “The loss of rare species such as wild senna through habitat loss is an indicator of how unnatural many areas have become,” he said.