Mohammed S. Vhora MS Student

Mohammed decided to pursue graduate work on frog parasites in our laboratory at OSU.  Mohammed comes to us from John Janovy’s lab at UNL where he took field parasitology and general parasitology and worked with Gabe Langford on the co-occurrence of Haematoloechus complexus and Rhabdias joaquinensis in the lungs of the plains leopard frog (Rana blairi).  Mohammed presented his undergraduate research at the Southwestern Association of Parsitologists meeting on April 17, 2009 and won the undergraduate student competition.  His talk was entitled Co-occurrence of Haematoloechus complexus (Trematoda: Haematoloechidae) and Rhabdias joaquinensis (Nematoda: Rhabdiasidae) in the plains leopard frog (Rana blairi).  We are very excited for Mohammed to join the parasitology laboratory at OSU.

Heather Robinson PhD Student

Heather Robinson is joining our laboratory in the fall of 2010 for her PhD.  Heather worked on post-cyclic transmission on the microhabitat use of Paulisentis missouriensis in Semotilus atromaculatus for her BS degree from Peru State College under Dr. Mike Barger, and is currently finishing her MS degree at Sam Huston State University on fish helminth community structure under Dr. Tami Cook. Heather received the Mark Dresden Award at the Southwestern Association of Parasitologists in April 2010 for her talk entitled “The role of environmental factors in structuring endohelminth communities in the western mosquitofish, Gambusia affinis”.  As a result of her numerous publications and presentation Heather was awarded the OSU Zoology Department 5K PhD incentive for the next 3 years.Way to go Heather!  Heather will be working on comparative life cycle strategies in amphibian parasites.

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Cleo Szmygiel MS Student

Cleo Szmygiel is joining our laboratory as a MS student in parasitology in the fall of 2010.  Cleo is coming to us from Dr. Janine Caira’s laboratory at University of Connecticut where she fell in love with parasitology.  Cleo worked on museum parasitology specimen curation while at the University of Connecticut.   Before joining our laboratory at OSU, Cleo will spend 10 weeks working on fish parasites in Dr.Florian B. Reyda’s laboratory at State University of New York, College at Oneonta.  Cleo will be working on some aspect of horsehair worms on our recently funded NSF proposal.

Crystal Wiles MS Student

Crystal Wiles is also joining our program in parasitology to pursue a MS degree in the fall of 2010.  Crystal comes to us from Dr. Florian Reyda’s laboratory at the State University of New York, College at Oneonta, where she spend time working on fish parasites, and odonate parasites particularly gregarines.  Crystal received a grant for her work as an undergraduate and has presented a number of posters on her work at regional undergraduate conferences.  She will be presenting a poster on some of her gregarine odonate research at this year’s American Society of Parasitologists meeting in Colorado Springs, Co.  Crystal has not picked a project yet but will most likely work on some aspect of parasitism in odonates.  

Erin Rogers BS Student

Erin Rogers is an Animal Science BS major working in our laboratory on the survivability of horsehair worm larvae and cysts to freezing.  Erin’s honors thesis will address differences in the survivability of North American and African horsehair worm life stages to low temperature freezing.  Erin’s work was recently presented as a poster presentation at the Southwestern Association of Parasitologists in April 16 2010. (see poster)

Laura Marie Hodges BS Student

Laura Marie Hodges is a zoology and biochemistry major and recently won the outstanding zoology sophomore of the year award in the department.  Laura Marie is currently taking general parasitology and working on a histological study examining ram horn snails, Planorbella trivolvis, infected with a Neoechinorhynchus sp. which we think goes into turtles.  As you can imagine Laura Marie spends a lot of time at the microtome.

Ryan Shannon BS Student

Ryan Shannon took my Animal Biology course in the spring of 2010.  For his honors contract in that course Ryan examined host specificity and cyst morphology of Gordius robustus in 5 species of freshwater snails.  He is currently continuing work on nematomorph infections in snails by examining naturally infected snails from various locations in the United States. 

Melissa Gorbet BS Student

Melissa Gorbet took my Animal Biology course last semester and approached me about doing research in the laboratory.  Currently Melissa is working on measurements of gregarine oocysts from numerous species of damselflies and helping Crystal with her work.

Fomer OSU Students

Heather Tracy, MS student

Heather defended her theses successfully on July 2nd 2010 and is now attending veterinary school at Oklahoma State University.  Congratulations.  One of the chapters from her thesis has been submitted and two more are in the works. 

Austin Kubat, BS student

Fomer UNK Students

Ashlee Hartman, BS student

Because of Ashlee’s experience working at the vet clinic, she decided to take me up on her 420 project looking at dog parasites from humane society dogs across Nebraska.  Ashlee just ran her first sample of a puppy from Kearney and he was infected with Toxocara canis and Cystoisospora canis.  Way to go Ash!  Every since that sample, Ashlee has been braving falling rocks from the sealing in the lab (Bruner Hall of Science is being remodeled), while she is spinning fecal samples. Ashlee presented some of her data at the 39th Rocky Mountain Conference of Parasitologists held at Cedar Point Biological Station September 18-20th and received the William C. Marquardt Award for Best Poster presented by an Undergraduate Student.  See Ashlee’s poster.

Katie Langenfeld, BS student 

Katie Langenfeld is one of the BRIN scholars on campus!  The BRIN program was created to expose students to serious biomedical research, build a statewide biomedical research infrastructure between undergraduate and graduate institutions and to strengthen undergraduate institution's infrastructure and increase its capacity to conduct cutting-edge biomedical and behavioral research.   Last year Katie spent some time working on plant cell biology in Dr. Paul Twigg’s lab (UNK), and is now joining the parasitology lab to work on the innate immunity of larval damselflies to frog lung fluke metacercariae.  

Andrew Prososki, BS student

Andrew took Biology I as a freshman and received an A in the course!   Andrew, or Drew as he likes to be called, then decided that he wanted to try his hands at research.  His project will involve looking at three different families of damselflies for parasites and comparing their body condition. Andrew wrote his first grant for $3,000 to the UNK Summer Student Research Program for his study and got funded.  Way to go Drew!  Because of his interest in the outdoors we think that Drew will make a superb field biologist.

Morgan Kellogg, BS student

For her 420 project, Morgan decided to examine host specificity of tadpoles in three different families of anurans to the trematode Glypthelmins pennsylvaniensis.  Glypthelmins pennsylvaniensis is an intestinal fluke of treefrogs in the genus Pseudacris and cercariae infect tadpoles where they form metacercariae.  Frogs become infected with adult worms when they metamorphose and ingest their skin.  Her work will involve infecting snails, and tadpoles, and doing quite a bit of histological work to see what happens to the metacercariae? 

Thora, the lab mascot!

Thora in Action!!

Although Thora has only been the lab mascot for a few weeks she has managed to collect the following parasites for our collections: Dermacentor variabilis the American Dog Tick, Amblyomma americanum The Lone Star Tick; Female Ctenocephalides felis.  Way to go Thora!  Unfortunately, Mrs. Bolek will not let us keep cultures of these critters on Thora.