With thanks to all the members of the lab who helped out at the event: Tim Lee, Chris Moore, Kyle Swanson, Laura Lukas, Zack Schlegel, and Emily Edmonds. A few pictures below.

In 2008 while I was a postdoc, I took part in a bay-wide sampling with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center for the non-native snail, Littorina saxatilis. I have been back a couple times since (2010 and 2011) but haven't since then. So it was time to return! I am very interested in the parasite diversity and prevalence of snails in the Bay (non-native species often escape many of their parasites when they invade new locations). We also take demographic measures: population density, size and sex distributions, and brood counts in females. It was a fun trip, and lots of help from Dr. Amy Fowler and my student Chris Moore. We were also sampling for the non-native white-fingered mud crab (Rhithropanopeus harrisii), and very conveniently, one of the field sites was in Napa Valley. So even though we were a little dirty from sampling in the mud, we had to stop and do a short little wine tasting. ;) It was a fun adventure but pretty intense... lots of early morning and late afternoon tides with lab work in between! Oh and we even got to see former undergrad in our lab, Christofer Brothers who is just starting a PhD at UC-Davis. See pics below!

Sharing a few images of trematode parasites from host snails. That's all. I think they're very cute. :)

Emily Edmonds (undergraduate student in our lab) was selected as a summer intern at the Pine Knoll Aquarium (nearby Atlantic Beach, NC). My family and I had a chance to go visit and get a behind the scenes tour from Emily. It was really fun and informative! Congrats to Emily!

On July 19, we completed three years of sampling sites along the Pamlico and Neuse every ~8 weeks along a salinity gradient to examine the impact of salinity on parasite prevalence in native mud crab species. At this point, we have concluded our sampling of the Neuse estuary but will continue sampling the Pamlico estuary into the foreseeable future. It's been a lot of work, but we have a ton of data now over those 3 years; now onto some initial analyses!! Special thanks to all the students in my lab over the years and the citizen scientists that have contributed to this effort!

It was once again a truly amazing experience to co-teach a Marine Parasitology & Disease course at Shoals Marine Lab this past June. It's such a beautiful place, and a great location to look for parasites. We once again have a Parasite Ecology intern (Anna Van Dreser) doing really fun work on parasites -- this time in snails and fish! I think the pictures below speak for themselves...

Please go here to read the article.... very exciting that research in our lab was featured in this prominent magazine!!

https://www.ourstate.com/beneath-still-waters-rachel-carson-reserve-carrot-island-north-carolina/
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​Photo below: Baxter Miller

Apparently a lot happened in April! We were very happy to have Corey Winkler do his honors thesis in the lab, and he did an excellent job defending it at his honors thesis defense in late April 2019. Now we're looking towards getting the research published. "Where do they goby..." :)