June 2, 2021
Student: Leo Ivey
Major: Biology (concentration in Environmental Biology)
Fall 2021 Peer Mentor
What is your goal in studying science?
I’m an aspiring researcher, and my main goal at the moment is to get as much research experience as I can, wherever I can! I’m trying to find a focus that I feel I would like to pursue beyond my undergraduate education – into my master’s and PhD, and beyond that to the rest of my career, whatever that may be.
What does STAMPS mean to you?
I feel that the STAMPS program has been absolutely essential to my research experiences – if it weren’t for funding from the program, I wouldn’t be able to pursue half of the research experiences I’ve been a part of. Even more than that, the program has been able to provide me with a community that is encouraging and that I’m able to connect with in more ways than one! I’ve had the opportunity to conduct research with some of my fellow STAMPS scholars, and they have been inspiring and supportive throughout my time in the program.
What advice would you offer incoming students?
Keep your eyes and ears open, and don’t be afraid to send someone an email. It never hurts to ask about a project or a topic you’re interested in – more often than not, people love to talk about what they’ve been working on, and those little conversations can open you up to connections and opportunities you wouldn’t have access to otherwise.
What is your research project?
I’m involved in a couple of different projects at the moment! I’ve been assisting Dr. Rada Petric over the summer months in assessing the effects of natural and man-made wetlands (and their pollutants!) on bat species’ activity and presence. Outside of my work with Dr. Petric, I also help out in the McLean lab during the rest of the year with data collection (both in the field and in the lab) and data management for graduate students’ projects, as well as just generally lending a hand whenever I can – our focus is small mammals, so this sometimes means helping out with trapping mice and shrews in the field or helping to clean up some of the numbers in the lab room!
My personal project is now complete and has focused on the range shift of fox squirrels (Sciurus niger) and how easily we can predict their movement with spatial distribution models (SDMs) – I use data from the past 150 years or so to make predictions about fox squirrel movement, and then compare those predictions to the actual movement of the squirrels during those time periods. After I make the comparisons between those two, I can then analyze how well the models can account for human impact – the way that human beings shape urban landscapes in ways that benefit the squirrels, as well as introducing the squirrels into areas they otherwise wouldn’t be expected to live based on climate and other factors.
What have you found in your research?
It was very apparent that the spatial distribution models were excellent at predicting range shifts based on expected climate variables (ex. temperature, rainfall, etc.) but weren’t able to account for anthropogenic change! In particular, there were some very significant isolated populations of my model species (the fox squirrels) on the west coast of the US that were completely unexpected by the projections – I believe this is caused by the introduction of broad-leafed trees in urban areas, but there are a lot of different factors that could be causing this discrepancy.
What is the significance of your research?
There has been quite a bit of study done to evaluate the quality of SDM projections, and they have been proven to be very reliable in predicting the occurrence of species under normal climatic conditions – however, humans are extremely exceptional! We change the environments around us in ways that are difficult to predict, and my project emphasized that without taking this into account the models fall ever so slightly flat. More research is needed to determine what factors we could take into consideration to predict anthropogenic landscape changes as well as normal climate variables in order to get a fuller picture of how species’ ranges shift over time – there are a lot of different directions this project could move in!
Where have you presented your research?
I was able to present my findings at the UNCG Thomas Undergraduate Research and Creativity Expo in Spring of 2021 – which was hosted virtually, so if you would like to see a brief summary of my results (as well as some of my maps!) you can view my presentation on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Smdsz8K00
What part of your project did you find most difficult?
Quarantine hit right as I was getting into the thick of my project and slowed me down quite a bit! Thankfully most of my project could be done remotely, but there were a lot of difficulties that arose from the virtual environment – it was very difficult to navigate software I had never used before pretty much on my own, but Google is a researcher’s best friend. Having to motivate myself and work almost entirely independently was a real challenge, but I’m very happy with where the project ended up.
For me, the easiest part of my project was georeferencing – which is what it’s called when you dig through old maps and datasets to find latitudes and longitudes for specimens that don’t have them for whatever reason. It’s an invaluable – if somewhat tedious – step in the data collection process that most people find extremely boring, but it’s one of my favorite things to do! Originally, I had planned to base my project entirely around georeferencing – comparing projections that had used georeferences from previous studies and projects with ones that had been done by hand, and ones that had been computer generated – to assess how the quality of the georeferences affects the accuracy of the SDM projections. Early on in the project I decided with my mentor, Dr. Bryan McLean, to take it in a different direction.
What has surprised you the most about undergraduate research?
I think that the most surprising thing to me was how excited and willing folks are to pull you into the fold of their research – even outside of working with you directly, everyone I have had the pleasure of working with has been ecstatic to share about their experiences and current projects if you express even the slightest interest. When I first spoke with my current mentor, I was terrified that being a freshman would make it difficult for me to join a lab – but everyone in my lab has been eager to teach me and guide me so much more than I ever would have expected!
