The Community Ecology Lab

Patrick Crumrine, Ph.D. Rowan University Department of Biological Sciences & Program in Environmental Studies

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Current Lab Members
Patrick Crumrine
Ryan Keweshan and Chima Nwosu		Ryan and Chima are Rowan Biology students primarily working on a project supervised by Dr. Josh Wyrick in Civil and Environmental Engineering. The project involves characterizing physical and biological parameters of several watersheds in southern New Jersey. The engineering students are collecting data on the abiotic conditions of Mantua Creek in southern New Jersey while Ryan and Chima are characterizing the macroinvertebrate fauna of this stream.
Former Lab Members
REU Students at Blandy Experimental Farm
Andy Miller, 2006		This picture sums up a summer at Blandy. We spend lots of time looking for larval insects in nature's finest ecosystem, the fishless freshwater pond. Andy Miller is an undergraduate at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania and his project examined predator prey interactions between odonate larvae and the free swimming stage (cercariae) of a trematode parasite. He determined that odonate larvae are potential predators of cercariae, which is quite intriguing because these parasites can infect amphibians and odonates may indirectly reduce infection risk.
Amber Burgett, 2005		Amber was an undergraduate student at Denison University in Ohio when she spent the summer at Blandy. Amber actually started several projects during the summer all involving intraguild predation in larval odonates. The experiments that weren't destroyed by the pesky Blandy raccoons turned out very well and earned her a spot in the Food Web Poster Session at the 2006 meeting of the Ecological Society of America. Amber is now a grad student in the Chase Lab at Washington University in St. Louis.
Aquil Meeks, 2005		Aquil came to Blandy from Howard University in Washington DC. He said he wanted to overcome his fear of spiders during his summer at Blandy. He faced his fear by working on a project exploring the role of hunger and mate availability on pre-copulatory sexual cannibalism in fishing spiders. Many thanks to my former labmate from grad school, Chad Johnson, who helped us out on this project.
Paige Barlow, 2004		Paige was a student at the University of Richmond in Virginia when she was at Blandy. Her project examined predator-prey interactions between dragonfly larvae and snails, that's right, snails. It turns out that dragonfly larvae do eat snails, not many but a few. Paige is now a grad student in Fisheries at Virginia Tech.
Keefe Keeley, 2004		As an REU student at Blandy, Keefe investigated the effects of agricultural pesticides on competition and predation in freshwater communities. Not only is Keefe a solid biologist but he was a college track star and is also a singer in a band. Keefe graduated from Swarthmore college in May of 2006 and secured a coveted Watson Fellowship to travel the world examining the interface between religion, agriculture, and environmental sustainability. Check out Keefe's Blog to read about his latest farming adventures.
Longwood University
Amanda Crossett		Amber's project examined the impact of introduced trout on native aquatic invertebrate assemblages in Virginia streams. Although we did not observe changes in species diversity after the annual stocking event in our streams, we did notice that some taxa were more abundant in riffles after trout were stocked. Amber presented a poster of her work at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Virginia Academy of Sciences.
Stephen Edwards		Stepehen's project explored the impact of pesticide mixtures on larval amphibian survival, development and behavior.
Jason Ferguson Marilyn McKee		Jason and Marilyn mapped amphibian breeding sites in the Appomattox-Buckinghan State Forest in south central Virginia.

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