{"id":2022,"date":"2011-04-01T14:33:17","date_gmt":"2011-04-01T18:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/biology\/?p=2022"},"modified":"2011-04-01T14:33:17","modified_gmt":"2011-04-01T18:33:17","slug":"discerning-the-damselflys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/biology\/2011\/discerning-the-damselflys\/","title":{"rendered":"Discerning the Damselfly's Dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"

Research Works
\nBy: Sarah Davidson
\n<\/strong>http:\/\/researchworks.carleton.ca\/spring-2011\/discerning-damselflys-dilemma\/<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Biology student Andre Morrill is researching parasitism in damselflies.<\/p>\n

Under the microscope, the insect looks intimidating, with huge blue-black eyes and an explosion of angular legs covered in prickly hairs that extend along its face and torso.<\/p>\n

Biology student Andre Morrill starts by pinning down the wings and torso, then he uses a dozen tiny pins to painstakingly take apart the insect. Magnified, it looks like a prehistoric monster. In many ways it actually is prehistoric, the ancestors of this beast flapped their wings beside the first reptiles on earth, in the late Paleozoic era.<\/p>\n

With the naked eye it looks less like a monster and a lot more like a small dragonfly. It\u2019s a damselfly, a smaller bug closely related to dragonflies.<\/p>\n

Morrill is researching parasitism in damselflies. He\u2019s taking this bug apart in order to count the parasites that cling to the bug\u2019s torso and the lining of its abdomen. The big question for Morrill is whether endo and ecto (internal and external) parasite loads correlate.<\/p>\n

In other words, he\u2019s trying to figure out if there is any connection between the number of parasites clinging to the outside of a damselfly and the number clinging to the inside.<\/p>\n

Inside this damselfly, he finds a collection of white lumps. To give a sense of scale, if this were a human, Morrill says, \u201cit would be as if you happened to have twenty hamsters living inside your stomach\u201d.<\/p>\n

The coolest part was working with researchers from all over the place<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The internal parasites, called gregarines, live off the damselfly\u2019s food. \u201cOnce they get inside the damselfly, they basically set up shop. They grab on to the intestinal wall and hang out there and eat stuff that passes by,\u201d says Morrill, \u201cthe added weight makes it difficult for the damselflies to fly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morrill spent the summer living at a remote research station between Ottawa and Kingston, catching four different kinds of damselflies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe coolest part,\u201d he says, \u201cwas working with researchers from all over the place, who are asking questions that no one really knows the answers to. It\u2019s one thing to read about their methods, but it\u2019s another to be getting up in the morning and catching bugs together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morrill ultimately collected hundreds of specimens, which he\u2019s now dissecting, one by one.<\/p>\n

In April, Morrill will finish his BA in Biology. \u201cGoing into it, I didn\u2019t really know what I wanted to do,\u201d he says, \u201cI just knew that biology class throughout high school was always the one where I got excited about seeing how things worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research experience, says Morrill, has given him a more nuanced view of how science works, \u201chow you go about going through that process of asking a question that no one really knows the answer to, and then figuring out a way to answer it, and then going out and doing it.\u201d Answering a research question while living in a \u201ccabin shack by a lake\u201d all summer, he adds with a smile, was a definite plus.<\/p>\n

Surrounded by his dozens of vials of insects, Morrill counts the damselfly\u2019s parasites and records the number. He picks up what\u2019s left of the bug with a tiny pair of tweezers, drops it back into the vial, and adds it to the growing pile of dissected specimens. \u201cThe other big thing I\u2019ve gained,\u201d he says, \u201cis I\u2019ve gotten really fast at dissecting bugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research Works By: Sarah Davidson http:\/\/researchworks.carleton.ca\/spring-2011\/discerning-damselflys-dilemma\/ Biology student Andre Morrill is researching parasitism in damselflies. Under the microscope, the insect looks intimidating, with huge blue-black eyes and an explosion of angular legs covered in prickly hairs that extend along its face and torso. Biology student Andre Morrill starts by pinning down the wings and torso, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nDiscerning the Damselfly's Dilemma - Department of Biology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Research Works By: Sarah Davidson http:\/\/researchworks.carleton.ca\/spring-2011\/discerning-damselflys-dilemma\/ Biology student Andre Morrill is researching\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/biology\/2011\/discerning-the-damselflys\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"ccms_editor\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/biology\/2011\/discerning-the-damselflys\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/biology\/2011\/discerning-the-damselflys\/\",\"name\":\"Discerning the Damselfly's Dilemma - 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