Muhlenberg athletes are spending the summer of 2022 enjoying fantastic experiences on campus, in their hometowns, across the country and even around the world.

Junior field hockey player Katie Raab spent the summer doing research at Muhlenberg.

This summer, I participated in summer research here on campus for eight weeks. I worked in Dr. Iyengar's ecology lab with my lab partner Bethany Fluck. 

We worked with aquatic isopods, which are like pill bugs or roly polies but the aquatic version. Surprising to many people, isopods are actually crustaceans, not bugs! 

Isopods are benthic detritivores, which means they hang out at the bottom of ponds and eat dead things like leaves. Aquatic isopods are very common in this area and can be found in many urban and rural ponds around Muhlenberg. 

My experiment was designed to look at the effects of road salt brine on local pond ecosystems, starting with the isopods. This is because isopods are the food source for a lot of larger predators in the water, and if the isopods start to die off, the whole food chain could have problems. Since the isopods live in freshwater, the increased salinity in the water from the runoff can harm them. 

What I did was gather isopods from an urban and rural pond with a net and then put them in small tubs of different salinities. Every other day for seven days, I would check all the isopods and count how many were alive or dead.

Throughout the experiment, I had 210 tubs and 4200 isopods! Overall, I have really enjoyed doing this research, and it is a great lab experience for my future in the sciences.
 

Doing something interesting or unusual this summer? Fill out this form to be included in our Summer Check-In series!