When I was at Bunker Hill Community College I took Population Ecology, where I carried out a field project based on using transects for documenting the presence of squirrels in Boston Common. As part of my individual project I recorded other data as well, including temperature and whether the squirrels were on the ground or on trees. Using this data I studied squirrel behavior depending on temperature to find on which temperature ranges they were more likely of being active (foraging on the ground) or inactive (resting on trees). In this course I received an A.
Once I transferred to the University of Massachusetts Amherst the past year, I had the chance of getting involved in more biology-related courses and research experiences:
- In the Fall of 2017 I worked at professor Peter Houlihan's Avian Bioacoustics Lab, studying the impact of acoustic pollution on nightingales in urban environments using Raven Interactive Sound Analysis Software.
- Starting in the Spring of 2018, I have worked at Elizabeth Jakob's Jumping Spider Lab. During my first semester at the lab, and this summer as part of Lee-SIP internship experience, I carried out arena trials for analyzing the behavior of Phidippus princeps when exposed to seemingly contradictory visual and acoustic information. This year as part of my Honors Thesis I will collect in the fields different families of spiders, in order to study the interactions between the secondary and principal eyes of spiders when exposed to lateral visual stimuli.
- This semester I am currently working as well at professor Alan Richmond's Herpetological and Amphibian Collection as an Animal Care Assistant. My tasks include cleaning the cages of snakes (which involves handling the actual snakes), changing the water of an American alligator, and taking care of a small invertebrate collection of tarantulas, scorpions, centipedes, and beetles.
- This semester I also joined Fernald Club, which is a student-led entomology club, where I am the leader of the Live Insect Collection. My tasks include organizing the team in charge of taking care of the insect collection, and helping at the collection by feeding and watering the insects. At the start of the semester I participated in a Monarch butterfly tagging event, where I learned the techniques for catching butterflies, determining their sex, and handling them with care for placing the tag.
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