News

December 2021 - A few new publications have come out, including one on nonnative snails. In this paper, we quantified the diversity of nonnative freshwater snails and described their mechanisms of introduction and interactions with parasites and predators. In a second paper, Landon studied hotspots of parasites in freshwater streams. His work suggests that leaf litter in streams can lead to aggregations of snails, which may cause higher rates of parasite transmission into other hosts, such as fish. 

September 2021 - Landon, Fernando, and Kim recently completed stream surveys in southern Wisconsin, where we are studying whether New Zealand mud snails are affecting trout fisheries and food web interactions. The productive streams in this area support brown trout (at right), shown with a full stomach of midges. We can anesthetize the fish and lavage them for stomach contents, before releasing them back to the stream unharmed. 

July 2021 - The lab has been busy with new field projects, including surveys in Colorado to understand short-term effects of wildfires on stream food webs. The 2020 wildfire season was the largest in recent Colorado history, providing lots of opportunities to study fire ecology near Fort Collins. At right is Trail Creek in an area burned by the East Troublesome fire. Our initial results suggest that we will see significant changes in trout populations and stream macroinvertebrates as a result of the wildfires. 

Jan 2021 - Tamara Layden recently wrote a blog post about a recent paper on trematode parasite ecology in freshwater streams. An accompanying video of Nanophyetus salmincola trematode larvae from inside a dissected snail is shown at right. The larger larvae are called 'rediae' and they asexually produce the smaller larvae, termed 'cercariae'. The cercariae exit the snail and seek out a fish host to infect, often a trout or salmon.

Jan 2021 - The Preston lab has made a move from UW-Madison to Colorado State University.  

Dec 2020 - Landon Falke successfully defended his Masters thesis on spatial heterogeneity in trematode populations in Oregon streams.