Our project is ambitious. There is a surprising amount that nobody knows about how particular freshwater mussel species use fish species as developmental hosts. One key mechanism for identifying these functional relationships is to observe natural infestations, that naturally result in successful juvenile mussels - and that is difficult work. Even more challenging, we want to learn about these relationships in the Flint River, part of the hyperdiverse aquatic ecosystem of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint basin.
To do this, we have formed a partnership: students and faculty at Albany State University (with the Flint flowing right past campus), colleagues at the Flint Riverquarium, and faculty and students at the University of Georgia are working together to have fun during the summer and answer these basic questions. As paid summer interns, ASU students get to catch and learn about local freshwater fish; maintain the fish in species-specific aquatic habitat chambers at the Flint Riverquarium where they both educate the public as well as monitor for successful juvenile drop-offs; and then learn basic DNA barcoding techniques for identifying the mussels that have parasitized each fish.
Funding for this project comes from diverse sources (we are currently looking for more stable funding support!), and has already provided some distinct successes both in terms of interdisciplinary training as well as new insights into this unique host-parasite relationship. Both outcomes are really important to our team: exposing students to these approaches helps them with their professional goals and possibly drawing students into STEM disciplines after college, and everything we can learn about imperiled freshwater mussels is key, because they provide ecosystem services in streams and rivers that ensure cleaner, more diverse, river ecosystems (linked video is on freshwater arthropods, but you'll get a good sense of what we mean!).