At Behrend, undergraduate students are able to be involved in a variety of research projects with faculty. Becoming involved is usually the easiest part because the actual research takes a lot of time and hard work. Senior Biology student, Emily Brown, and junior Environmental Science student, Megan Palko, are some of the students to take advantage of this unique experience that Behrend offers and were able to receive a research grant through the School of Science for the summer of 2017.

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Brown and Palko, with help from advisor Pamela Silver, Interim Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Department Chair of Biology and Distinguished Professor of Biology, are studying the presence of macroinvertebrates in five streams on and around campus. To do this they took samples of leaf packs, groups of leaves stuck in streams, and counted the macroinvertebrates in the samples. This research is a side project of the road salt study that began in 2015 and is now in its third year.

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“Doing research at Penn State has been an awesome experience that I’m glad to have been involved in,” said Palko in a recent interview. “I’ve learned so much throughout my year doing research and I can’t wait to use that knowledge in my next study.”

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They began their project in the fall of 2016, but found that the streams they looked at had very few macroinvertebrates. The macroinvertebrates they did find were pollution tolerant organisms, therefore indicating poor stream health. Healthy streams should have a population of leaf-shredding macroinvertebrates, which are partially responsible for the breakdown of debris and the cycling of nutrients. Slow decomposition caused by a lack of leaf-shredders could cause matter accumulation and limit biological activity and diversity.

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“Manny people don’t realize that when we hurt the environment, we are hurting ourselves in the long run,” said Brown. “It’s easy to look at what we are doing and say ‘so what?’ My hope is that this will get people thinking about the long-term effects of our short-term solutions.”

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After determining that the streams did not look healthy, Brown and Palko decided to continue their research. They continued sampling every month and will not finish until January of 2018. The team plans to present their study at the Sigma Xi Research Conference at Behrend in April 2018 and in Detroit at the Society for Freshwater Science meeting in May 2018.