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Biology Department Update – late 2007/early 2008                                  Bio Home

Text Supplement Published

Steve Gehnrich, Biology, authored the Power Point lecture slides that accompany the new edition of the Principles of Animal Physiology text written by Moyes and Schulte, published by Pearson-Benjamin Cummings.

Papers Published

Environmental health science faculty member Vaughn Wagner had three publications based on collaborations with other Henson faculty. He and Math Computer Sciences faculty member, Barbara Wainwright, with colleagues Hepler ZW, Wood AL, and Shipley MT published “Concentrations from a Maryland Barrier Island Resort Community, 2004-2005”, in the Conference Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on Statistics, Mathematics and Related Fields, 1194 p., 2007.

Vaughn’s other two pulbications were written with Biology faculty Bill Grogan and SU students. “Mosquitoes associated with US Department of Agriculture managed wetlands on Maryland’s Delmarva Peninsula” was written by Vaughn, Bill and students, A. C. Efford, R. L. Williams, and J. S. Kirby and published in the Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association 23:346-350, 2007. The abstract, “Mosquitoes Associated With U.S. Department of Agriculture Managed Wetlands on Maryland's Delmarva Peninsula” co-authored by Vaughn, student RL Williams and Bill, was published in the Conference Proceedings, of the American Mosquito Control Association 73rd Annual Meeting - Abstract Number 98, Page 30.

In addition to the publications with Vaughn, Bill Grogan has two other recent pubs, bring his total to an amazing 114. They are:

Grogan, W. L., Jr. and R. A. Phillips. “A New Species of Biting Midge in the subgenus Monoculicoides of Culicoides from Utah (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae)” in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington 110:196-203, 2008.

Hagan, D. V., W. L. Grogan, Jr., G. L. Murza and A. R. Davis. “Biting Midges (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) from the English Sundew, Drosera anglica Hudson (Droseraceae), at Two Fens in Saskatchewan, Canada” in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington 110: 397-401, 2008.

Three Henson faculty, Ellen Lawler, Biology, Mara Chen, Geography and Geosciences, and Elichia Venso, Environmental Health Science, collaborated on “Student Perspectives on Teaching Techniques and Outstanding Teachers” which was recently published in the Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 7: 32-48, 2007.

Biologist Judith Stribling’s paper, “Microtopography in brackish marshes: ecosystem engineering by vegetation?” written with former student Olivia Glahn and colleague J. C. Cornwell at Horn Point Labs, was published in Estuaries and Coasts 30(6):1007-1015, 2007.

Papers Accepted or in Press

Mara Chen, and Judith Stribling, along with student coauthors David Mueller, Carrie Kellams, and Zack Baccala, have a paper in press, “Water Quality Perceptions and Fertilizer Application Practices of Property Owners along The Wicomico River, Maryland”, in The Pennsylvania Geographer.

Biology faculty member, Ryan Taylor’s paper, "Faux frogs: multimodal signaling and the value of robotics in animal behaviour" was recently accepted for publication in Animal Behaviour.

Other Faculty Accomplishments

Biology faculty member Chris Briand was asked by Martin F. Wojciechowski, Associate Professor, Arizona State University, for permission to add Chris’ image of the legume Cladrastis lutea (currently on the SU Arboretum web site), to the Tree of Life Web Project. To see the image, go to http://www.salisbury.edu/arboretum/Cladras/ClLu/ClLuHM.html); the Tree of Life site is http://www.tolweb.org/Fabaceae/21093 .
 
Biology Department Update– late 2006/early 2007

Grants and Contracts

 

Mark Frana and Elichia Venso recently received a contract from the Maryland Department of the Environment for $262,287 that will support continued studies of MD impaired watersheds by the Bacterial Source Tracking Lab through June 2008.  To see which watersheds they are studying, check out the poster outside their lab in HS 215. 

 

Ryan Taylor, the new face in the Biology Dept, is in the middle of a three year National Science Foundation grant ($358,000.00) which supports his summer research in Panama on frog communication. 

 

Papers

 

Chris Briand has a new publication, co-authored by SU librarian Susan Brazer and J.M. Harter-Dennis: Tree rings and the aging of trees: A controversy in 19th century America. Tree-Ring Research 62: 61-75, 2006.

 

Also in press in Animal Behaviour is a pub by new Bio faculty member, Ryan Taylor written with co-authors C. B. W. Buchanan, and J. L. Doherty.  Sexual Selection in the Squirrel Treefrog, Hyla squirella: The Role of Multimodal Cue Assessment in Female Choice. 

 

Former SU Biology student ('06)  Phil Ferralli and SU Biology faculty members John Egan and Les Erickson have a publication in press "Making Taq DNA polymerase in the undergraduate laboratory" in BIOS, the TriBeta Research Journal.

 

Elichia Venso and Mark Frana are co-authors on A Classification Tree Method for Bacterial Source Tracking with Antibiotic Resistance Analysis Data by Bertram Price, Elichia A. Venso, Mark F. Frana, Joshua Greenberg, Adam Ware, and Lee Currey in Applied and Environmental Microbiology   May 2006.  Vol. 72, No. 5:  3468-3475.

 

Presentations

 

Bacterial Source Tracking Lab faculty and research students made a couple presentations in 2006.  At the American Society for Microbiology meeting in May 2006 in Orlando, FL, Gene Williams, Kerrie Lorch, Kristen Van Sant Mark Frana, and Elichia Venso presented a poster:  Membrane Fatty Acid Composition of E. coli as BST Markers.

    

The next month, Hannah Coulson, Julie Meeks, Mark Frana, and Elichia Venso presented Enterococcus spp. as Indicator Organisms for Bacterial Source Tracking using Antibiotic Resistance Profiles at ASM's 7th Annual Conference on Streptococcal Genetics in St. Malo, France. 

   

In Nov. 2006, Gene Williams and four engineering students from Old Dominion University presented the poster "A Sounding Rocket Experiment to Study the Effects of Microgravity on Cancer Metastasis" at the meeting of  the American Society of Gravitational and Space Biology.

  

Other Faculty Accomplishments

 

Gene Williams was nominated and confirmed to serve on the Agricultural Reconciliation Committee for Wicomico County’s Department of Planning and Zoning, is a member of the Awards Committee of the Washington (DC) Academy of Science and a member of the Maryland Sea Grant College Academic Advisory Council.

 

Gene Williams’ election to the position of Vice President for Affiliated Societies of the Washington Academy of Sciences was announced at the society’s annual awards banquet, May 1.
 

Other Student Accomplishments

 

Recent Biology graduate Adam Lowe received a monetary award from Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society and was of only 25 students nationwide selected to participate in the Summer Research Program at Cold Spring Harbor (where he met Dr. James Watson). Of the 25 Cold Spring Harbor students, Adam was chosen as their single Steamboat Scholar.

 

Biology majors Emily Lausten and Julie Harris each received Guerrieri Summer Research Awards.