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Grad Student Publishes Thesis in Prestigious Journal

Amanda Bennett's research on link between maternal body condition and offspring survival published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Grad Student Publishes Thesis in Prestigious Journal
Grad Student Publishes Thesis in Prestigious Journal

In what signals a promising career, Trent graduate student Amanda M. Bennett completed her Ph.D. in Environmental and Life Sciences this summer, and has capped off her achievement by having part of her thesis published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The paper, titled “Maternal body condition influences magnitude of anti-predator response in offspring,” reveals how the physical condition of female frogs affects the ability of their tadpoles to respond to the threats posed by nearby predators. In a finding that could be applied to many other areas of biological research, Dr. Bennett’s paper explains that female frogs whose bodies were in the best physical condition spawned the offspring that were best able to respond to cues and chemical signals given off by predators and other injured tadpoles.

This research was not easy, as it took multiple summers to find enough frog specimens and breed them in captivity to observe the results. Dr. Dennis Murray, Canada research chair in Terrestrial Ecology and Ms. Bennett’s Ph.D. supervisor at the Integrative Wildlife Conservation Lab, took special note of the effort involved: “Amanda is a bright and very independent person. She doesn’t ask for help often or shy away from challenges. She’s willing to work on problems herself,” he said.

True to her nature, Dr. Bennett is not keeping still now that she’s finished her Ph.D. She’s currently completing a year-long contract with the Georgian Bay Biosphere Reserve as a turtle conservation intern, where she’s determining what threats there are to the local turtle population and their nesting areas. This position is ideal as it will allow her to continue doing field work.

Although Dr. Bennett is still charting out her career path, she wants her work to encompass both field work and academic research. She intends to continue studying amphibians and reptiles, as she considers them to be good model organisms for lots of different areas of research in biology.

In particular, she wants to do more research about “headstarting” – the process of collecting turtle eggs before they hatch and releasing the hatchlings into the wild only after they’ve had a chance to grow and become less vulnerable. She wants to analyze how much benefit actually comes from headstarting, and whether there’s an optimal rate at which turtle hatchlings grow, among other questions surrounding the practice.

It’s a lot of work, but Dr. Bennett is not daunted, and her comments reflect the values of Trent University itself: “I certainly have no problems jumping into a swamp, trying to catch frogs and turtles. It takes perseverance and confidence that what you’re doing is interesting and important, and that the answers you get are interesting and should be out there in the world.”

Posted on Wednesday, October 29, 2014.

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