Finding a Direction in Science

Staci Amburgey

There are lots of different types of science, but specifically, I am a “quantitative ecologist”. “Ecology” is the study of living creatures and the food, habitats, and other creatures they encounter when living their lives. “Quantitative” means I use a lot of statistics and mathematical modeling to measure the effect food, habitat, and other living things have on the creature we’re studying. A mathematical model is a math statement we’ve written that does a good job at explaining a relationship or interaction that occurs in real life.

This is me posing with a Blainsville horned lizard in San Diego, California. We are researching how species like this lizard might be affected by building houses and businesses on the land (we call this chopping up of natural landscapes “habitat fragmentation”).

My job involves working with other researchers, members of the community, and government officials to figure out what important questions need to be asked about wildlife. A question might be “Why don’t we see as many of this species anymore?”. It might also be “We want to build a road, but what is the effect that will have on the species nearby?”. Or it might even be “How might changing climate affect this species?”. I help figure out how to collect the data to answer these questions. My main job is then to analyze all the data on the computer using statistics and mathematical models to understand what is happening. I get to work with a lot of different animals (e.g., salamanders, frogs, toads, lizards, snakes, and even small mammals like mice and gophers) in many different places (e.g., Colorado, Pennsylvania, Virginia, California, Ecuador, and Guam). I also get to do a lot of little jobs within my overall job (e.g., hiking to study places, measuring animals, talking to and sharing results with people, writing code to analyze data, creating figures of data, making maps, and doing public outreach). It keeps me excited and busy!

Red – Map of all the places I worked as a researcher. Blue – Where I currently live.

As long as can remember, I always really liked animals. Though as a really little kid, I absolutely loved dinosaurs! I think that’s why I like studying reptiles today. As a kid in elementary school, I changed from liking only extinct animals (those that are gone completely from the Earth) to those that are still alive. I got excited about living animals by watching National Geographic episodes on television. These programs show animals in the wild, doing what they do from day to day, with beautiful camera footage and cool information about the animals’ lives. Between watching these shows and going to the zoo with my dad, I grew up wanting to learn as much as I could about animals.

I might have liked animals from a young age, but I tried a lot of different ways to study animals before I got to where I am now. When I was in high school, I volunteered for a local nature center to teach others about hummingbirds in Colorado. After high school, I went to college at Colorado State University to continue studying science. I was originally a student worker in a lab looking at the cells and molecules in animals, which I realized was at a much smaller level than I wanted to be working. I asked around the college and was introduced to another researcher who was looking at frogs in Colorado, where they live, and how they change across the prairie into the mountains. I was able to do fieldwork with this group, which involved going out and catching frogs, measuring them, and seeing where they actually live. I really enjoyed fieldwork and especially liked seeing the animals and the places they live, what they eat, and what eats them.

This is me as an undergraduate in college after finding my first wood frog in Colorado. This was before I had enough money to get nicer water shoes or field pants (I would not recommend walking through ponds in jeans and bare feet – leeches and stabby pine needles aren’t fun to step on)!

I met other researchers through this project, worked on other projects over the years studying toads in Rocky Mountain National Park, did my own projects that I wrote about and published with the help of my mentors, and was able to get my Bachelor’s degree in Biology (the study of living things) and Zoology (the study of animals). When I graduated, I learned that you can do some types of research with a Bachelor’s degree, but I wanted to design my own projects and ask my own questions. That meant I needed to go to graduate school, which involves being a student at a university and taking some classes but also doing work with researchers. You are mentored and shown how to be a professional scientist.

I stayed at Colorado State University to get my Master’s degree in Zoology and went to Pennsylvania State University to get my PhD in Ecology. I worked on a lot of different animals and projects, which was really interesting and exciting. For example, while in Pennsylvania, I helped study spotted salamanders. These salamanders are types of amphibians (like frogs and toads) that migrate in huge numbers to ponds in the spring. We were interested in how they move from where they spend the winter to these ponds and how often they come back to the same pond.

Here is a bucket of spotted salamanders (left) and some of people who help do this work (right; led by Courtney Davis in center). This species moves in large numbers from forests to ponds in the spring. If you live near the Midwest or east coast of the United States, you might get to see these cool animals! We research how long these animals live and how much they move from year to year. It takes a lot of volunteers to help us study them.

I was in graduate school for seven years to get both degrees, but I learned so much about science and studying animals! I also was able to teach some while doing my degree, which was a great experience in learning how to share my excitement for science. When I was finished with my PhD, I applied for a job doing more research.

Other obstacles have come from being a woman in a mostly male career. It is difficult feeling like an outsider, even if people are very friendly and welcoming.

Some of the biggest challenges I’ve faced in my career have come from myself. It is easy to focus on the little voice in your head that tells you that the work is too hard and that you’re not smart enough to learn enough or do enough to succeed. There is a lot of learning needed to do science, so I’ve often been stressed about whether or not I am good enough at what I do. It is important to talk through these fears and realize that everyone has them. I work with myself to realize that I am a hard worker, I am a good team player, and that I am excited about what I do. All these things mean I can succeed just as much as anyone else. This is also a challenge that I haven’t fully overcome. Most people have these worries, and it is always necessary to remind yourself that you’re better than that. I don’t expect it to go away, but I am getting better about being more confident every day.

Other obstacles have come from being a woman in a mostly male career. It is difficult feeling like an outsider, even if people are very friendly and welcoming. It is even harder when people are not welcoming. I found good mentors that encouraged me and supported me. They made me feel wanted when I was worried about being different. They helped me find opportunities and introduced me to other good people. I also came from a lower income family growing up. Not many of my family members have gone to college. My mother and father both went back to school after having kids and continued to work full time jobs outside of school. They showed me that getting an education was worth the extra work. They also encouraged me to be excited about what I chose to do as a career. With their support, I paid for college while doing jobs that applied to my interests. In most colleges, there are always people looking for help to do research. Sometimes you can even get paid to do that research. Looking for those jobs helped me pay for school while getting experience.

What do I do now? Well, I currently work at the University of Washington as a postdoctoral researcher. That means I already have my PhD (i.e., it’s after a doctoral degree or “postdoc”) and am doing a specific job that lasts for only a few years. The job involves me working on a project on the island of Guam with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Invasive Species Branch. The brown treesnake (Boiga irregularis) is a type of snake from Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and several other nearby islands in the Pacific Ocean. However, the snake was accidentally brought to the island of Guam in the 1940s and quickly spread across the island, eating Guam’s birds, lizards, and mammals. It is considered an invasive species, meaning it is not from Guam and has done damage to the native species that normally live there. Eleven bird species no longer live on the island! I use mathematical models to estimate the number of snakes on the island, using photographs, traps, and people catching snakes. This information will allow managers to predict how the number of snakes might change as we try to remove them and reintroduce the birds that belong on Guam.

This photo shows a brown treesnake doing what it does best – looking for food! Brown tree snakes have eaten tons of the native birds, bats, and lizards. We want to figure out how to remove the snakes so the native species can be brought back! Photo courtesy of USDA researcher Shane Siers.

It is everyone’s hope to figure out how to remove and control the spread of this invasive species. Many partners are invested in this project, including wildlife biologists and natural resource managers from multiple federal agencies, the people of Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Mariana Islands, with benefits to all island ecosystems in the region.

Management and removal of the brown treesnake (and understanding the effects on the entire ecosystem) is a team effort involving wildlife biologists from multiple countries and U.S. states. Top row (left to right): Abbey Feuka, Peter Xiong, Xenabeth Lazaro. Bottom row (left to right): Drew Mora, Chaz Comia, Emma Hanslowe.

The excitement of helping someone learn something new or find a cool, new creature they never knew existed really makes me happy.

Some of my favorite hobbies are reading, hiking, finding new animals and plants I’ve never seen before, and cooking. I like to travel when possible and am really glad my work lets me visit neat places and awesome researchers from around the world. I also enjoy playing with my (indoor) cat and trying to convince him not to ruin the garden I’m growing in my backyard when he supervises my gardening.

I also enjoy doing outreach, which is sharing my research and passion for science with the community. Any chance I get, I try to get involved with activities in classrooms, community centers, and natural areas. The excitement of helping someone learn something new or find a cool, new creature they never knew existed really makes me happy. It’s also very important to interact with the public so they know what scientists do and why it’s important to care about what we work on. If I’m talking to people about research, I can also better understand what people care about or are worried about. Having this friendship with the public helps me be a better scientist.

—

About Letters to a Prescientist
“The mission of Letters to a Pre-Scientist is to demystify STEM careers and empower all students to see themselves as future scientists by creating personal connections between students from high-poverty schools and real scientists.”