Crouched on the shore of Lake Wilson, University of Arkansas biologist Adam Siepielski looked closely into a clear plastic cup.
Inside was a female damselfly – a winged insect that is similar to the dragonfly but is smaller and has a slimmer body.
Adam Siepielski (center) with Mabel Serrano (left) and Britt Ousterhout (right) at Lake Wilson near Fayetteville. | Russell Wilson, University of Arkansas
“See that little dot on her abdomen? That’s a mite,” Siepielski said, turning the cup slightly for a better view.
The mite had attached itself to the damselfly as a parasite. Siepielski, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, is studying the parasitic relationship between the insect and the tiny arthropod. He hopes the results of the project will help predict the level of parasitism in damselflies. His work this summer is testing a mathematical model he developed.
The relationship between the mite and the damselfly is “antagonistic,” Siepielski said. The mite sucks a blood-like fluid from the damselfly, provoking a physiological reaction from the damselfly that produces more of the fluid. The damselfly isn’t defenseless, he explained. It will try to knock the parasite loose by spinning around. But that kind of action is risky because the damselfly knows it might draw the attention of fish that prey on the insects.
Adam Siepielski displays damselflies that are being held in cups that will go back to his lab at the U of A. | Russell Cothren, University of Arkansas
“Fear is very real, and it shapes a lot of the ways that organisms interact in nature,” he said.
This morning, Siepielski started his summer field research season capturing damselflies on Lake Wilson, near Fayetteville. Siepielski brought two members of his lab – postdoctoral research associate Britt Ousterhout and technician Mabel Serrano, a senior biology major. All three waded into the water and used butterfly nets to catch the insects, which hovered and landed on vegetation rising out of the shallows.
“You’re looking for motion,” Ousterhout said as she stood about knee-deep in the water. A floppy hat protected her head from the sun and sunglasses shaded her eyes.
Ousterhout recently joined Siepielski’s lab after earning a doctorate at the University of Missouri. Her dissertation centered on salamanders, so she was still adjusting to using a net to capture a flying insect.
“This is my first day doing this, but I’m getting better with each passing minute,” she said. “You wonder how you missed them at first.”
Britt Ousterhout searches for damselflies in the shallows of Lake Wilson. | Russell Cothren, University of Arkansas
Siepielski catches damselflies with a sudden swiping motion that resembles a tennis backhand. Siepielski developed tennis elbow back when he was doing field research as a postdoc at Dartmouth College.
This type of fieldwork is the first step toward lab discoveries, Siepielski said. He is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist who uses empirical and theoretical approaches to understand the processes that determine the distributions and abundances of organisms.
He also studies how evolutionary processes shape the ability of species to persist, especially in aquatic communities. He has received funding from the National Science Foundation and Beckman Scholars Program.
Siepielski came to the U of A in 2015 from the University of San Diego. He began scouting lakes and ponds that would be suitable for damselfly experiments soon after arriving in Northwest Arkansas. Lake Wilson is one of more than a dozen lakes and ponds that he’ll travel to this summer to conduct field research, sometimes in collaboration with other institutions.
Mabel Serrano uses a net to catch damselflies. | Russell Cothren, University of Arkansas
Many of Siepielski’s backhanded swipes produced two damselflies – a male and a female. They weren’t accidents. It’s not as difficult as it would seem, he said.
“I’m looking for mated pairs,” he said. “The male and female fly in tandem. Also, when they are mating the male will attach itself to the female. It looks like a little heart as they are flying around.”
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