Alyssa Calhoun

In the early 1930’s, two researchers, Van Cleave and Mueller, conducted a survey of the parasites found in the fish of Oneida Lake, New York in which they identified 76 parasitic species, 33 of which were not previously described. As this survey was done nearly 100 years ago, there have been many changes to the ecosystem due to a variety of factors such as climate change, agricultural runoff, and introductions of invasive species that have directly affected the biodiversity of the lake and therefore which species can be found. Due to these recent changes, it has been recorded that several species of molluscs have been lost from the lake, as well some new species being introduced and this trend can be observed in most groups of organisms, including the parasites. Florian Reyda of SUNY Oneonta and his collaborators, including many students, have been conducting a similar study to the one done by Van Cleave and Mueller to identify which parasitic species are still present in the lake, which seem to have been lost, and if there are any species present that have been introduced since the original study. By collecting and dissecting many fish from a variety of species including yellow perch, small mouth bass, walleye, brown bullhead, rock bass, chain pickerel, white sucker, creek chub sucker, bowfin and more, we are able to observe which parasites are found in the digestive system and other internal organs of these fish. There is a large collection of previously collected parasites from the fishes of Oneida Lake at the SUNY Oneonta Biological Field Station including cestodes (tapeworms) from the genera Proteocephalus, Bothriocephalus, and Glaridacris, as well as species of other parasite groups including digeneans, nematodes, thorny-headed worms, and monogeneans. The overall goal of my project is to take scanning electron micrographs of representatives of each parasitic species collected from Oneida Lake. These scanning electron micrographs will enable us to determine which species have survived in the lake since the last survey and to have a set of captivating images to portray these results.