WWA President Bruce Urben Honored to Have Parasite Named After Him

By Bruce Urben, President

Pictured above: WWA President Bruce Urben (left) and Dr. Robert Jadin with the new Scaup parasites identified and named in their honor for their support of duck carcass donations for UWSP Research.

This article appeared in the Wisconsin Waterfowl Association’s May 2026 eNewsletter. 

I was invited to attend the UWSP student research symposium on Friday, April 17th. All student researchers were able to present a poster or an oral presentation of data they collected, explored, and analyzed during the course of their research.

I was pleased to hear research done under the mentorship of Dr. Sarah Orlofske in her “parasite lab”. Research that affects waterfowl health and can impact Wisconsin waterfowling:

1. Investigating Blood parasite infection levels in Woodducks (Boucher, Latza, Neve, and Zerilli)
2. Richness and abundance of Endoparasites in Dabbling ducks at Mead wildlife area. (Miller, Liven, Thao, Garcia-Heinrich and Niles).
3. Survey of Tapeworm Prevalence and abundance in American Woodcock. (Liven, Miller).

Cutting-edge research by our future Biologists/ Researchers in training!

I was also honored, along with Dr. Robert Jadin, to have a new Scaup parasite identified and named in our honor for our support of duck carcass donations for UWSP Research.

To learn more about some of these projects, plan to attend WWA’s Waterfowl Hunters Expo in August to hear directly from Dr. Orlofske and her student researchers.