By Dr. Sarah A. Orlofske, University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point
This article originally appeared in Wisconsin Waterfowl Association’s September, 2022 Newsletter edition.
Hello Waterfowl Hunters!
We are recruiting waterfowl hunters from Mead Wildlife Area to partner with us on a new research project. We are asking for volunteers to donate breasted out carcasses or gastrointestinal tracts of hunted waterfowl for parasite investigation by a team of undergraduate student researchers at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point.
We have two main research objectives 1) investigate the number and type of parasites infecting waterfowl including new species and potentially pathogenic species to the birds and 2) determine if parasites can be useful biological indicators of aquatic ecosystem health by connecting the parasite diversity to geographic locations and habitat characteristics. This work cannot be done without the support of hunters to provide us specimens. If you want to see your leftover carcasses contribute to new scientific discoveries and are willing fill out a very brief data sheet with info on date, location, and species info we would love to hear from you!
By donating specimens for our work, you are contributing data that will be useful in understanding waterfowl biology and habitat use and helping support the training of our future waterfowl ecologists. Students will gain experience working with wildlife, including species identification, sexing and aging birds as well as properly conducting dissections and diagnosing parasite infections. We look forward to building new connections with the waterfowl community and hope to share our research findings with public presentations, newsletter articles, and individual hunters that are interested in our results.
For more information about the research or if you have any questions please contact: Dr. Sarah Orlofske (sorlofske@uwsp.edu) Dept. of Biology, University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point (715-346-2159)