Who am I?

By Leila Lemos, PhD Student
(hopefully PhD candidate soon)

Here I am with the first GEMM Lab blog post of 2018.

Many people begin a New Year thinking about the future and planning goals to achieve in the following year, and that’s exactly how I am starting my year. After two and a half years of my PhD program, my classes and thesis project are nearing the end. However, a large hurdle stands between me and my finish line: my preliminary exams (as opposed to final exams that happen when I defend my thesis).

Oregon State University requires two sets of preliminary examinations (a.k.a. “prelims”) in order to become a PhD candidate. Thus, planning my next steps is essential in order to accomplish my main objective: a successful completion of these two exams.

The first set of exams comprises written comprehensive examinations to be taken over the course of a week (Monday to Friday), where each day belongs to a different member of my committee. The second type of exam is an oral preliminary examination, conducted by my doctoral committee. The written and oral prelims may cover any part of my proposed research topic as described in the proposal I submitted during my first PhD year.

In order to better understand this entire process, I met with Dr. Carl Schreck, a Fisheries and Wildlife Department professor and one of the members of my committee. He has been through this prelim process many times with other students and had good advice for me regarding preparation. He told me to meet with all of my committee members individually to discuss study material and topics. However, he said that I should first define and introduce myself with a title to each committee member, so they know how to base and frame exam questions. But, how do I define myself?

As part of my PhD committee, Dr. Schreck is familiar with my project and what I am studying, so he suggested the title “Conservation Physiologist”. But, do I see myself as a Conservation Physiologist? Will this set-up have implications for my future, such as the type of job I am prepared for and able to get?

I can see it is important to get this title right, as it will influence my exam process as well as my scientific career. However, it can be hard and somewhat tricky when trying to determine what is comprised by your work and what are the directions you want to take in your future. I believe that defining the terms conservationist and physiologist, and what they encompass, is a good first step.

To me, a conservation specialist works for the protection of the species, their habitats, and its natural resources from extinction and biodiversity loss, by identifying and mitigating the possible threats. A conservation specialist’s work can help in establishing new regulations, conservation actions, and management interventions. As for an animal physiology specialist, their research may focus on how animals respond to internal and external elements. This specialist often studies an animal’s vital functions like reproduction, movement, growth, metabolism and nutrition.

According to Cooke et al. (2013), conservation specialists focus on population characteristics (e.g., abundance and structure) and indicators of responses to environmental perturbations and human activities. Thus, merging conservation and physiology disciplines enables fundamental understanding of the animal response mechanisms to such threats. Using animal physiology as a tool is valuable for developing cause-and-effect relationships, identifying stressor thresholds, and improving ecological model predictions of animal responses. Thus, conservation physiology is an inter-disciplinary field that provides physiological evidence to promote advances in conservation and resource management.

My PhD project is multidisciplinary, where the overall aim is to understand how gray whales are physiologically responding to variability in ambient noise, and how their hormone levels vary across individual, time, body condition, location, and noise levels. I enjoy many aspects of the project, but what I find myself most excited about is linking information about sex, age, body condition, and cortisol levels to specific individuals we observe multiple times in the field. As we monitor their change in body condition and hormones, I am highly motivated to build these whale ‘life-history stories’ in order to better understand patterns and drivers of variability. Although we have not yet tied the noise data into our analyses of whale health, I am very interested to see how this piece of the puzzle fits into these whale ‘life-history stories’.

In this study, animal physiology facilitates our stories. Scientific understanding is the root of all good conservation, so I believe that this project is an important step toward improved conservation of baleen whales. Once we are able to understand how gray whales respond physiologically to impacts of ocean noise, we can promote management actions that will enhance species conservation.

Thus, I can confidently say, I am a Conservation Physiologist.

Over the next three months I will be meeting with my committee members and studying for my prelims. I hope that this process will prepare me to become a PhD candidate by the time my exams come around in March. Then, I will have accomplished my first goal of 2018, so I can go on to plan for the next ones!

References:

Cooke SJ, Sack L, Franklin CE, Farrell AP, Beardall J, Wikelski M, and Chown SL. What is conservation physiology? Perspectives on an increasingly integrated and essential science. Conserv Physiol. 2013; 1(1): cot001. Published online 2013 Mar 13. doi:  10.1093/conphys/cot001.