Anika Wohlleben
Differential infection rates
Some threespine stickleback populations have persistently low parasite loads, some have consistently high loads, and some exhibit extreme fluctuations in parasite loads and stickleback population sizes across years. Still, to date we are missing empirical data on infection rates over extended time frames for many populations.
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I am working on quantifying and comparing infection rates and parasite burdens of different stickleback populations in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley of southcentral Alaska over a span of approximately 10 years.
These Falcon tubes contain S. solidus dissected from the same number of stickleback from Wolf Lake (left), Cornelius Lake (middle) and Walby Lake (right). It is easy to see how large the differences in infection rate is between the lakes.
Dissection set-up to assess infections in preserved (10% buffered Formalin) stickleback.
