How do you see you internship benefiting your mentor?

Dr. DeAnna Beasley is an entomologist at the Museum of Natural Science and North Carolina State University. Dr. Beasley has done research on many different topics, but is currently interested in how human driven environmental change effects the insect pathogen community. The way we determine that immune function of our insect, ants, was by testing four main categories. My team observed the and social behavior, photographed and analyzed they are cuticle melanin, extracted hemolymph and ran a plate analysis, and tested the soil around the colonies for entomopathogens.

I feel that our internship experience will benefit Deanna by getting her another set of immune pathogen data. As Deanna collect sets of data, she puts it into an analysis program to see if there are any strong trend lines. So far, Deanna has not found any data of a major significance, but her research on ants and their pathogen community has just begun. Cooper, Juilianna, and I plan to continue adding data to Deanna’s research and teaching citizens around the world how they can contribute as well.