This week’s guest is Jake Shurba, a wildlife biologist and graduate student at Clemson University who studies the microbiomes of wood ducks, and a science blogger who runs The Art of Infection blog where he explores the world of parasites and what makes them so fascinating. We discuss what got Jake interested in studying wildlife diseases, why he has chosen to blog about parasites, and how a global pandemic has affected his field research on the Wood Duck.

Wood Duck Research during a Global Pandemic

At the time this interview was recorded, most of the world was under lock-down due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. This has affected scientists around the world as social distancing rules were put in place to prevent the spread of the virus. Fortunately, not everyone was affected.

Jake tells us that as he lives in a very isolated part of Florida and as his field site in Georgia is also fairly isolated, there has not been a huge effect on is research. Jake’s team also happens to be small; he works with four technicians so there isn’t much of an issue working together compared to larger research groups/teams.

Jake is part of a wide-scale project that encompasses many states in the southeastern US, and parts of the mid-west. The goal of the project is to learn about recruitment in wood ducks—this is the process by which new individuals are added to the population, either by birth, maturation, or immigration.

In the case of wood ducks (at least the female ones), ducklings hatch and migrate out, and then return to the same area where they hatched from to reinvest and help contribute to the population. Formal studies show this to be around 5%, which is not good. Ideally, that number should be around 12% to 15%, which would indicate a healthy and stable population.

Jake tracks the population by banding the female ducks and attaching a special web tag on the webbing between a ducking’s toes. This is known as a mark-recapture study; they mark the ducklings and then come back the next year to see how many have returned.

Science Communication on Social Media

Jake credits social media as an important part of his science communication. He credits its use in helping him to write better for general audiences. Writers tend to make their writing as simple as possible but that does not necessarily mean that a piece is easy to understand, which should be the main goal. As Jake points out, “— the purpose is to draw more people in from the public to see what we do as scientists, and to show them that we are people, and we’re not… trying to hide ourselves away. We want to share our research and make sure that it’s understandable by everyone.”

…the purpose is to draw more people in from the public to see what we do as scientists, and to show them that we are people, and we’re not… trying to hide ourselves away. We want to share our research and make sure that it’s understandable by everyone.

Jake Shurba

Blogging about Parasites

Jake started blogging abut parasites on his blog The Art of Infection because he was fascinated in the way they infiltrate and and quietly take resources from their hosts. Many organism have a security system that should prevent this but parasites have found a way around this.

Jake started the blog after he graduated and started working as a biologist in a non-disease related job. The blog was a means to keep up-to-date with the literature and stay in touch with a field he absolutely loves. But there was also the additional reason; to alleviate boredom. Blogging (about parasites) was the perfect way to keep his mind active when he was out in the field in “the middle of nowhere South Carolina”. It was the perfect opportunity to keep him mind active.

One particularly nasty article on Jake’s blog was about parasites in your eyes. Of the 145 million people who wear contacts, about 40% to 90% of them don’t clean their contacts properly: if they don’t use tap water instead of the recommended saline solution, they risk introducing parasites on to the lens. The person in the article was infected by Acanthamoeba keratitis, an amoeba usually found in soil and water. The unfortunate patient showered daily with his contact lenses. Jake recommends always using proper cleaning solutions for your contact lenses and follow the instructions on the package.

You can check out Jake’s blog or follow him on Twitter:

• Blog: https://artofinfection.blogspot.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/JShurba