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In: Alexandra Pesano, Allie Pesano, black-capped chickadees, Emily Pavlovic, Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory, house wrens, Human Health and Environment Research Fellows Program, John Haselman, Matt Etterson, PFAS and birds, tree swallows, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, University of Minnesota Duluth

Allie Pesano. Submitted photo.

Allie Pesano first got turned onto birds as an undergraduate at Unity College in Maine. She was studying wildlife biology and, for one class, students were required to learn about various common North American wildlife species. The variety of birds sparked her curiosity, ultimately leading to her current six-month fellowship in avian toxicology with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Great Lakes Toxicology and Ecology Division in Duluth, Minnesota.

“I realized that every bird I saw wasn’t the same thing,” Pesano said. “They’re all very nuanced and unique. That led to my interest in learning more about birds in general. Even in my spare time, I would flip through the bird guide and just kind of go on a treasure hunt in my own back yard to see what kinds of birds were around.”

Her back yard was in Syracuse, New York. After obtaining her undergraduate degree, she flitted about the country like a bird, researching migrating hawks in Nevada, nesting endangered sparrows in Florida and resilient saltmarshes in Massachusetts, which, of course, provide homes for wetland birds. Most recently, she graduated with a master’s degree in integrated biosciences from the University of Minnesota Duluth. There, in collaboration with the Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory, she used satellite transmitters to determine where some unique, dark-plumaged red-tailed hawks were migrating from on their way through Duluth. These hawks are usually only found in the western part of North America and are rare in the East. This bird treasure hunt led her to northeastern Canada.

One of the dark-plummaged red-tailed hawks that Pesano studied for her master’s research. This bird was captured in the Twin Cities (Minnesota) in February 2021, and was named “Manley.” He was the first dark red-tailed hawk fitted with a satellite transmitter. Manley spent the last two summers in northern Manitoba and has returned to the same winter territory in the Twin Cities since researchers have been studying his movements. Submitted photo.

“We discovered they had been spending summers and the breeding season in northern Manitoba and Ontario. Birds that look really dark like that would not, to our historical knowledge, be nesting and breeding in those provinces usually. They would more likely nest in Alaska or British Columbia,” Pesano said.

Pesano’s latest quest involves researching the impacts of per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) on the reproductive success of birds in the Duluth area. Under the mentorships of Matt Etterson and John Haselman at the EPA, Pesano is studying tree swallows, black-capped chickadees and house wrens with another EPA Fellow, Emily Pavlovic. Funded by the University of Wisconsin-Madison but working in Duluth, Pesano is looking into things like the quality and quantity of food to see if there’s any correlation between what the birds are eating and their reproductive success.

The goal of this research is to create a toxicology model that scientists can use to predict, based on contamination concentrations in the environment, what the exposure risk would be to birds in that area.

Pesano checks a tree swallow nest as part of her EPA avian PFAS study. Submitted photo.

The three-year U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Human Health and the Environment Research Fellows program is a partnership between the EPA, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and its Aquatic Sciences Center. The goal is to train the next generation of scientists in environmental and ecosystem health.

The post Allie Pesano: On a treasure hunt for birds first appeared on Wisconsin Sea Grant.

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Marie Zhuikov

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In: Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm, avian toxicology, Earlham College, Emily Pavlovic, Great Lakes Toxicology and Ecology Division, Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory, Matt Etterson, PFAS, University of Minnesota Duluth, US EPA Human Health and the Environment Research Fellows Program

Emily Pavlovic, EPA Fellow in avian toxicology, holds a northern saw-whet owl. Submitted photo

Emily Pavlovic’s love of birds didn’t come to the fore until after college when she worked at an Audubon Center. She turned that love into her vocation and is now a fellow at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Great Lakes Toxicology and Ecology Division in Duluth, Minnesota. Under mentorship from Matt Etterson, Pavlovic is looking at the impacts of per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) on the reproductive success of birds in the Duluth area.

After Pavlovic earned her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Earlham College, she spent five years working as an environmental educator at various nature centers around the U.S. before earning her master’s degree.

Emily Pavlovic holds an American kestrel. Submitted photo

“I was able to work up-close and personal with the birds and really see the power they have on engaging the public,” Pavlovic said. “The birds capture people’s attention so that you can teach about other really important things like contaminants in the environment, or basic ecology.”

At the Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm in Dayton, Ohio, Pavlovic had the chance to work with an American kestrel. This small, fierce raptor became an educational bird after an accident broke its wing.

“This kestrel was spunky and loud. It didn’t always do the things I wanted it to do. It taught me a lot,” Pavlovic said. “Seeing peoples’ reactions when they saw this beautiful bird up-close was pretty incredible.”

Pavlovic’s passion for birds led her to the Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory in Duluth, a nature reserve along the Lake Superior coast that’s one of the premier bird-watching sites in fall as birds migrate south. For her master’s degree in integrated biosciences at the University of Minnesota Duluth, Pavlovic collected feathers from three different species of juvenile raptors that were caught in mist nets (red-tailed hawks, sharp-shinned hawks and northern saw-whet owls). Analyzing the feathers for hydrogen-stable isotopes allowed her to identify where geographically the birds had been born, providing more information for the ridge’s long-term dataset.

A nest box holds a black-capped chickadee nest and eggs. Submitted photo

For her six-month EPA avian toxicology fellowship, Pavlovic is studying tree swallows, black-capped chickadees and house wrens. “We’ve got a bunch of nest box locations around Duluth that we’re assessing for reproductive success and various metrics of how the birds are doing. Then we’re relating that to the amount of PFAS in the environment in those areas,” Pavlovic said.

The goal of this research is to create a toxicology model that scientists can use to predict, based on contamination concentrations in the environment, what the exposure risk would be to birds in that area.

The three-year U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Human Health and the Environment Research Fellows program fellowship program is a partnership between the EPA, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and its Aquatic Sciences Center. The goal is to train the next generation of scientists in environmental and ecosystem health.

The post EPA Fellow Emily Pavlovic: Up-close and personal with birds first appeared on Wisconsin Sea Grant.

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Marie Zhuikov

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In: Matt Etterson, Nathan Pollesch, toxicity translator models

A passion for mathematics, natural resources and community outreach led Nathan Pollesch to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Duluth, Minnesota. That’s where he is working to develop an analytical model that can predict the effects of pesticides on wildlife populations.

Nathan Pollesch. Image credit: Nathan Pollesch

Pollesch is the latest fellow in a partnership project between the EPA’s Great Lakes Toxicology and Ecology Division, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and its Aquatic Sciences Center. The goal of the three-year U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Human Health and the Environment Research Fellows program is to train the next generation of scientists in environmental and ecosystem health.

Pollesch’s EPA mentor is Ecologist Matt Etterson. The duo has been working together already with a group of EPA ecological modelers who are spread across the country. Pollesch said the toxicity translator model he is working on is specific to fish.

“Dr. Etterson got the ball rolling by developing the first model, which is for birds and looks at nesting success related to pesticide exposure,” Pollesch said. “Two others are under development that focus on invertebrates and amphibians.”

These models will be tools that risk assessors at the EPA and elsewhere can use to help inform their assessments of new chemicals and chemicals that are up for reregistration. For instance, for agricultural chemicals, “We can run scenarios. Using some other models developed by the EPA and elsewhere will give us a time series of a concentration of the chemical that we can expect in the environment. We can see how that concentration will fluctuate over the course of a year and then we can pair that with the integral projection model I’m developing. We’ll be able to say, ‘Given this exposure profile, we would expect this potential effect on the populations of whatever species we’re looking at’,” Pollesch said.

Pollesch became interested in mathematics in college, thanks to some excellent professors. “A lot of people see math as this dry, robotic thing. It’s a shame you don’t learn until much later that it’s really not. At a certain point, it’s so far past memorization. That’s when it gets really interesting,” Pollesch said.

He was also interested in natural resource problems and decided to apply his math passion along that pathway. Pollesch earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Steven’s Point in mathematics. He continued to the University of Minnesota Duluth where he earned his master’s in applied and computational mathematics. For his master’s project, Pollesch developed a model to look at impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico. For his Ph.D., Pollesch studied mathematical ecology at the University of Tennessee. Then Etterson had an opening for a postdoc, and Pollesch jumped at the chance to use his mathematical training to help solve environmental problems. His EPA fellowship is offering the chance for him to continue his work with Etterson and other EPA researchers.

Soon after his arrival in 2016 at the EPA, Pollesch started a community outreach program centered on science. He is the lead organizer of a series of monthly science cafes that are ongoing. He said that experience also helped him gain the EPA fellowship.

“Outreach and the application of science had a strong emphasis in the fellowship application. That was especially exciting, given the work I’ve done with Café Scientifique. For those experiences as well as in my own research, I always try to communicate science and what I’m doing at a level that’s appropriate for the people I’m talking to. Also, I have a strong interest in working on applied problems,” Pollesch said.

“I think the reason I do research in the environmental field is because I feel strongly that environmental protection is one of the things that benefits the community the most. Protecting these shared resources is really important for everybody. The community-minded aspect probably influences why I spend time doing community outreach for science. I think there’s a connection,” Pollesch said.

Eventually, more trainees will be placed at the Duluth EPA Laboratory, ranging from undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows such as Pollesch. They will focus on four EPA priorities: systems toxicology, watersheds and water resources, ecosystem services and translational toxicology.

Original Article

News Releases – Wisconsin Sea Grant

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https://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/news/new-epa-fellow-uses-math-to-predict-toxicity-for-fish-and-other-wildlife/

Marie Zhuikov