Is there a project the Wildlife Monitoring team works on that is your favorite?

The ticks go by the quickest for sure: you're focused the whole time and all of a sudden, it's noon. I don't know if there is a favorite. Both Bring Conservation Home [a native plant and animal habitat program of The Audubon Society] and the camera trapping are fun because you get to drive around St. Louis and learn about different people who have native species. I met a very nice, older French woman and became friends with her because she showed me all her plants and bees and had a lot of funny things to say. We surveyed her yard because she has all these native species. She’s a platinum member of the Bring Conservation Home program. She reminded me of my grandma, with a very European accent and very harsh at times in what she said; straightforward and to the point.

If ticks were excellent verbal communicators, what would they say to us?

I guess to people in general, they'd probably say they don't mean to eat you, that it's definitely an accident when they bite humans. I know I had 10 on me last time when we went trapping and it was very tragic when I took off my socks and saw them. But to people in general, they'd probably say they don't mean it. They latch on and they think you're going to be like a deer or something that they can stay on but then you end up in your driveway with them and if they fall off on anything but grass then it's not good for them. So they'd probably say, “Sorry for that,” to people in general.

To the people in the lab, they'd probably be mad that we trick them with dry ice. When organisms are near, they breathe out CO2 and that's just what dry ice is. It's just CO2, fogging out. And so the ticks sense it and they climb onto the traps and then you trap them. So they'd probably be mad about that. They would say to the researchers "Come on, you should get bit because you tricked us." I kind of asked for it because I wanted the challenge of doing the steep plots when we collect ticks. That’s on me for getting into that.

I think a lot of people think of social science and environmental science as two completely different things. What’s your take on that?

There is siloing for sure, in all of the sciences. Breaking down those silos and connecting different academic fields is very important. I’m combining economic data with urban ecology for my independent project.  People like to focus only on what they know and there’s so much to be learned from how they connect.