Karina Long is a senior in the College majoring in Environmental Biology on the Pre-dental track
Experience in Research
Karina Long is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in Environmental Biology on the pre-dental track. As a member of the Mann Lab, Karina has been working on the Potomac-Chesapeake Dolphin Project. She believes this is one of her best experiences at Georgetown as the project has grown her appreciation for environmental research and ecology, which she believes is often overlooked in the scientific community.
Karina had known she would be involved in undergraduate research to prepare for dental school. However, she joined the Mann Lab to learn more about the field of environmental biology. She was particularly struck by Professor Mann’s long-term research experience and knowledge of bottlenose dolphins. Professor Mann has been researching bottlenose dolphins for 40 years in Shark Bay, Australia, and nearly 10 years on the Potomac River of the Chesapeake Bay. Her Potomac-Chesapeake Dolphin Project allows undergraduate research assistants to study the abundance and distribution, population structure, and the intersection of social behavior and disease of bottlenose dolphins in the population. The project also contributes yearly to a continuous catalog of all migratory Atlantic bottlenose dolphins so that other institutions can study their population and migration patterns, as well as understand the current population size and trends throughout the years of research.
Karina’s role in the Mann Lab is to study the presence of calf-directed aggression through the appearance of tooth rakes on the bodies of newborns, in both the Potomac-Chesapeake (PC) and the Shark Bay bottlenose dolphin populations. Dolphins are known to use infanticide as a reproductive strategy; however, the strategy is not ubiquitous and is not seen in every population. Presently, Karina is compiling her data to test the team’s hypothesis that the residential population in Shark Bay will not exhibit many instances of calf-directed aggression, because the population is residential all year round and the dolphins in the population know and recognize one another. Furthermore, they predict that if a male were to commit infanticide, there would likely be retaliation from other females in the population which could result in the male not being able to mate following the event. However, since the PC population is far larger than the Shark Bay population and its dolphins migrate from various places along the Western Atlantic Coast, they are less familiar with one another. Hence, PC male dolphins will likely experience fewer consequences, or none at all, following an infanticide event.
Reflection
Karina believes learning about the use of infanticide as a reproductive strategy in bottlenose dolphins and other species has broadened her perspective on these mammals. She has also initiated a personal research project, which has improved her knowledge of the scientific research process and publication. In the past summer, fieldwork brought even more value to Karina’s project as she witnessed the interactions between newborns and other dolphins first-hand.
Karina says she knew little about bottlenose dolphins or behavioral ecology before joining the Mann Lab. However, she feels she has gained immense knowledge from Professor Mann and her graduate lab mentors throughout the years. The lab project has also aided her academic endeavors as working with large databases and data analysis programs has allowed her to excel in related STEM classes and has prepared her for a future in dental research. Karina has also discovered a newfound passion for collecting observational data in the field. Over the summer, she learned how to drive the boat, practice patience, and learn from the tedious process of observational data collection.