Jacob Penrose ’23 — First, I would like to give a huge thanks to Dr. Bradley Carlson and the Wabash College Biology Department for providing me the opportunity to further my academic success throughout my internship. With the guidance of my peers and professors, I was able to actively apply the skills that Wabash has taught me to work around difficult situations that have arisen in the lab and in the field during our research.
My internship focused on behavioral differences in Eastern Box Turtles, Terrapene carolina carolina. More specifically, our aim was to address if there were any parallels in the turtles’ immune system and their personality. We collected blood samples from numerous turtles and analyzed specific turtles’ immune abilities by placing their plasma on agar plates with specific amounts of E.Coli to observe any differences in the bacterial killing abilities of more or less bold turtles. Our team also focused on collecting microbiome samples in order to assess if there were any differences in the turtle’s personality that point to a correlation within their microbiome.
Using GIS software to gain accurate population density estimates, our team was able to obtain necessary estimates on the Eastern Box Turtle population within Allee Memorial Woods. A species that has just recently moved from near threatened to vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The computer program, ImageJ, was also used in order to quantify the light to dark color patterns on the turtles’ shells, in order to see if there was any correlation between the coloration on the turtles’ shell and their personality.
