INTERN
IN ACTION-- MEGHAN AVOLIO
February
2002
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The
living conditions were rustic. Studying humpback
whales with a research team in Madagascar this
past summer, senior environmental biology major
Meghan Avolio slept in a tent and showered under
a waterfall. But the experience was extraordinary.
Each day, she and the team surveyed the waters
of Antongil Bay off the coast of East Africa
for humpback whales and then collected photographic,
positional, behavioral and genetic data.
Avolio’s involvement with the research
team can be traced back to an e-mail she received
from Barnard’s environmental science department
announcing an internship opportunity with the
American Museum of Natural History and the Wildlife
Conservation Society. She got that internship
in January of 2000 and began working with Museum-based
conservation biologist Howard Rosenbaum. Dr.
Rosenbaum, who went to Antongil Bay each summer
himself, was the one who introduced her to the
project, a venture jointly funded by the Museum
and the Wildlife Conservation Society. In the
summer of 2001, Meghan received a Research for
Undergraduates grant from the Museum to accompany
the team for seven weeks. While there, she lived
with the rest of the team: two American researchers,
two Malagasy researchers and five local Malagasy
project assistants.
"It was an amazing experience to go from
studying whales on a computer screen in New
York City to studying humpback whales in the
waters of Antongil Bay in Madagascar. It was
also a great cultural experience to be exposed
to a completely different way of life, but still
be able to communicate to each other a love
for the work despite the language barrier,"
Avolio said.
"Meghan's
work is an excellent example of the way Barnard
students can integrate field work, in New York
and elsewhere, into their coursework,"
said Stephanie Pfirman, professor of environmental
science, and one of Avolio's advisers.
The Madagascar trip adds to her growing experience
in the field. In 2000, she was awarded a summer
grant from the Museum’s Center for Biodiversity
and Conservation to compile data collected from
the Comoros Archipelago, in the Mozambique Channel.
In January 2001 she received the Lowe Fund Barnard
Alumnae Internship Grant to continue interning
at the Museum. Her responsibilities increased
and included matching and identifying whales
that were then imported to a database.
This semester, Avolio continues to intern at
the American Museum of Natural History and the
Wildlife Conservation Society and is working
on her senior thesis under the guidance of Dr.
Rosenbuam and Dr. Pfirman on the abundance and
distribution of marine mammals in the waters
of Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean.
Recently, she was given the opportunity to present
this work as a poster at The 14th Biannual Conference
on the Biology of Marine Mammals, a conference
that brought together marine mammals researchers
from around the world held in Vancouver, Canada.
The presentation was entitled "Humpback
whale distribution and marine mammal diversity
in the waters of Mayotte, Comoros Archipelagao
in the Mozambique Channel, " and Avolio
was the lead author in the group of 11 authors.
This fall, Avolio applied to graduate school
programs and hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in biology,
more specifically, ecology and evolution.
"Working on this project has given me a
strong sense of the type of research I would
like to pursue in my future and has given me
the inspiration to further my studies in this
field." She hopes one day to become a conservation
geneticist and study something she loves.
***
If
you would like to be featured as the Barnard
Intern in Action please send an email to Cara
Smith, Internship Program Coordinator, at csmith@barnard.edu.
Indicate where you are interning, what you are
doing, and why you would like to be considered.
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