Faculty NSF Grant Will Support Research on Widespread Parasite
Joanna Cielocha, Ph.D., associate professor of biology, has received a $206,112 Mid-Career Advancement grant from the National Science Foundation to study parasites known as gregarines, which infect grasshoppers, in the American West to broaden the understanding of the gregarine diversity and distribution.
It’s OK if you’ve never heard of gregarines. Just know that in the insect world, these single-cell organisms are everywhere — at least, they are commonly found in every place that researchers have looked so far. That last qualifier is important — this particular parasite is understudied, Cielocha says, especially in the American West.
“We estimate that however many species of insects there are, there's probably about that many species of gregarines,” Cielocha said. “But nothing has been reported west of Nebraska.”
The work has already started — Cielocha’s fall 2024 sabbatical was spent gathering specimens, doing molecular work and preparing lab protocols for the larger study. Among the grasshoppers she collected during that time, she said 50% appeared infected with gregarines.
The next phase, which will last three years and is funded by the NSF grant, will allow Cielocha and a team (including students) to do six total collection trips in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. They will collect grasshoppers, look for gregarines in them and analyze them in the hopes of answering a range of questions related to gregarines in the American West, searching for variation across those different geographic areas, insights on the types of grasshopper host species they are parasitizing, and identification of any new species of gregarines.
“Part of the proposal was, ‘How will this three-year grant boost your research to allow the scientist to expand in the future?’” Cielocha said. “I hope that after this grant expires, I can propose a broader taxon sampling or go even more in-depth on the scientific questions based on what we discover over the next three years.”
For Cielocha, it’s also a return to work she had done during her undergraduate experience. Richard Clopton, Ph.D., professor of biology at Peru State College, in Peru, Nebraska, who served as Cielocha’s undergraduate research mentor, will be serving as a mentor and collaborator for the grant. It was under Clopton’s mentorship that Cielocha said she first encountered the world of gregarines. She then studied tapeworms in sting rays for her graduate work before returning to where it all began.
This particular award from the NSF is called a mid-career advancement grant. It is meant to support tenure-track faculty who are at a mid-stage of their career, post-tenure but prior to promotion to full professor. The grant is meant to help these mid-stage scientists reengage in the work of scholarship. Cielocha said sometimes that research is difficult to maintain amid teaching and other responsibilities.
In the meantime, Cielocha expects the research to yield several presentations and articles. For someone who has been studying parasites since her own undergraduate days, it’s an exciting opportunity and opens the door to even deeper study into these parasites and their world.
“There are so many more questions to be asked. There could be studies to look and see if the gregarine is causing any sort of damage to the host tissue, how much of the hosts’ nutrients are the parasites are using, and whether the presence of gregarines is decreasing longevity or reproductive output or flight ability,” she said. “These are all questions we don’t quite understand and could be addressed through long-term studies of this nature.”
