By David Welsh
An ambitious graduate student couple thrives on challenges.
She's pursuing a Ph.D. in wildlife and fisheries resources. So is he. He's also working on a law degree. When do they find the time to be married?
Meet Jennifer and Alex Menzel, doctoral candidates in the Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry, and Consumer Sciences at WVU. With a remarkable work ethic, ambition, and innate curiosity, they're making the most of the opportunities WVU has to offer.
Their first foray into West Virginia was a summer spent working at the Westvaco Wildlife and Ecosystem Resource Forest near Elkins. Impressed with the beauty of the state's forests and the research opportunities they presented, they looked into WVU's advanced degree programs in forestry. Both have set their academic sights even higher since enrolling.
Initially, Jennifer was working toward a master's degree. After her first year of studies, she was given the opportunity to participate in the U.S. Forest Service's Scientist Recruitment Initiative, a U.S. Department of Agriculture development program. Under the terms of the initiative, Jennifer will complete a Ph.D. at the Forest Service's expense in exchange for a period of employment with the agency upon completion of her degree.
Alex began his doctoral studies in ecology and environmental biology at the University of Tennessee, but transferred after his first year. At WVU, he received an Arlen G. and Louise Stone Swiger Doctoral Fellowship, which provides an annual stipend and tuition, and covers most fees. With the Forest Service funding his research, one might suspect Alex had something of a full plate, but he didn't see it that way.
"It became clear that I would finish my coursework long before my field research was completed," Alex says. To supplement his coursework, he looked into the possibility of studying environmental law. Alex is now in his third year of doctoral studies and his second year as a student at the WVU College of Law, working toward a juris doctorate.
Jennifer and Alex met at the University of Georgia when Jennifer was working on a B.S. and Alex was completing a master's degree in wildlife biology. Their careers at Georgia demonstrated their ambition and diligence, with Jennifer pursuing a dual major in forest resource science and wildlife biology and Alex teaching courses in addition to his graduate program.
After the death of a faculty mentor during Alex's last year at Georgia, he was asked to teach advanced courses in vertebrate diversity and evolution and mammalogy. Experience as a teaching assistant helped him with the challenge, and his experiences at the University of Georgia prepared him for a semester teaching biology at North Georgia College during the interim between the University of Tennessee and WVU.
As outgoing as the Menzels are, their research subjects are reclusive. Jennifer is studying flying squirrels. Alex specializes in bats. Both are interested in the way wildlife populations are affected by forest management practices.
In the third year of her research program on the Virginia northern flying squirrel, Jennifer has selected a subject that presents many challenges and opportunities. The flying squirrel is an endangered species that isolates itself high in the forest canopy. At the same time, there is little existing research on the species in West Virginia. Her agreement with the Forest Service will allow her to continue her work with the flying squirrel through her education and into the beginning of her professional life.
"This is an opportunity to answer a lot of unanswered questions," Jennifer says. She hopes to finish her Ph.D. in 2003.
Alex is completing a Forest Service grant enabling him to examine bat populations on a U.S. Department of Energy site on the Savannah River in South Carolina. His research centers on the impact of foresting practices on bats and how bat populations reflect forest and ecosystem health. Alex's education at the College of Law enriches his perspective on the legal and political ramifications of his research and the difficult questions these ramifications suggest. "The issue always becomes so polarized," he says.
Less polarizing has been the relationship between his life as a law student and his work as a doctoral candidate. Like the Division of Forestry, Alex says, the College of Law has been very generous with scholarship support, and the Swiger fellowship has provided tuition waivers. The principal conflict, of course, is time.
"If you do law school right, you have very little time to do anything else," he says. "As long as I've known him, he's been an overachiever," Jennifer says of her husband. "We don't have as much time for each other as we'd like."
A complicating factor is the nature of their respective workloads. Jennifer is at a point where the bulk of her work rests in long-term projects, while Alex is completing the structured early courses of the law curriculum. Another separating factor is that their respective research programs are both conducted in the summer in different locations.
But they still provide critical support and partnership to each other. Their mutual interests, Jennifer says, create a strong level of empathy between them. "Alex is constantly helping me with study design and other research elements," she says.
"And, we only have to get one set of scientific journals," Alex adds with the smile of one who knows the cost of a set of law books.
They've published five papers jointly in the last 18 months. And, if they ever tire of chasing winged mammals through darkened forests, they have a healthy, more socialized menagerie at home, consisting of a German Shepherd, a cat, indoor and outdoor fish, zebra finches, and a turtle they jokingly describe as more of a decorative accessory than a companion animal.
While they haven't narrowed down their precise career paths—whether Alex will be an environmentally aware lawyer or a politically astute scientist, or if Jennifer will stay with the Forest Service past her initial obligation—their background and interests seem to make them uniquely suited to a productive and intriguing life in West Virginia, where commerce, politics, and the environment coexist and collide with regularity.
Protecting (West) Virginia
Flying Squirrels
What a squirrel wants . . . What a squirrel needs. These are
the questions pondered by Jennifer Menzel as she pursues a Ph.D.
at WVU in wildlife and fisheries resources.
"The main objective of my research is to understand the habitat requirements of the Virginia northern flying squirrel," says Menzel. "Much is still unknown about this species. Because of its endangered status, data is needed to aid in the understanding of how human influences such as logging, mining, development, and habitat fragmentation affect this species. More specifically, I am looking at the den sites of the squirrels and the type of habitat they use for foraging, mating, and other activities during the night. Of course the long-term goal of my research is to remove this species from the endangered species list."
The project isn't without its challenges, particularly capturing individual squirrels.
"The northern flying squirrel population in West Virginia is very small, so I have few to begin with," she explains. "To compound the problem, they are extremely secretive and difficult to trap. They seem to be wary of the traps and will avoid them at all cost."
Menzel uses two methods of trapping the animals: nest boxes and Tomahawk traps.
"The nest boxes are just like very large birdhouses," she explains. "The squirrels use them to sleep in during the day. There are about 200 that we are currently monitoring. We usually check the boxes every two weeks. If there is a squirrel in one, it's usually pretty upset about being awakened in the middle of the day."
The second method, the Tomahawk trap, is what Menzel uses on a day-to-day basis. Tomahawk Live Animal Traps are box traps constructed from wire mesh and steel rods with a variety of doors and spring-locking mechanisms designed not to harm the trapped animals.
"We have about 200 Tomahawk traps scattered throughout the woods in several locations in Tucker and Randolph Counties. We bait the traps at dusk to avoid catching mammals that are active in the daytime, like chipmunks or foxes and grey squirrels." The traps are baited with a tasty mixture of peanut butter, molasses, and oats.
"We get up at dawn to check the traps and close them. The process is then repeated the next night. We have success with both methods, so we have continued to employ both," she says.
The work hours are long and difficult. "Generally, I am trapping and tracking squirrels all summer. So, each night I usually set my traps around sunset and then track squirrels at night until about 2 a.m. Then I have to get up around 5 a.m. to check the traps. If I don't check them early in the morning, the squirrels become susceptible to predators or dehydration."
It's a wearing schedule, she says. "It's almost as if I become a squirrelSsleeping during the day and active at night.
"All squirrels have a pretty bad temperament when being handled, and the flying squirrels are no exception," Menzel notes. "You have to be quick on your toes when you are handling them. They seem to be able to move at the speed of lightning sometimes. However, to make things easier on both the squirrel and me, I anesthetize the squirrels as soon as I capture them. This prevents the squirrels from getting too stressed out. Once they are under the anesthesia, they are very easy to deal with. The anesthesia does not completely put them to sleep—it just calms them down some."
Evocative as the name may be, "flying squirrel" isn't terribly accurate. "The squirrels are called flying squirrels incorrectly," Menzel says. "They do not fly in the sense that most people mean 'fly.' They actually glide from tree to tree like miniature hang-gliders. They can glide as far as 100 meters in very open habitats. If you didn't know any better, they would appear to be flying.
"As far as the squirrels' physiology goes, they have a flap of furred skin called a patagium that extends from their sides and attaches at the wrist and ankle," she explains. "This is what they use to glide, change directions, and land on a tree or the ground. They can use it like a rudder, a parachute, or like wings. Needless to say, they are highly maneuverable. They also have a very flat tail that they steer with while in flight. They can actually make 180-degree turns in mid-glide. I've watched them through night vision goggles and it's pretty amazing to watch them glide from tree to tree."
The endangered status of the squirrels definitely sparked Jennifer's interest in this species. "I've always had an interest in small mammals, whether they are mice, squirrels, shrews, or bats. The combination of an endangered species and small mammal makes the northern flying squirrel the perfect focus for my project," she explains. "I find this project both useful and interesting. Sometimes it is hard to find projects that are both."
Studying Bats in Carolina
Bays
He's worked with rodents, shrews, and salamanders, but "I
always seem to come back to bats," says Alex Menzel, a WVU
doctoral candidate in wildlife and fisheries resources. "My
interest in bats was a boyhood fascination; it seems it is a
fascination I may never outgrow."
Alex's research centers on the effects of factors such as upland timber harvests on male Rafinesque's big-eared bats, and the effects of timber harvests on bat foraging activity above and below the forest canopy in pine forests of the southeastern United States. He is also exploring the impact of Carolina bay restoration on the spatial activity patterns of bats, and the factors influencing the spatial distribution of bat foraging activity in the southeast. Additionally, he's conducting a review of the distribution and roosting ecology of bats in South Carolina.
"We glue radio transmitters to the backs of male big-eared bats and track their movements and foraging patterns in harvested and unharvested upland pine stands," Alex says. "Then, we use time-expansion radio microphones tethered to helium balloons to detect bat activity above the forest canopy. We float the balloons above the forest canopy and the detectors then transmit the calls down to narrow-band FM scanners on the ground."
When examining the effects of Carolina bay restoration on bats, Alex monitored bat activity using this technology. "Carolina bays are natural wetland ponds that occur throughout North and South Carolina," he says. "Many were drained for agriculture. The U.S. Forest Service is now reclaiming many of these. I monitored bat activity around the bays before and after they were restored to quantify the effect of the restoration on levels of bat foraging activity."
Alex spent the past summer monitoring bat activity at 400 USFS Forest Inventory Points to determine how a variety of factors influence the spatial distribution of bats in forests in the Southeast. He's also been in touch with bat researchers and natural historians to summarize the distribution of the 13 species of bats that occur in South Carolina.
"I hope the results of my research will be the impetus for starting a South Carolina bat atlas that constantly monitors the distribution and status of bats in the state. This will provide insight into how forest management activities can be altered to minimize the negative effects they have on bat communities and maximize the benefits they provide, as well as quantifying the effect of a major wetland restoration effort on the bat community," Alex says.
The research is challenging because it is very difficult to monitor the activity of an animal that is about the size of your thumb, flies at speeds of 30 miles per hour, can maneuver in complete darkness, and can sense, using echolocation, something the size of a human hair, he says. Through echolocation, a bat can locate distant or unseen objects by emitting sound waves which are reflected by the object or prey and received again by the bat. The monitoring is made all the more difficult by the fact that bats can move in three dimensions, while gravity restricts human movements to a two-dimensional plane.
"We attempt to overcome these challenges by using very large nets, 30 feet tall by 40 feet wide, made of very fine material that is difficult for bats to detect," he explains. "In addition, we are learning how to identify bats based on the characteristics of the echolocation calls they emit. We detect the ultrasonic calls of bats using equipment specifically designed to detect the calls and lower the frequency into a range detectable to the human ear. These altered calls are then recorded on laptop computers; the calls can be identified by examining their spectrogram on the computer's display."
But despite the advanced technology he now employs, the fascination is the same as it was years ago, when Alex was growing up in Dahlonega, a small mountain town in north Georgia.
"Contrary to the belief of most Americans, Dahlonega was the site of the first great American gold rush, not California," he says. "The Dahlonega gold rush occurred in 1828, almost 20 years before the California rush. The legacy of the Dahlonega gold rush can be seen all over the southernmost hills of the Appalachian Mountains.
"Gold mines abound there, and as a
kid, despite my parent's admonitions, I spent many hours playing
in and exploring them. The mines interested me, but the bats
that had made them their home captivated me. I've been fascinated
ever since."