Comparative Lactation Lab: Dispatches from the Field
Usually Mammals Suck… Milk! showcases recent scholarly publications from throughout lactation biology, usually emphasizing the evolutionary perspective. However, those journal articles, so meticulous, brief, and jargony, often obscure the months and years scientists spend doing the science.
"Science has it ALL!" -Principal Skinner
Well, 2013 has been a really exciting year around the Comparative Lactation Lab and I am going to take a moment to high five my colleagues and the cool stuff everyone is doing.
This summer, 3rd year graduate student Laura Klein conducted pilot research for her dissertation. She investigates the types and levels of immune molecules in breast milk from women who live in different disease ecologies. During summer 2012, she collected milk samples and interviewed women at the Mogielica Human Ecology Study Site in rural Poland established by Professor Grazyna Jasienska. Most families in this area live on small-scale farms or help relatives plant and harvest, so this is a great location to look at milk immunofactors that may be important for protecting infants who will be exposed to a variety of farm animals and soil microbes. The area also has one of the highest fertility rates in Poland, which is helpful for researchers looking for moms and babies!
Mogielica Human Ecology Study Site
This summer, she worked closer to home, recruiting an urban sample of Boston-area moms to come into "the Milk Study" here at Harvard University. While the study objectives and methods are the same in both locations, recruiting over the past two summers has been quite different. In Poland, Laura and her field assistants hiked over the mountains between farms, going door-to-door to recruit mothers. In Boston, while she did distribute flyers at playgrounds, she primarily recruited online through social media networks with the help of active parenting groups. Over the next few months, Laura will take the milk samples she's collected in Poland and Boston into the lab to start analyzing their nutritional and immunological composition.
Importantly, we thank the Nursing Mother’s Council, the Somerville and Arlington Parents listserv, Boston Garden Moms, the Cambridge Birth Center, Isis Parenting, The Diaper Lab, the Birth and Beyond Center in Jamaica Plain, and the many participants who have shared information about our study with their friends! This research has been funded by a Department of Human Evolutionary Biology Summer Research Grant and a Harvard GSAS Graduate Society Summer Research Fellowship.
Laura Klein in Poland with Kiddo
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Cary Allen-Blevins, a 2nd year graduate student, spent the summer of 2013in Zanzibar! She was there conducting a pilot research for a project launched by Professor Richard Wrangham on paedomorphic traits and extended suckling behaviors in Zanzibar red colobus (Procolobus kirkii). Zanzibar red colobus females have been reported to habitually nurse sub-adult and adult males. Cary spent 10 weeks in Zanzibar with fellow Human Evolutionary Biology student Jenny Wong, collecting fecal samples and conducting focal observations. They studied two social groups of colobus, for a total of 66 individuals. Once back in the lab (samples did make it through customs with only a raised eyebrow and “Now, why are you travelling with monkey poop?”), Cary will determine relatedness using DNA extracted from fecal samples.
Funding for Cary's research was provided by a Harvard Graduate Student Council Summer Research Grant, Harvard Human Evolutionary Biology Summer Research Grant, and the Nacey Maggioncalda Grant for Doctoral Students.
Cary Allen-Blevins in Zanzibar with Red Colobus Monkey (and poop)
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Post-Doc Amy Skibiel. In one year she set the bar very high for all future post-docs. Between applying for jobs, writing grants & manuscripts, and joining me for the to explore logistics, methods, and feasibility of a Meerkat Milk Study at the Kalahari Meerkat Project, she managed to ran nutritional and hormonal assays on hundreds of rhesus macaque milk samples (in duplicate!). As of August 15 she is now Faculty at Auburn University in the Department of Biological Sciences. She also just published a kickass meta-analysis of mammalian milks (topic of future blogpost!).
Dr. Amy Skibiel in the Lab and the Kalahari
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Claire Stingley in Argentina
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As for me… let’s see… the typical ridonkulous workload of all tenure-track professors: wrote papers & grants, gave talks & posters at professional meetings, taught classes, mentored students, advised honors theses, reviewed papers, book proposals, & grant proposals, investigated logistics of meerkat milk study, exposed dangers in our field, blogged, SPLASH!ed, Mammal March Madness, milked monkeys, and reached the end of the 3-year longitudinal study of rhesus macaque lactation (many papers to follow).
Katie Hinde and Meerkats
And next week Prof. Brooke Scelza, Anthropology Dept at UCLA and I are going to NAMIBIA to recruit Himba women into a milk study! Oh Yeah!
Dr. Brooke Scelza and Himba Women
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Lab Alumni: Kickin’ Ass & Taking Names!
Although its so hard to say goodbye to yesterday, previous lab members are doing amazingly awesome things now:
Alison Foster begins an MA and credential in Early Childhood Special Education at Mills College in Fall 2013. At the Mills College Children's School, a laboratory school with a constructivist educational philosophy, Alison will learn to work in early intervention and school settings with children, usually 5 and younger, who are developing atypically.
Alison Foster with NOT A MAMMAL!
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Chase Nuñez is in Kakamega, Kenya managing the long-term Blue Monkey field project of Prof. Marina Cords, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, Columbia University. This research on Cercopithecus mitis life-history and behavioral ecology has been ongoing for 34 years! Chase is especially interested in the intersection of physiology and behavior within a life-history context, has awesome R skills, and is working on manuscript from his time in the Comparative Lactation Lab.
Chase Nuñez & Blue Monkey Mother-Infant Dyad
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Danielle Rendina earned an MA in Social Sciences at the University of Chicago investigating postnatal social factors influencing individual and sex differences in cognition and anxiety in the lab of Prof. Sian L. Beilock. This fall she joins Dr. Chris Coe's lab at the Harlow Center for Biological Psychology at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Danielle Rendina, Being Awesome
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Michelle Wechsler worked at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research in Dr. Lance Miller’s Behavioral Biology Lab. She performed hormonal assays and conducted behavioral observations of lions, cheetahs and okapis. Michelle now splits her time between investigating communication, emotion, and cognition in bottlenose dolphins with Drs. Brenda McCowan and Eliza Bliss-Moreau and monogamous pair bonds in titi monkeys in Dr. Karen Bales’ Lab for Comparative Neurobiology of Monogamy.
Michelle Wechsler, Also Being Awesome
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I am super fortunate in getting to work with such a fantastic set of colleagues and students. And shout outs to the HEB students Charlotte Lane and Jorie Sullivan who, while not directly studying milk, wrote Honors Theses in 2013. High five everyone!
More: What Scientists Looks Like.
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