Audrey E. McGowin

My current research projects involves monitoring water quality on the university campus.  Chloride contamination in the area ground water is threatening our woods and old growth forest.  The monitoring project is in its sixth year.  

The previous project was an assessment of water quality in Glen Helen Nature Preserve by the Environmental Chemistry class.  Each fall, the class has performed sampling and analysis of water at more than a dozen sites in and around Glen Helen in Yellow Springs, OH.  This long-term monitoring project is shedding light on improvements in water quality in the area but also showing decreases in water quality, especially due to stormwater runoff into the glen. 

The investigation of how water pollution is related to tumor formation in sea turtles is on hold currently.  An alarming number of sea turtles that forage in lagoons with poor water quality such as the Indian River Lagoon in Florida have developed fibropapillomas on their skin and eyes impairing their ability to see, swim, and feed.  Fibropapillomatosis (FP) has become a panzootic with disease outbreaks at similar sites in Hawaii, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Australia, and others.  Fibropapilloma-associated turtle herpes virus (FPTHV), an alphaherpesvirus, has been identified as the likely infectious agent yet many of the factors associated with disease etiology have not been discovered such as 1) how the virus is transmitted between turtles, 2) why some turtles that have been exposed to the virus develop tumors while others do not, and 3) what factors initiate tumor formation.  There are two known leech species that are specific to sea turtles.  We have developed a DNA method to identify leech species at all stages of their lifecycle, that does not depend on morphology, to discern between the species.