UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
North Augusta reporter

Elizabeth Hustad is a reporter with The Post and Courier North Augusta. She covers government, growth and development, and business.
Elizabeth is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and previously worked with a Twin Cities weekly. Her work has appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune and MinnPost.
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UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
NORTH AUGUSTA — Skeeters bite, and those bites itch. Funny thing is, “To a mosquito, we are a small slice of the pie compared to what they do in their life.”
This from Dr. Dan Peach, an assistant professor at the University of Georgia’s College of Veterinary Medicine who also heads up the Dan Peach Vector Ecology Lab.
“I like to say they have this whole secret life that we don’t know about,” he said of this ubiquitous insect.
For one, not every kind of mosquito goes after humans. Of the more than 3,600 species of mosquito around the world, there are various palates. One of which is for the larvae of other mosquitos and nothing else.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
Just “a small slice of the pie” from Science Saturday, the annual outreach event from the UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab.
Held Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta, organizers anticipated that more than 1,100 people would come through in just three hours, taking in the cool trivia about this region’s flora and fauna, and getting up close to some of what nature has to offer, mosquitos included — but also an American alligator, turkey vulture and red-tailed hawk, among others.
Plus, the native plants.
Amanda Hurst, outreach coordinator for SREL, said one station was showing how these plants can be used to dye hides.
It was a chance, too, to get a peek at ongoing research being conducted right here in the CSRA.
Caryn Nross, a Ph.D. candidate, is working with the Federal Aviation Administration, trapping birds around the Augusta Regional and Savannah-Hilton Head airports and outfitting them with GPS transmitters that will track the birds’ movements and help create a new bird strike risk assessment model for the FAA to use.
Nross was on hand to speak to that research or more simply to talk about the ecology lab’s outreach animals — the largest being the turkey vulture, the smallest a pair of screech owls.
UGA Savannah River Ecology Lab hosted its annual outreach event, Science Saturday, Aug. 1 at Riverview Park Activities Center in North Augusta.
Across the gym from Nross was Kasey Wood, his infrared camera set up as visual aid to his own research: monitoring how individual animals respond to the consistent disturbance of headlights at night.
Back over at the mosquito station, graduate students in Dr. Peach’s vector ecology lab talked about the link between these insects, wild pigs and human health.
Their research is rooted in the wallows that wild pigs make while rooting in the ground — their means of staying cool.
These wallows fill up with water, the dry earth turns to mud, and “it’s like a bed-and-breakfast situation,” Dr. Peach said.
But the wrinkle to that, he added, is the existence of a pathogen not currently present in the United States but at risk of coming here.
“This is a virus that amplifies in pigs, that is vectored by mosquitos, and it can make people very sick,” he said. Should this pathogen ever make it stateside, Peach said it’s important to have a basic understanding of it because “in that case, it’s not just a bed-and-breakfast; it’s a bed-and-breakfast that gives you food poisoning.”
North Augusta reporter

Elizabeth Hustad is a reporter with The Post and Courier North Augusta. She covers government, growth and development, and business.
Elizabeth is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and previously worked with a Twin Cities weekly. Her work has appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune and MinnPost.
To support local journalism, sign up for a subscription. See our current offers »
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