By Dan Nonte, University Relations
Contact: (336) 334-4314
Posted 5-18-10
Meghan Fitzgerald
GREENSBORO, N.C. – Meghan Fitzgerald’s undergraduate research earned her a nickname: “the dung beetle girl.” She’s not crazy about that.
But the two years she spent studying the beetles also helped earn her a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF), support normally awarded to students already in graduate school.
Meghan, who graduated last week, plans to pursue graduate study in biology at the University of Wisconsin.
Her primary undergraduate project, itself part of an NSF program to promote interdisciplinary research, applied game theory to the competition for resources, specifically brood balls, among bull headed dung beetles. Painstakingly made, jealously guarded and frequently stolen, brood balls are where the beetles lay their eggs.
An adult student, Meghan has presented her research at 18 conferences and co-authored three published papers (two more are written and will also be submitted to journals). Dr. Jan Rychtar, assistant professor of mathematics, and Dr. Mary Crowe, director of undergraduate research, served as her mentors on campus.
“Over the course of two years, Meghan worked incredibly hard in the field and the lab to design, carry out and analyze experiments,” Crowe says. “She met me in the field early in the morning, late in the evening and even in the middle of scorching hot summer days, always with a smile on her face.”
Rychtar says Meghan is the strongest undergraduate he has worked with.
For her senior honors thesis, Meghan wrote an overview of kleptoparasitic behavior, the stealing of prepared resources. Advised by Rychtar and Dr. Graeme Ruxton at the University of Glasgow, she created a model of the costs and benefits of the behavior, which she plans to explore further in her graduate studies.
She’s fascinated by the point where behavior changes, when the concentration of beetles in a particular area makes it more advantageous to steal a brood ball than to build one, for instance. “That’s my favorite part in the story.”
For her, there were many of those points at UNCG. She did not originally plan to major in biology or to attend graduate school. Teachers like Julia Loreth, who stood on a desk and hopped around the classroom, inspired her own passion for biology. “She really pushed you hard and really got excited.”
There was her first conference. Despite hours of coaching by Crowe, Meghan was shaking throughout the presentation she made at a 2007 conference in Sussex, England. Nevertheless, she felt like she belonged.
“I realized this is what I really want to do,” Meghan says. “I could see myself doing it, not just finishing my undergrad degree, but going on to graduate school.”
She didn’t realize how unique her experience has been until she started visiting graduate schools. The other undergraduates she met, who were also planning to attend grad school, were in awe of her what she’d already accomplished.
Her research was not without its low points.
“I was sitting in a field, staring at a fresh pile of dung, waiting for beetles to appear. This cow keeps coming up and licking the back of my head, and I’m supposed to be staring at the dung. I can’t move, because the beetles are really small and if I miss it, it’ll be a waste of two hours of my time.
“Every once in a while I feel the cow coming up, so I’d turn around and yell. The cow would jump and run away. Then the same cow starts creeping up again.
“That was probably one of my worst days of research. Afterwards it became a great story. At the time, I was about ready to shoot that cow, and I’m a vegetarian.”
