Kelly Speer, a UNM alumna, is one of four new students who was recently accepted year into the American Museum of Natural History's prestigious program for comparative biology.
Kelly studies at the Richard Gilder Graduate School located in the American Museum of Natural History, working alongside an internationally recognized staff of scientists and curators as she conducts research on the role of habitat fragmentation of blood-borne parasites.
The Richard Gilder Graduate School (RGGS) is the only museum that has a doctorate program in the western hemisphere, according to its website. It offers a four-year program in comparative biology, whereas most other similar programs take five to seven years to complete. Only four or five students are accepted into the program each year.
Speer didn’t start her college career majoring, or even considering a future, in science. She began her freshman year interested in literature and history, but meeting UNM Biology Professor Joseph Cook, who is also the director and curator at the Museum of Southwestern Biology (MSB), changed her future plans completely.
Cook offered Speer an opportunity to volunteer at the MSB, which is when she began to garner an interest in science.
After volunteering at the museum, Speer started working in Cook’s molecular genetics lab through the Undergraduate Opportunities Program under the mentorship of his graduate students. During this time, she conducted two research projects and had the opportunity to participate in fieldwork in southeast Alaska.
“These experiences solidified my desire to pursue a career in research, specifically the guidance and encouragement I got from Dr. Cook and his graduate students,” Speer said.
Speer went on to graduate from UNM in 2012 with a Bachelor of Science degree in biology, as well as a degree in chemistry. In August 2012, she started work on her Master's at the University of Florida and Florida Museum of Natural History. There, she studied the population connectivity of bats and their parasites in the Caribbean.
She graduated from the University of Florida in 2015 with a Master’s of Science in Zoology and started her doctorate at the Richard Gilder Graduate School in August.
Speer’s current doctoral research focuses on the interaction between bats, their associated parasites, the environment and disease transmission.
She said wildlife diseases are a key source of emerging infectious diseases in humans, and have been the source of recent outbreaks of Ebola, SARS and Lyme disease.
“As the environment continues to change and humans have more contact with wildlife, we expect diseases to spillover from wildlife to humans," Speer said. “Previous research has shown that in arthropods, naturally occurring bacteria influence immune response and the ability of an arthropod to transmit disease. Bats are host to many arthropod parasites, including bat flies and ticks.”
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Speer will also assess the correlation between the composition of bacterial communities in bat flies and ticks with the prevalence of pathogens in their host bat.
“Right now, we don’t know how the microbiome of bat flies and ticks of bats impact their ability to transmit disease and how their microbiome is affected by habitat change,” Speer said. “Because of this, we don’t understand the disease ecology of arthropod-vectored diseases of bats, which may be important wildlife sources of human diseases. My dissertation will take steps to fill these gaps in knowledge.”
Speer said the experience she gained through the programs she participated in and the advice she received along the way helped her advance so far in her career. Hearing about other peoples' experiences helped shaped hers, she said.
"Even though I don’t have a lot of experience applying to programs, I asked as many people as I could about their experiences and I effectively multiplied my knowledge on the subject," she said.
Speer’s advice to anyone pursuing a career in research is to find a lab to volunteer or work in and begin building up experience.
“Start talking with people in that lab and getting their advice. Read scientific journal articles from a broad range of fields. Attend a scientific conference. Get involved, my mom always said 'half of life is just showing up.' I always thought about this little tidbit as just a weird thing that my mom would say, but she was totally right," Speers said. "If I hadn’t of decided to show up and volunteer at MSB, I wouldn’t have any of the opportunities that got me where I am.”
Denicia Aragon is a staff reporter for the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com on Twitter @DailyLobo.
