Despite being a woman in both math and science, Elyce Gosselin, a world traveler and researcher, said she never felt uncomfortable in her departments.
“I definitely sat in some of my upper division math classes and calculated the gender ratio and it was not good,” she said. “I’ve never felt like the extreme minority here and the wildlife department is female dominated, so it’s nice having female mentors.”
Gosselin was in Mozambique, working with elephant populations in rural communities when she gained valuable perspective about conservation biology.
“We were training some community members to help with monitoring the elephants,” she said. “Someone asked, ‘Well, we can’t go into the national park and poach antelopes but the elephants can come here and raid our crops and the park isn’t going to do anything? How is that fair?’”
Gosselin said the experience abroad opened her eyes.
“We always think about protecting the elephants, especially in the United States and as someone who is passionate about wildlife. It’s important to think about the people who are affected by conversation efforts,” she said. “We’re coming from a place where elephants don’t raid out crops.”
Gosselin will graduate in May with a double-major in math and ecology and conservation biology after several years of research in two labs. She has spent every summer traveling to exotic and remote locations, finding new ways to approach conservation biology.
“I was always interested in math and science growing up,” she said. “I thought about going into engineering for a while. I got really into going outdoors and animals.”
Gosselin said she picked up a math degree because it provides an added skill when looking for future jobs.
“I always liked math, and I think it’s interesting when it’s applied to things I like,” she said.
An African elephant (Loxodonta africana) in Gorongosa. Courtesy.
Gosselin, a Boise native, said she was excited to leave the sprawl of Boise for Moscow.
“I got involved with research really early on which was the most beneficial thing I did,” she said. “I learned so much better when I’m doing applied learning that has an impact. It’s challenging.”
She joined UI assistant professor Ryan Long’s lab in 2015 and traveled to Mozambique to work with elephants during the summer of 2016.
While elephants are loved in the West, locals have a strained relationship with the large mammals.
Gorongosa National Park, located in central Mozambique, was home to more than 2,000 elephants in the past. The Mozambican Civil War, which ran from 1977 to 1992, ravaged the elephant population. About 90 percent of the elephants living in the park were killed to feed soldiers. Tusks were sold to buy ammunition and arms for the soldiers.
The Park is still being restored. But as the elephant population recovers, the large mammals find their way into villages and trample crops.
“Elephants can destroy all the crops in one night,” Gosselin said. “Communities have really negative feelings toward elephants because they only see them when they’re crop raiding. Some elephants get killed for it.”
Gosselin and the research team, led by UI graduate student Paola Branco, helped put collars and cameras on elephants to track their movements and behavior. The researchers collected data about crop damage by elephants using collars to track the elephants’ movement. The cameras tracked the behavior of the large mammals.
“This is a problem across Africa so it was cool to work on a project that helped gather information that will be widely used,” she said. “It’s nice to work closely with communities too.”
Waits said she enjoys working with students like Gosselin because of her particular excitement to learn and engage in her studies.
“She’s a unique student in that she came in ready and interested to get involved with research,” Waits said. “She had great scientific skills and asked great questions, which is what you want from a scientist and researcher in the beginning.”
Gosselin said it was exciting to work with Waits as an undergraduate.
“She’s an influential person in conservation biology and genetics. It helped build me up knowing I had access to research opportunities as a freshman,” she said.
Waits supervised Gosselin’s first research project in her genetics lab. Gosselin was tasked with testing the DNA in coyote scat samples. Typically, scat is examined by dissection to determine what the predator is preying on.
Gosselin’s research project aimed to answer if DNA was an effective way to test what animals the predator is consuming. She wrote a senior thesis on the project during her sophomore year, which was published.
A hoatzin (Ophisthocomus hoazin) in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
“Elyce is one of the most remarkable undergrads I’ve worked with in terms of her passion, curiosity and ability in wildlife and conservation biology,” Waitts said. “She’s the kind of person who is a great scientist and has this passion about animals and conservation. She’s going to be one of our alumni who make UI famous.”
Gosselin spent her next summer with Waits and several students studying how land use changes riparian habitats in the Ecuadorian Andes, and how it affects bird and bat populations. Riparian habitat zones are found on the banks of rivers or streams.
Gosselin said increased agriculture in the area often erases and fragments existing habitats.
“It affects what food resources are available, more cows can sometimes mean more vampire bats,” she said.
Gosselin said there were noticeable differences in the bird population through visual identification and song identification.
“It was easy to see the bird had disappeared from the urban and pasture areas,” she said.
The bats were a little harder to draw any conclusions from.
“We didn’t capture a lot of bats in the study areas, so it was hard to make any strong findings,” she said.
Although Gosselin did not originally think of bats as endearing, she quickly found a love for them during the project.
“I never thought about bats being a very charismatic species, but they’re so cute,” she said. “They’re also so important for the ecosystems.”
This summer, Gosselin will work with bats at Grand Teton National Park. She plans on travelling and working before attending graduate school.
“I want to go into research, I like academia too. I hope with a quantitative background I can bounce around a little,” she said.