BBCHS grad researches snake fungus
Amanda Erlandson’s childhood fascination for grandmother Cindy Erlandson’s 3-foot-long ball pythons in Bradley has carried her through the University of Wisconsin-Platteville and research into a fungal disease in snakes that has swept across the eastern United States in recent years.
She graduated last week with a degree in biology and zoology and has landed a part-time job at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium, on the river bank at Dubuque, Iowa, 22 miles southwest of Platteville.
Her senior research and thesis might have helped land her that job.
Working with biology professor John Peterson, she and other Platteville zoology students conducted local research into Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola, a potentially lethal enemy of snakes that has been spreading across the east half of the U.S. It is being compared to white-nose syndrome that has devastated bat populations across the same region and into Canada for a decade.
The snake fungus is known “from Iowa east, both north and south, but it seems more severe in northern climates — Wisconsin and north,” Erlandson said. It is reported in 23 states. “It could be established in other areas, but people just don’t care enough to find out. People are scared of them and they’re portrayed as evil, but they are very important.”
Just as the devastation of the white-nose syndrome threatens the tremendous insect control services of bats, the fungal disease in snakes can have a similar cost in service to society.
In nature, “snakes are both prey and predators — food for other animals — birds, foxes, coyotes — and they prey on smaller animals like insects and rodents,” Erlandson said.
The fungus “is hitting the snake population hard. It is believed to be transferred among snakes during hibernation ... by rubbing against each other,” she said.
Is it transferred to offspring? “I’m not sure,” she said. “I would assume it could be because some snakes have live birth, but if they lay eggs, it would probably not be transferred.
“If they have a wound, then it can be more serious.”
In their research, the students spread 125 plywood, metal and asphalt sheets over the vegetation of the university’s Memorial Park, then came back each morning to check for snakes that took cover under them. They then examined the snakes for fungus.
The research has its hazards. Erlandson was nipped on the finger one morning by a nonpoisonous garter snake she was examining.
Once the researchers get enough suspected fungal samples, they are to be sent to the University of Illinois, which she said has “the only lab in North American that tests for it.”
They had “close to 20 samples, maybe more” as the school year closed, she said. Of the snakes from which the samples were taken, “I would say maybe five had symptoms.”
The research “was a great opportunity to work with snakes in the wild,” she said. “I had always only worked with captive snakes.”
“My first interest in them was when I was around 10 years old and my grandmother had ball pythons probably 3 or 4 feet long. I would hold them, watch them eat and really just observe them.”
Grandma lived in Bradley for years, but has since moved to Wisconsin. Grandma and her parents, Julie Kennedy and Gary Erlandson, both of Bradley, “always encouraged me in wanting to be a veterinarian or a zookeeper,” she said.
She and her brother and sister, Ryan and Tori, also grew up in nature, riding bikes and exploring Perry Farm, the Indian Caves area and its creek, she said.
“I really prefer to do out-of-classroom experiences, because I’m more of a hands-on learner,” Erlandson told Alison Parkins, of UW-Platteville public relations. “The difference between doing in-class case studies and the fieldwork is that we actually get to see what is happening. When you read a case study in class about a project and how it went wrong, it tells you what they did to solve it, but when we do fieldwork, we get to use our own problem-solving skills. It gives you a new level of learning.”
Her new part-time job at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium will be hands-on. She’ll be feeding the animals, cleaning up after them, testing water quality in the aquarium and doing maintenance. She be around plenty of animals — fish, a lot of turtles, an alligator, a stingray, an armadillo and a lot of reptiles. “The only mammals we have are the mice we feed to the snakes,” she said.
Erlandson is a 2014 graduate of Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School, where she was an honor student and all-conference and MVP soccer goalie.
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