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MC Student Spotlights Stonefly Research


Mississippi College student Audrey Harrison is passionate about stonefly research.

You could say it's in her blood. "Insects have been of interest to me for years," says Harrison, whose family lives on Fish Pond Lane in Corinth. "As an adolescent, I attended entomology camp during my summers."

Not your typical Mississippi kid with a passion for sports, Harrison says she quickly got directed to biology professor Bill Stark when she first enrolled at MC a couple of years ago.

Recently, Harrison and Stark combined to pool their lengthy research about stoneflies into a scientific journal with readers from around the globe. Their work was published in "Illiesia," the international journal of stonefly research.

It's a publication co-hosted by the Slovenian Museum of Natural History and Mississippi College. The journal is published on-line at no cost on the Illiesia Web site. The publication is also placed in several major libraries such as the Smithsonian, British Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History. A list of about 50 of the world's leading authorities on stonefly research get notified by e-mail when a new article on their favorite topic gets posted.

Stark is delighted.

"This is Audrey's second publication while at MC, and another student, Michele Willet published an article last summer," Stark said. "We have probably averaged about one publication every three years for an MC undergraduate during my career."

Harrison got her family involved when she embarked on some of her research on stoneflies. The MC student collected her first specimens of the new species of stoneflies in December 2008 on her grandparents\' property near Coffeeville.

When the initial findings indicated a new species might be involved, Harrison continued to collect the insects through January 2009 and again in the fall and winter of 2009-2010, the professor said.

Harrison examined many of the specimens with the scanning electron microscope in the biology department on the Clinton campus.

The budding biologist is not letting her insect research stop at MC.

Currently working as a research biologist on the fish ecology team at the Waterways Experiment Station at Vicksburg, Harrison plans to attend graduate school in the fall. "I will always be involved in research," she says. "I love working in the field."

Stark has served as an excellent role model and mentor.

"No one has prepared me more for my future than Dr. Stark and it is an honor to work with such a well-published (he's named over 325 new species of animals) scholarly person," Harrison said.

Stark is very impressed with the young researcher in the Department of Biology. She first started doing independent research under the professor as a sophomore and they combined on getting their first study published in May 2008.

Studies of this breadth "are exceptional for an undergraduate student at any university," Stark said. "The use of a scanning electron microscope by an undergraduate student is also somewhat unusual."