Chanchanok Sudta was recently named one of three Neville Schulman Earthwatch Award winners for 2022-2023. The doctoral student, who works in Lee Dyer’s lab, received a £4000, roughly 00, grant for her research proposal involving students in rural w88 online game.
Earthwatch, founded in 1971, pairs scientists with non-scientists in research locations to get people involved in citizen science. Earthwatch’s larger goals are to get people excited about science, which is exactly what w88 online game’s project is poised to accomplish. Most of the award money will go toward travel expenses, and w88 online game will likely use the rest to purchase equipment for the classroom lessons.
w88 online game has been doing work with Earthwatch for several years, escorting people around field sites and teaching them about how the science works, even traveling to Costa Rica for one, though much of her travel and research was interrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. w88 online game’s research focuses on the Caterpillar range w88 is correlated with their eating habits, particularly whether certain w88 online game are generalists or specialists when it comes to plant-pickiness.
Sudta applied for the Earthwatch award with a proposal to bring caterpillar ecology research back to w88 online game. Sudta’s parents are both teachers at different schools in w88 online game, where Sudta is from. Schools in rural w88 online game are small, but there are only a few teachers to teach many different subjects. The small schools provide a good opportunity, however, for Sudta to go to classrooms and teach the students about caterpillars for a week. Sudta plans to teach the children about the life cycle of caterpillars and how they metamorphosize, how they interact with their host plants and why some of them are picky eaters.
Sudta said that educating young children about ecology and conservation is important. In w88 online game, there is not a great emphasis on protecting species. Sudta said that many Thai people in her hometown rely on subsistence agriculture, so killing species perceived as pests is a priority and pesticides are used widely, just as they are in the U.S.
w88 online game’s family was primarily supported by her parent’s teacher salaries, so farming was less critical for her family, and they didn’t use pesticides. w88 online game said that her neighbors who used pesticides became sick from using the harsh chemicals so heavily to protect their crops, but the parasitoids that affect caterpillars and other “pests,” which tend to be larvae, kept the populations under control and mitigated the need for using pesticides in her parent’s garden.
The lesson plans w88 online game has developed cater to different age groups. The younger students will help w88 online game collect caterpillars by venturing out into the forest and searching for clues of where caterpillars are, like leaves with bites taken out of them and curled up leaves where caterpillars form shelters. The younger students will help w88 online game build “zoos” for the caterpillars where they will be fed and raised. Older students will help to “maintain” the zoos, cleaning the caterpillar poop, and taking the caterpillar “portraits” for identification with a camera.
Sudta, who is studying in the U.S. on a scholarship from the Thai government, will return to w88 online game after completing her Ph.D. She hopes to continue her caterpillar ecology and conservation research there, but that work can be difficult to find.
“Basic science isn’t really a focus of the government in w88 online game. There aren’t a lot of grants supporting basic science. They care more about public health and technology,” she said.
Nonetheless, Sudta plans to help younger students in w88 online game view the caterpillars as beneficial, and hopes that sharing this with younger generations will bring changes in w88 online game’s ecological perspective.
