Kacey L. Cope
Research Interests
Artificial Light at Night
I first knew I wanted to become an ecologist while taking classes at Penn State in the Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences program. A professor introduced the topic of ecological light pollution, and I became intrigued with the idea that something so common and seemingly benign as light could be causing so many ecological problems. I wrote a term paper on the artificial light at night and the following year joined the graduate program at Penn State and began researching the effects of artificial light on small mammals and amphibians.
Artificial light at night, a problem caused by anthropogenic illumination, was first acknowledged by astronomers. Artificial light has only recently started to be researched in terrestrial systems. Much of the light pollution research has focused on the effects of light on taxa such as birds, sea turtles and insects. Relatively fewer studies have extensively looked at taxa such as small mammals and amphibians. My research examined both morphological and physiological effects of artificial light on mice and salamander populations in Pennsylvania. I found that populations of the white-footed mouse, Peromyscus leucopus, were more abundant in areas that had long term exposure to night lighting. Furthermore, northern dusky salamanders, Desmognathus fuscus, gained more weight under 24 hour light regimes. These results suggest that despite the potential increase in predation, the potential increase in food availability in lit areas may be increasing fitness in rodent and amphibian populations.
I have continued to work on the effects of artificial light while at CWRU and now at WVWC. Most recently, I have investigated the effects of artificial light pollution using an amphibian model system, the American toad. During my 4th year of my PhD, I felt that one aspect of my research that needed to be expanded upon was having a measurement of physiological changes occurring because of ALAN exposure. I began a collaboration with the Endocrinology Lab at the Cleveland Metroparks’ Zoo so that I could more specifically determine the physiological impacts of environmental pollutants. This has been a particularly challenging yet rewarding experience as this new aspect of my research has allowed me to determine that larval-stage ALAN increases corticosterone and juvenile-stage ALAN decreases melatonin production in toads.
Road Salt Contamination
When I first moved to Case Western Reserve University, I studied the effects of road salt on wood frogs, paying close attention to the carry-over effects to the terrestrial environment. I have previously researched the effects of road salt run-off and global climate change on Bullfrog tadpoles, Rana catesbeiana, in Pennsylvania. In this study, I examined the interaction between climate change (i.e. increased temperature) and road salt to determine the effect on amphibians. Climate change predicts more intense precipitation events which would leave to more concentrated levels of salt contamination in spring. This could lead to differences in survivorship, growth rates, morphology, behavior, or time to metamorphosis.
Previous research has demonstrated that the effects of road salt on tadpoles can vary greatly, and laboratory studies often demonstrate road salt negatively effects fitness. What remains unclear is if a polluted larval environment has any legacy effects on post-metamorphic individuals. Furthermore, I am also looking at the effects of wood frog density on the terrestrial community, especially macroinvertebrate abundance, size and composition and their effects on ecosystem functions like leaf decomposition.
So far, we found road salt did not affect tadpole survivorship but did slow development and increased growth, reduced zooplankton abundance, but increased algal growth. Increased algal growth may benefit tadpoles by increasing food resources and may be a result of reduced zooplankton abundance (a resource competitor). Additionally, exposure to road salt caused tadpoles to metamorphose at a larger size. After metamorphosis, juvenile frogs were housed in outdoor terrestrial pens at high and low densities for approximately 18 weeks. Exposure to road salt during the tadpole stage increased mortality among terrestrial, juvenile frogs in high density treatments. These results suggest that we may be underestimating the effect of environmental pollutants when focusing only on one life stage or conducting experiments solely in laboratory settings.
Want more on this research? Check out this publication.