LHS teacher, ex-students make a scientific splash

Two former Lewiston High School students didn’t have to wait long to make a scientific discovery with their teacher.

Former LHS students, Elizabeth Connerly and Robert Bayless, along with their teacher, Jamie Morton, recently became published authors in a peer-reviewed scientific journal based on their discovery of Idaho’s first known red swamp crayfish. The crayfish was found while participating in a University of Idaho Extension citizens’ science program, according to a news release from the university.

In October 2021, Morton’s ecology and environmental science class was on a field trip with UI Extension’s IDAH20 program. While investigating a part of municipal stormwater ponds near the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers, the class trapped a crustacean later confirmed to be the red swamp crayfish. If the aquatic crustacean multiplied in the surrounding environment, it could have harmed water quality and native species

During the field trip the class usually traps and identifies one of Idaho’s native crayfish species. However, the red coloration and the bumpy and pointy claws made it easy for the class to identify it as the red swamp crayfish by comparing it with photographs. The identity was also confirmed by a crayfish expert through DNA testing, according to the release.

Connerly and Bayless continued trapping crayfish outside of class in the following weeks. They caught six more red swamp crayfish from the ponds. Those discoveries also proved the original crayfish discovery wasn’t an isolated incident. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continued to monitor the ponds and surrounding area, according to the release.

“The best part was seeing the students who wanted to participate and were motivated to continue doing it because they wanted to,” Morton said in the release.

Morton, Connerly and Bayless are listed as the authors of the paper published online this week in “BioInvasions Records,” which will also be in the journal’s June print edition.

“It’s a genuine, honest discovery. And I hope it creates more buy-in with my classes as we go on, especially when it’s officially published,” Morton said in the news release. “We can make a contribution just being normal citizens. You don’t have to go to college and you don’t have to become a scientist in your day job to be interested and take care of your environment.”

Morton has been participating with the IDAH20 program for the past seven years to give her students hands-on learning opportunities and sample water and trap invertebrates in local watersheds. The information is then shared to assess the health of Idaho’s waterways.

The IDAH20 program has spent the last decade teaching basic water quality monitoring techniques to more than 600 citizen scientists from throughout the Pacific Northwest. Active participants receive pH test strips, kits for measuring dissolved oxygen in water and other basic supplies to record stream data, which are uploaded through an app.

Not only do the volunteers in the program collect data on the health of streams but Jim Ekins, UI Extension water educator and director of IDAH20, has volunteers trained to identify and report crayfish species for River Mile, a network of educators and students who study the crustaceans in the Pacific Northwest to learn stream health. Ekins also partners with organizations in Idaho, eastern Washington and Oregon to train more people for the program.

“We think citizen science may be a good way to find new invasions of invasive species. There are that many more eyeballs,” Ekins said in the news release. “Plus, we are teaching kids science, being observant and writing things down. Those are skills you need for any job.”