Adrian Chesh ’05 with Dr. Luis Ebensperger, a behavioral ecologist at the Universidad Catolica de Chile.

Although Octodon degus or “brushtail rats” may look and act like the typical “Albright squirrels” that scuttle around campus, seemingly ubiquitous and often accompanying students and faculty members on their travels from one building to the other, they share no other similarities, says Adrian Chesh ’05, a graduate student at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Members of the family Octodontidae, “degus are small, diurnal, semi-fossorial and social rodents that are only found in Chile,” says Chesh, who is studying their group-living habits for his graduate studies in biology.

Just one month after graduating from Albright, Chesh began his work with adviser Dr. Loren Hayes. They spent July and August of 2005 in Chile, evaluating the sociality of a population of degus, which live in groups of five to 10 rodents. In his study, Chesh is looking at how and why the degus live within groups, as well as other factors affecting the sociality.

Chesh decided to go to Chile after his Albright adviser, Stephen Mech, Ph.D, assistant professor of biology and honors program co-adviser, introduced him to Hayes at the meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists in Arcata, Calif.

Chesh plans to use the degus sociality, in one form or another, as the topic for his master’s thesis. “One possibility involves assessing ecological determinants of sociality such as food abundance or soil hardness, he says. “There are other possibilities as well.”

He and his adviser are learning more about the degus everyday. The study was conducted until November 2005 and will resume again in June 2006, continuing another six months. “We have extremely large amounts of data that still need to be analyzed,” Chesh says. “We hope to understand more about their group size, home range size and fitness consequences of sociality when the study is complete.”

In addition to his academic experiences in Chile, he learned a little about the culture as well.

“We worked very long 13-hour days in the field but also found a good amount of time to see the country,” Chesh says.

Although, living in a region where Spanish is the only language spoken was very difficult for Chesh since “my Spanish isn’t particularly good,” he says.

“This gave me the opportunity to interact with young biologists like myself from Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.”

Nonetheless, he enjoyed working with Dr. Luis Ebensperger, a behavioral ecologist at Universidad Catolica de Chile, and his students. “We used his lab and had assistance from him, as well as his students, in the field,” says Chesh. “This gave me the opportunity to interact with young biologists like myself from Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.”

Chesh and Hayes lived in the city of Santiago. “The metropolitan area is home to over six million people,” Chesh says. “So we had all the nice things about a large city, as well as our field site 45 minutes away that was a beautiful isolated chaparral habitat. There is an amazing view of the Andes Mountains off to the east of the city.”

Based on his experiences abroad, Chesh says his master’s work “is off to a great start.”

“Albright prepared me very well for graduate school,” he says. “Classes such as ecology, vertebrate natural history and behavioral ecology gave me a great preview of my particular field.”

Perhaps most influential to Chesh, however, was his research with Mech conducted through the Albright Creative Research Experience (ACRE) program. “I learned many field techniques that I still use today on a regular basis involving live trapping, radio-telemetry, vegetative sampling and species identification,” he says. “I also learned how to write scientifically and present my research at a national meeting, which will aid me throughout my career.”

Chesh and Mech are currently working together on publishing Chesh’s undergraduate research in the Journal of Mammalogy. “Adrian's work is, I believe, of high enough quality to get published and can give us some important information regarding the impacts of habitat change on small mammals,” Mech says.

Chesh hopes to pursue a doctorate after completing his master’s degree.

– Joshua R. Grandy ’06