Bugs and Slugs and Spiders, Oh My! July 14, 2011— Help wanted:
Must be willing to work for free. Arachnophobes need not apply.
Actually, Kathy Roberts admits that sometimes her quarry make
her a little edgy. “Ew, that’s a different-looking spider,” she
says, peering into a glass vial containing a tangle of hairy
arthropod legs. Under her microscope are a couple other not-so-
alarming spiders, and off to the side are rows of vials filled
with all manner of creepy-crawlies. As a volunteer research
assistant, Roberts gathers slugs, ants, millipedes, nematodes,
worms, and lots and lots of pill bugs—whatever falls into her
traps. Under the direction of Erik Lilleskov, an adjunct
professor of forest resources and environmental science, she is
helping to establish baseline data on the small creatures living
in and around the soil next to the USDA Forest Service
rhizotron. The rhizotron is a 75-foot tunnel, paneled on the
inside with glass, which extends into a wooded hillside adjacent
to the Michigan Tech campus. Bui