Professor-Student Team Saving Endangered Species Underneath damp
piles of blackened mud and dead leaves in Rock Creek Park and
the George Washington Parkway lives a rare and curious shrimp-
like creature named an amphipod. Along with the bald eagle and
the mountain lion, it is one of D.C.’s three indigenous animals
to make the endangered species list. David Culver, environmental
science professor and associate dean for the sciences, and Ben
Hutchins, MS student in biology, are conducting research on
these amphipods for the National Park Service. “Our mission is
to discover exact locations of amphipods and offer suggestions
on ways they can be protected,” says Culver. Culver and Hutchins
spend much of their time trekking along the banks of Rock Creek
or the Potomac River. Using a specially designed pump, they
collect the animals from the ground and take them back to the
lab where Hutchins extracts DNA from each sample and maps gene
sequences. “This has been a fascinating project for me. The more
I work on it, t