U.S. and University of Cape Coast students, along with four faculty mentors, collect dragonflies and aquatic invertebrates in a stream in western Ghana.
ALTOONA, Pa. — Two Penn State Altoona faculty have returned to Ghana, Africa, this summer as part of a group conducting research on dragonflies.
This is the second year for the research, which takes place through the Department of Conservation Biology and Entomology of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Cape Coast (UCC).
Penn State Altoona’s Lara LaDage, professor of biology, and Kofi Adu, professor of physics, along with six students from the United States, five from UCC, and faculty mentors from various institutions are spending four weeks in Ghana studying the response and adaptation of dragonflies in different climactic habitats.
Global climate change has had profound impacts on food and water availability, habitat availability and infrastructure vulnerability, threatening biodiversity across all ecological scales, according to the researchers. West Africa is thought to be one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to the effects of anthropogenic environmental change and subsequent loss in biodiversity.
During the fieldwork phase, group members are observing and collecting data on dragonfly populations across different habitats.
“This year, we have been traveling in remote areas in the west of Ghana. The environment and infrastructure have been highly unpredictable, yet the students have demonstrated a high degree of flexibility and problem solving while in the field,” said LaDage, who is also the undergraduate research coordinator at Penn State Altoona.
The research initiative originated in 2021 as a Fulbright research topic, eventually shaping into a collaboration between UCC, Penn State and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
The project is headed by LaDage and Adu, along with Jessica Ware from AMNH, Rofela Combey, UCC, and Laura Cruz, Penn State.
