Tiffany Miele (Hawthorne, N.Y.), a second-year Environmental Management major, spent her summer internship looking through a microscope at organisms smaller than a grain of rice, using them to help answer much larger questions about the long-term health of Otsego Lake in Cooperstown, the source of the 444-mile Susquehanna River.
Miele, an undergraduate research intern, worked with Dr. Mairi Meehan, Assistant Professor of Biology, on a project that sought to interpret 30 years of zooplankton monitoring data to identify and describe ecosystem change in the lake.
Zooplankton are tiny, free-floating animals near the base of the aquatic food chain. These organisms respond quickly to shifts in nutrients, invasive species, and water quality, making three decades of monitoring data a detailed record of how the lake has changed over time.
Miele took that record from the archive to the public. She developed and delivered a 12-minute research presentation to SUNY Oneonta Biological Field Station faculty, staff, and interns, covering the project’s background, methods, preliminary results, and ecological implications.
She and Dr. Meehan then translated the completed findings into a scientific poster, “Long-Term Zooplankton Species Turnover in Otsego Lake: Archival Evidence of Contemporary Ecological Pressures,” which Miele presented to a public and stakeholder audience at the Otsego Lake Association Annual Meeting, held August 8 at the Otsego Lake Sailing Club. The project’s results were also included in the SUNY Oneonta Biological Field Station’s annual report.
Comparing archived samples from 2012 to those collected in 2026, Miele found a shift in the lake’s dominant copepod groups. The 2012 samples showed greater abundance and diversity among cyclopoid copepod species, while the 2026 samples were dominated by calanoid copepods. Miele and Dr. Meehan attribute the shift to changing environmental conditions, including predation, competition, and the effects of climate change, all of which can influence zooplankton community composition and abundance over time.
In the lab, Miele worked with a Sedgwick-Rafter counting cell, a stereomicroscope, Image-Pro imaging software, and dichotomous keys to identify and measure roughly 450 individual organisms. In the field, she deployed zooplankton nets and flow meters, collected and preserved samples, and recorded water-quality readings. She then organized and cleaned the resulting data and interpreted it scientifically, carrying the project from raw counts, through analysis, to conclusions.
“Tiffany has been heavily involved in this project and eager to learn,” said Dr. Meehan. “She’s picked up nearly every tool and method we use to sample, identify, and analyze zooplankton, from imaging and identification work in the lab to net, flow-meter, and water-quality sampling in the field. She even became a certified New York State boat operator along the way, which shows the level of independence she has a researcher and the skills she can take on in the name of gathering data.”
“One of the most memorable parts of the whole experience has been learning to drive a boat,” Miele said. “I’d never driven one before.”
An additional 24-hour diel vertical migration (DVM) study built on her work and drew in other undergraduate students, who helped prepare and run the round-the-clock sampling, collected complementary biological and water-quality measurements, and troubleshot problems in the field.
“Dr. Meehan and I ran our first DVM survey this past July, basically tracking how zooplankton move up and down through the water column, and now we’re hoping to expand it into a year-round study to see how those migration patterns change with the seasons,” Miele said.
The research is part of Dr. Meehan’s work as one of the College’s inaugural National Science Foundation EPIIC Fellows, conducted in partnership with the SUNY Oneonta Biological Field Station.
The research is funded through a $400,000 NSF grant program, Enabling Partnerships to Increase Innovation Capacity, or EPIIIC. The College serves as lead institution for the A-SPARK (Agriculture and Science Practice and Access for Research-Driven Knowledge) team, a three-year collaborative project running through September 2028 that also includes Louisiana State University Eunice and Modesto Junior College in California.
Miele’s research interests span saltwater ecosystems as well. As part of her coursework, she and fellow student Keaton Muller (Sparrowbush, N.Y.) completed a literature review under Dr. Meehan’s mentorship, titled “Clownfish–Anemone Symbiosis: Evolutionary and Physiological Mechanisms of Mucus-Based Sting Tolerance.”
“I came in as an Animal Science major, but working on the clownfish project changed everything,” Miele said. “I realized I wanted a career centered on ecology and studying ecosystems. When Dr. Meehan told me about this grant, I applied right away.”
The project takes on a long-standing question in marine biology: How do clownfish live unharmed among the stinging tentacles of sea anemones, which injure most other fish? Drawing on published studies, Miele and Muller examined the makeup of clownfish mucus, how the trait may have evolved, and how clownfish differ from closely related damselfish that do not share the trait.
The review points to distinct biochemical features of clownfish mucus, including lower levels of certain sugars that can trigger anemone stings and differences in lipid makeup. It also identifies open questions about the evolutionary and biochemical processes behind the adaptation.
“Throughout my research so far, one thing I’ve learned is that it’s okay to not know exactly what you’re doing at first,” Miele said. “I was nervous when I started, worried I wasn’t where I was supposed to be out in the field. But it all comes together quickly. You figure out why you’re there and what you’re doing. The people I’ve met and the relationships I’ve built have made this one of the most memorable experiences of my time here.”