Laura Rodríguez Miguel
Laura Rodríguez Miguel has a passion for nature and research — she wants to understand the “why” of things and use that knowledge to have a positive impact on the environment.
As a Weston Family Conservation Science Fellow at the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC), Laura’s research helps conserve and manage important natural areas and biological diversity across Canada. She is also a master’s student in biology at Carleton University, supervised by Christina Davy, PhD.
Growing up in El Salvador, while Laura’s family was environmentally conscious, she otherwise didn’t see much environmental awareness or opportunities for environmental education. Being born on Earth Day, she felt a connection to the environment grow over the years.
She earned a degree in veterinary medicine in El Salvador, and a diploma in environmental science from St. Lawrence College in Ontario. For the six years prior to starting her master’s degree, she worked in various environmental and natural resource positions with Ontario Public Service, gaining a wealth of experience in these sectors, including research, conservation and policy. This training and experience has prepared her very well for her chosen study.
Laura’s master’s research focuses on bat and disease ecology, including implications for species-at-risk recovery, landscape resilience and human health. Sometimes bats can have high viral loads with few symptoms whereas other times they get very sick or die, and scientists don’t know why. She aims to understand which coronaviruses are out there, which bat species have those viruses, their viral load (i.e., how much do they carry), and how these change with land use and habitat fragmentation. Understanding the relationships among viruses, bat health and habitat modification can help prevent diseases from reducing bat populations.
As well as documenting bat diseases, Laura’s research has practical implications for people. Since coronaviruses can be “zoonotic” (i.e., move from one species to another), it’s important to know the types of coronaviruses that bats have compared to those that humans or other species can have, and what factors might be involved in disease transmission, like habitat fragmentation. Laura is working closely with infectious disease experts so that her results can inform public health and possibly be used to develop tools to prevent future pandemics.
Laura is passionate about sharing why we should care are about bats; they play important roles in ecosystems, including pollinating plants, eating insects and dispersing seeds. Yet, eight of Canada’s 18 species of bat are at risk of extinction, so we should care about helping them. One of the ways NCC helps bats is by creating roosting habitat, including in BC and Saskatchewan.
Getting out to do hands-on field work is Laura’s favourite part of her master’s project, even if there is a lot of poop involved! That’s right, this research involves taking bat guano (poop) samples from places where bats live, like caves, buildings or bat boxes. Sampling viruses from guano is a new and less invasive method of studying diseases compared to the traditional method of swabbing bat mouths. It may also be more effective, because coronaviruses like to hang out in their hosts’ guts — Laura is using both methods so she can compare results.
In doing this work, Laura spends a lot of time up close with bats. “Getting to see them up close, you see how cute they are and can see how a small, tiny, animal is connected to everything else around it,” she says. She stresses that outside of research, it is really important to leave bats and the habitat they depend on alone.
In addition to her research, as a member of the Weston Family Conservation Science Fellowship Program Laura will be learning and applying professional skills such as science communication, and networking with other researchers and conservationists across Canada. She hopes to turn her passion for scientific research and solving environmental problems into a career conserving nature.