Getting Slimy for Research

Faculty, Arches, Students

For Megan Mooney ’23, spending time in the muck next to the Puget Sound led to finding an important new parasite.

Megan Mooney ’23 stepped onto campus in 2019 a declared biology major—unusual, since students usually take the first year to decide—and high expectations for her college career. The valedictorian of her high school in Arvada, Colo., Mooney was determined to do just as well, if not better, at Puget Sound. “I just hit the ground running,” says Mooney on a bright April afternoon, sitting in the courtyard outside Oppenheimer Café.

“This is a school where, if you get to know your professors, they become your community, cheering you on. It made me feel like I could do everything I set out to achieve.”

“Everything” feels apt. Mooney was quickly invited to the Phi Eta Sigma honor society, added a major in environmental policy and decision making, joined Pi Beta Phi, and signed up to be a resident assistant the next fall. Today, she sits on both the ASUPS Finance Committee and the Faculty Senate’s Academic Standards Committee, is a member of honor society Phi Beta Kappa, and volunteers at the Tacoma Boys and Girls Club.

Mooney figured a career in biology would allow her to maintain her strong connection to the outdoors, cultivated by weekends spent hiking with her family. Students often don’t get involved with research until their sophomore year, but Mooney knew that technically, there wasn’t anything stopping her from getting a head start. She hung back after class one day and asked biology professor Alyce DeMarais if she needed any research help. She started in DeMarais’ lab the next day.

When DeMarais retired in 2020, she pointed Mooney toward colleague Joel Elliott, who studies the ecology and evolution of aquatic organisms, from sea star wasting disease to microbial interactions in eelgrass. Elliott was studying pathogens that infect seagrass roots and had discovered a parasite that was infecting the roots of seagrasses worldwide, which in turn affected marine animals that depend on eelgrass for habitat, food, and shelter. At their first meeting, he presented Mooney with a list of questions related to his research, telling her to pick whichever looked most interesting. She couldn’t tell eelgrass from seaweed, but found Elliott’s passion for the subject—and how much was still unknown about the parasite he had discovered—compelling.

Megan Mooney ’23 and Prof. Joel Elliot — Megan Mooney ’23, working with faculty member Joel Elliott, collected and processed water samples from Dash Point State Park to better understand organisms that harm seagrass.

Megan Mooney and Prof. Joel Elliot dig in the sand at Dash Point State Park. — While processing samples from infected Puget Sound native eelgrass, Mooney realized they had discovered a novel species of parasite.

Eelgrass in Puget Sound. — Mooney's experience working with Professor Joel Elliot led her to apply to law school, where she hopes to bridge the gap between science and policy.

For the next two summers, Mooney worked alongside Elliott and other student research assistants to characterize the parasite by collecting and processing specimens from the Puget Sound for analysis. (The job sometimes included kayaking into Dash Point State Park after dark, in the middle of winter, to collect samples.) But something didn’t add up. The specimens all had different characteristics, from size to impact on the seagrasses, and they realized they had discovered a novel, second species of parasite.

Over the next year, Mooney, Elliott, and Kate Kelly ’22 collaborated with researchers in Canada and Europe on a paper detailing their findings. The article was published this spring in the journal Environmental Microbiology, with Mooney and Kelly among the coauthors.

“It’s a challenge to write a letter of recommendation for someone like Megan,” Elliott says over Zoom. “I find myself running out of superlatives. The last thing I expected was for an undergraduate working in the lab to go out and amplify our research and discover an entirely new species.”

In summer 2022, Mooney and Elliott traveled to the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor lab in the San Juan Islands. Talking with other eelgrass researchers, Mooney realized how few people ever learn about a discovery like this, despite its wide-reaching implications. She found herself doubting her path—and her potential to make an impact. How could she defend the organisms she’d spent countless hours analyzing if most people weren’t paying attention in the first place?

Back at school, Mooney thought about bridging the gap between science and environmental policy. She thought of her mother, a youth criminal appellate defender. “Growing up, I saw my mom’s passion for every detail of her work, putting in insane hours trying to find the thing that could win her case,” says Mooney. “That’s the passion I’m looking for. I want to do something where I can see people’s perspectives change.”

By the end of the summer, Mooney had started studying for the LSAT, her sights set on environmental law. With her pick of schools, she recently committed to the University of Colorado Law School.

Mooney was recently chosen to receive the Gordon D. Alcorn Award, given to the outstanding senior in biology, at Convocation. Elliott admits he was disappointed when she said she was going to law school, but quickly saw it was the right fit. “I think she would be a fabulous researcher,” he says. “But given her interest in environmental policy and decision making, and how she thinks about the world, this will allow her to use her skills to make a broader contribution to society.”

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