While out searching for snails, a University of Lethbridge undergraduate student stumbled across a scientific breakthrough that has now been given the name of a retired professor.
Molly Tilley says she was on the hunt for parasites commonly found in snails when she made a fantastic discovery.
“(I) kind of just stumbled upon this fish that had some bulging eyes and scooped it up in a Tim Horton’s cup and brought it inside,” said Tilley.
The parasite was discovered in a small pond beside the Alberta Water and Environmental Science Building on the U of L campus.
“(It was) kind of serendipitous, I guess, that it just stumbled into our lap, but it has been found at many sites in southern Alberta now. So, it goes to show that it’s pretty prolific in spreading.”
At the time of the discovery… Tilley was an undergraduate student and took her new find to her professor, Cam Goater. Tilley now works in Goater’s lab at the U of L.
“Molly came to the lab and said, ‘I want to study this new parasite’ and that’s where we end up today in this species description,” Goater said of the discovery.
Goater says the work with the parasite began with simply trying to understand what the parasite even was.
“We needed to diagnose the parasite and that was the first step. So, the parasite causes the fish’s eyes to bulge and they produce these big lesions and so we would look inside the lesions for diagnostic characteristics of particular parasites,” said Goater.
Once the work was completed, a name was needed.
Both Tilley and Goater decided there was no better namesake than Joe Rasmussen, a retired U of L professor.
“He’s been a huge, huge name in Canadian aquatic science for years and years,” said Tilley. “So, I think he’s more than deserving.”
Rasmussen, who has been retired for five years, says this will make him “immortal.”
“A great many well-known people from the past we now remember today because their names are associated with species,” he said.
He says it is an honour to have been selected and his name will forever be intertwined with the Myxobolus rasmusseni.