What do ferrets and turtles have in common?
“They are both considered exotic animals,” says Laura Del Collo ’09, who ought to know. The Saint Joseph’s University biology major from Odenton, Md., will start veterinary school at the University of Pennsylvania this fall, where she looks forward to learning more about how to care for all kinds of animals, but admits to a special interest in exotics.
“I had pet ferrets when I was growing up, but I never had any contact with turtles,” she says. That changed during her time at SJU. An internship for her environmental science minor took her to the Academy of Natural Sciences’ Live Animal Center in 
Philadelphia, where unwanted pets – like turtles and ferrets – as well as non-releasable wildlife, often find a home. While there, she discovered she especially liked working with turtles, and that was just the beginning of her encounters with many species of the shelled reptiles.
Last fall, she and four other SJU students began working with Scott McRobert, Ph.D., professor of biology, on a study that sent them to Asian food markets in Philadelphia’s Chinatown. The purpose of the research was to survey the prevalence and species of turtles being sold for various uses – including the pet trade, human consumption and traditional Chinese medicine.
The team also got an up-close look at the effects of the markets on the turtles’ health, by purchasing and monitoring the growth of ten juvenile red-eared sliders that were destined for the retail pet trade. During their first month in the lab, the Chinatown turtles experienced retarded growth and a 30 percent mortality rate. None were lost from a comparison group, which were bought from a local breeder.
“We surveyed three markets over seven months, and found that conditions for the animals deteriorated over the course of the study, ” says Del Collo. “We also found that demand for turtles is high in the Philadelphia markets, as is the case worldwide,” she notes. “This high demand is driven by China and other Southeast Asian countries, where wild populations have been over-harvested and are in steep decline.”
To conservationists, a big market for any animal is cause for concern. Del Collo notes that as a result of the steady decline of the Asian turtle population, some species native to the U.S., like the Florida soft-shelled turtles, Diamondback terrapins and red-eared sliders found in the Chinatown markets are now being sold to China and other Southeast Asian countries.
“There is a risk that the same thing that happened to the wild Asian species could happen to our own native species,” says Del Collo. “It is important that we become aware of this possibility.”
Luckily, the SJU research group did not discover any endangered or threatened turtles in the Philadelphia markets, but Del Collo suspects that is because the U.S. exercises strict controls. This is not the case everywhere. “Though international and national regulations exist to control the turtle trade in some species, recent surveys have found endangered species for sale in markets throughout Asia,” says Del Collo.
In the spring semester, Del Collo became the sole student investigator for the study – which will be submitted for publication – and presented the research at the Sigma Xi Student Research Symposium. At the same time, she took over as the animal care coordinator for McRobert’s biodiversity lab, which houses over 50 turtles, including several species that are threatened or endangered, like Leaf turtles from Vietnam. Leaf turtles are almost extinct in the wild.
Though the animal care coordinator job has typically gone to a graduate student, McRobert says he always thought Del Collo, who has taken several classes with him, would be capable of handling the position.
“It takes a very special person to be the animal care coordinator for the biodiversity lab,” notes McRobert. “This person is on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week to care for a multitude of exotic species, each of which has its own special, complex needs. Problems arise on a daily basis, and the coordinator must be ready to make decisions to solve these problems. The job requires more than hard work and responsibility – it requires a person who really cares about the animals.”
Turtles are difficult to raise and care for because they live in complicated habitats. There are turtles that worry Del Collo daily, and she has had to switch the land and water portions of their habitats to keep them healthy and happy, but she loves working with and learning about all of the turtles that populate the biodiversity lab.
In particular, she is fond of one mud turtle named Horcey, who seems to like interacting with his caretaker, as well as other turtles. “He’s a funny guy,” she says. “I think he wants to make friends. I can always temporarily house other turtles with him, and he’s happy for the company.”
Del Collo has worked hard during her time at Saint Joseph’s. In addition to her position in the biodiversity lab and internship at the Academy of Natural Sciences, she has held jobs as a veterinary supervisor, technician and kennel assistant at local animal hospitals, and she spent two summers interning at the Bovine Functional Genomics Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. She participated in a study abroad course for natural resource management in Australia and New Zealand, and after her internship concluded at the Academy of Natural Sciences, she found time to volunteer her services at the Live Animal Center.
Even with this challenging workload, Del Collo maintained a 3.99 G.P.A. in her major, and an overall G.P.A. of 3.94. The SJU Gender Studies Committee honored her as a “Woman of Purpose,” and she is a recipient of the SJU Medical Alumni Scholarship.
McRobert is not surprised that others have recognized Del Collo’s talents – he has been very impressed with how she has handled her duties as animal care coordinator for the biodiversity lab. “Laura has developed her own style with the animals, and has become a leader within my group of researchers,” he says. “I will be sorry to lose her to vet school, but she assures me she will still help out whenever she is available.”
No doubt Horcey the mud turtle, and all of the other exotic animals in the lab, will miss her, too.
Contact: Patricia Allen, Associate Director of University Communications, 610-660-3240, patricia.allen@sju.edu
