U of A Professor Shares Knowledge of Tiny Creatures on Global Scale

Ashley Dowling was a mite unsure when he was trying to pick a Ph.D. topic. Twenty years later, he's a well-established acarologist leading a summer course at the University of Arkansas to share his expertise with other acarologists from all over the world.

Acarology is the study of mites, and while these arachnids are tiny, types such as the spider mite have a huge impact on agriculture around the world, feeding on plants including food crops and ornamentals, often causing serious damage. Other types, such as house dust mites and ticks, play a huge role in medical issues including disease transmission, allergies and asthma.

While working on a doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Michigan, Dowling attended a long-running acarology summer program at Ohio State University. He went on to teach at that program many times over the years.

"In 2017, the guy that ran the program for a long time was thinking about retirement," Dowling said. "No one at Ohio State was going to be able to take it over. The whole program is about mites, and there are not a whole lot of us studying mites. His choice was to find a new home for it or end it after 65 years. I had a hard time thinking about it ending so I offered to move it to the University (of Arkansas) and run it for the foreseeable future."

 

Program's New Home

When he agreed to take the acarology summer program to the U of A, Dowling realized pretty quickly neither he nor his department had any experience running such a venture. Dowling is a professor in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology in the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences. He is also a researcher and scientist with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

"When I agreed to do it, Global Campus was not involved," he said. "I didn't think a lot about it. I just said, ‘The program can't die; I'll take it and make it work.'"

He contacted the Global Campus about handling some business aspects of the program.

"We weren't really equipped to do it within the department," Dowling said. "My department head said, ‘If Global Campus already does this sort of stuff, why not see if they would be willing to take on the registration and the advertising side of it?'"

 

Services Available

The Professional and Workforce Division of the Global Campus works with U of A departments and units that want to offer professional development such as the acarology courses but require assistance such as:

• Creating a landing page on the training website
• Coordinating services for the day of the offering
• Technical support
• Registration
• Promotion that could include social media, marketing emails, a news announcement and fliers

The professional development can be offered either on campus, like the acarology courses, or online.

"Our partnership with Dr. Dowling and the acarology program is just one example of how the Professional and Workforce Development department supports other departments and colleges by adding value in unique ways," said Grant Brewer, director of Professional and Workforce Development. "With our department being part of Global Campus, I am not sure there is another example of a collaboration that exemplifies the mission of all the stakeholders involved to truly help provide a global reach for a program."

Dowling handles the academic and operational aspects such as:

• Hiring instructors
• Gathering specimens for study
• Scheduling classroom space
• Overseeing curriculum

Dowling also oversees housing arrangements for the students, many of them agricultural inspectors from other countries, as well as incidental, yet important, details such as parking.

Courses this year took place in the Agriculture Building on campus in May and June. Only two of 11 students in the second, longer course of the summer were from the United States. Another two are a U of A graduate student and lab technician.

 

Mite-y Knowledgeable

Dowling is what is known as a mite systematist, a scientist who describes, names, classifies and studies the evolutionary relationship of mites. He had always been interested in biology but was not sure which area to pick in graduate school. The professor who became his mentor explained he would be able to study many types of animals upon which mites are parasites.

"He proceeded to just tell me crazy stories about mites for 45 minutes," Dowling said. "I left his office and called my wife. I told her I was definitely coming to Michigan and working on mites. I had no idea what they are, I told her, but they really are everywhere."

The field is understudied, he said, leaving it wide open for scientists to explore.

"There are a handful of people in the U.S. working on it so you could kind of just do what you wanted to do and not step on toes," Dowling said. "It's about discovery and learning new things for me."

 

Learning Environment

A typical day in the summer program goes from 8:30 a.m. to 7 at night, a mix of lecture time and hours spent looking at specimens with microscopes. Most of the participants don't have extensive specimen collections available to study in their workplaces, Dowling said.

That's the main reason an online learning format would not be ideal, he said; it would require thousands of high-quality photographs.

The University of Arkansas' collection has grown since Dowling came to Fayetteville in 2008. Mites can be found in every type of habitat, he said, but most participants can't get the same level of training in their home countries, so government agencies are willing to pay to send them to the U of A. This year, the countries from which government employees came were South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the UK. The people from other countries such the Netherlands and Belgium were from industry.

Some participants stay in touch after camp and collaborate on projects later.

"We are all spread out over the world but when we get together we realize there are others interested in mites," he said. "We form a bond that way. I heard from some people last year who have been interacting regularly (since camp)."

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