Once summer break returns each year, most people embark on beach trips or other vacation getaways. Anika Hurst, a student at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) and a Conestoga native, had other plans in mind this past June.

Hurst spent most of her summer conducting research in Australia with a group of six other students- two other students from EMU, three from Bridgewater College and one from James Madison University. This was the first excusion in a series of research trips funded by a three-year, $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

The research initiative, Tephritid Fruit Fly Multidisciplinary Australian Research Collaboration for Biosecurity, or T-MARC-BIO for short, was created with the goal of discovering ways to monitor and control the invasive species and reduce the negative effects of pesticide use globally. Tephritid fruit flies are a dangerous horticultural pest in many countries, and affect trade barriers between nations.

The group first landed in Sydney, where it spent a few weeks becoming oriented for its research a couple hours outside the city. Hurst and two other students then traveled to Queensland to work with the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, while the rest of the research group remained in Sydney to conduct lab work. Hurst and her group were focused on ecological field work and learning more about the behaviors of the Tephritid fruit fly. "Our goal was to look at the fruit fly and determine its flight patterns," said Hurst. "It's always been difficult to track them. We wanted to see if there was a bias in (the fly's) patterns."

Hurst and her group used harmonic radar tags to keep track of the insects. After marking the flies with the small tags, the students released them into papaya fields. The harmonic tags emit a frequency that researchers can use to find their location by using what is called a RECCO unit. RECCO units are primarily used in search-and-rescue efforts to locate survivors in catastrophes such as avalanches by receiving the frequency emitted from the harmonic tags. Hurst's group also conducted trials to determine if specific chemical compounds were more attractive to the flies, in an effort to assist with the management of the pest. "I absolutely loved it. It was such a beautiful trip and the work was fun," Hurst said. "The community and people I worked with were wonderful."

Hurst grew up in Conestoga, where she attended Conestoga Elementary School, and she graduated from Lancaster Mennonite High School in 2020. She is now majoring in environmental studies at EMU and minoring in Spanish and biology, and will return from her semester abroad in Peru in mid-December.

For more information on the T-MARC-BIO research project, visit https://tinyurl.com/tmarcbio.