Water Scholar Awardee Spring 2023: Megan Linke

Megan Linke is a first-year Biology master’s student with a focus on Environmental and Organismic Biology at East Carolina University.

Her project “King rail habitat use in restored and managed wetlands of Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge,” was awarded with funding from the Water Scholar Program and takes place over the course of Spring and Summer 2023 and 2024.

“The king rail project has existed in a different capacity before,” Linke said. “Previously, we were working at Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge. It’s about two and a half, three hours north of Greenville by the Virginia border. We will be conducting very similar research except at Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge. We were invited to conduct research down at Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge because they added king rails to their Natural Resource Prioritization Plan and needed help monitoring the king rails.”

Last August, Linke said, she went to the refuge for two weeks to get a better understanding of the land and morphed her research into a project from there.

The field season started over spring break of this year, she said. During that period, Linke said, she and her research group did some king rail trapping.

“We were working on trapping the king rails to mark individuals with color bands to help us resight individuals via marsh bird surveys and camera trapping. ,” Linke said.

As the field season progresses, she said, the group will be looking for the king rails’ nests and monitoring them to gain insight into their reproductive success..

On top of that, Linke said, they will also be recording data on the habitat characteristics  at Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge.

“Habitat management is a big part of the Natural Resource Prioritization Plan. Some field sies are actively managed with fire, mowing, and water level control structures, and other sites are unmanaged and the water level fluctuates under a lunar tidal system. is Linke said. “We are investigating how the king rail population differ with changes in habitat and determining what habitat characteristics are associated with king rail presence and king rail breeding success.”

The king rails live in freshwater marsh, so we are investigating not only vegetative but also water characteristics as well. . Linke said some characteristics she will be looking at include thetype of vegetation, the height of the vegetation, the amount of open water versus emergent vegetation, but also the water depth.

Another part of her project, she said, includes identifying the importance of predators, such as alligators, on the research site.

“In the deeper water of our new site, we have alligators,” Linke said. “They could play a role in whether or not the king rails avoid a certain area. Salinity is also an important factor, as the king rail is a freshwater marsh bird and is really sensitive to salt.”

On rare occasions, Linke said, the king rail can be found in slightly brackish water which is fresh and saltwater combined. However, she said, the king rails have a sister species that are saltwater specialists.

When those two species come together, Linke said, what can happen is that the king rails are either outcompeted of the area or they start to hybridize together. She said with all of the different influences in mind, she wants to make sure to be able to mention those in her research recap.

“So far, we have caught four king rails,” Linke said. “That’s more than we caught last year. And we only went for a week this time! We will be going out over the next couple of weeks to try and trap some more rails since it’s a really good time to catch them at the beginning of the breeding season.”

It took the group a couple of days to figure out where the birds are “hanging out”, Linke said. After getting a better understanding of the area though, she said, they now have an idea of the best places to catch the king rails.

The most challenging thing about catching the birds, Linke said, is they are skeptical of humans and don’t like to expose themselves to open areas. Instead of catching them on foot, she said, they call them into a trap.

“We don’t catch them on foot, that would be way too hard,” Linke said. “Instead, we actually call them into a trap. It’s a little bit easier, but it’s still pretty intensive because we have to carry all the equipment out to the research site, set it up, and then take it down and carry it out again. There’s a lot of equipment involved.”

With the award Linke received from the Water Resources Center, she said, new equipment, such as salinity meters and water level monitors, will be bought. While compiling her research, Linke said, she will be looking into creating a habitat or species distribution model to use as a foundation for her final proposal of the project.

This kind of research is the first of its kind at Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge and has not been done similarly so far, she said. Since the breeding season will run from the end of spring until the middle of summer, Linke said, she will have to determine the end of the research period on the bird’s activeness.

“Starting this May, we are going to be moving down to the refuge permanently to conduct research on a daily basis,” Linke said. “It won’t just be about trapping. We will also be nest searching, monitoring nests, conducting habitat surveys, and monitoring water level and  salinity. It’ll be an exciting time.” 

The overall reason behind this project, Linke said, is to use the research and all the data they gathered to inform the refuge manager on how he can better manage the habitat for the king rails.

When she heard she was selected as a Water Scholar Awardee Spring 2023, she said, it made her “extremely happy” as she knew she could achieve personal goals of hers with this project. For her future, Linke said, she would like to become a faculty member at a university.

“I really want to be a professor one day,” Linke said. “I want to run a lab at a university, and I also want to teach. I can see myself mentoring other graduate students and conducting research in an academic setting. As a teaching assistant right now, going into a classroom is always a great experience. I want to continue that.”

If the opportunity comes up, Linke said, she wouldn’t want to miss doing a Ph.D. at ECU as well. Until then, she said, she will concentrate on teaching others and doing more research on the environment and wildlife.

Read more about the Water Resources Center

About Me

Name: Megan Linke

Age: 29

College: Thomas Harriot College of Arts & Sciences

Classification/Focus: First-year master’s student in Biology with a focus on Environmental and Organismic Biology

Hometown: Statesville, North Carolina

Bachelor of Science: Environmental Science with a minor in Biology and Geology