Liana Van Zen

they/them
Undergraduate Fellow
Pawpaw Patrol

How did you get here? What brought you to Tyson?

I was always really interested in the natural world as a kid. I was interested in everything in general but that very quickly became birds. For a minute it was bugs, but now I have a phobia of dead bugs, so that didn’t work out. I didn't get to spend a lot of time outside as a kid because my dad had a lot of allergies. In middle school, there was a program called Adventure Club that took us on camping, backpacking, and river trips. Through that, I was able to combine the love of this theoretical nature that I was reading about in books and then actually be out in nature and out in the field. Past that into high school and college, I found that there weren't as many opportunities to get out there. This summer was the first summer that I was ever able to actually have the time to apply to one of these kinds of internship programs. I applied to Tyson just because I had heard a lot about it being at WashU and from St. Louis. I knew that it would be a really good place to have that first-ever field experience. So that’s how I ended up here.

Why did you choose your specific team?

I knew Jonathan Myers because I had taken community ecology with him. I think I had his team as like third option because I know him and trees are cool. I am interested in birds but also more broadly how birds exist within spaces. Of course, trees are a huge part of that. I saw for Pawpaw Patrol that it was 95% in the field. I was really excited about that because I think so much of college during the pandemic has been inside doing online stuff. I don't wanna do data entry, I wanna get out there. I also interviewed for the wildlife monitoring team they mentioned doing a lot of computer work. I figured I wouldn’t be a great fit for that this summer. When Anna told me, “We're gonna be out there like a lot,” I thought that was great.

How have your research/academic interests evolved as a result of being at Tyson?

I started realizing how data actually gets recorded and created. Before you do field work, you know the question you wanna ask and you know how you want to answer it, in a sense, but you don't know how you're actually gonna get the data. You don't know what it takes to get that data: money or equipment or time or people, just labor that is required to do it. I think it's given me more respect for that and maybe made me realize that I may need to rein in some of these questions.

What has surprised you about this summer?

With myself specifically, how quickly I was able to learn all this botanical knowledge because I do not come from a plant science background. My dad really liked plants so I have little trivia knowledge about plants, but not any of that basic understanding. It continues to be reinforced every day. If there was a species that I was struggling with and we continue seeing it in the plot, they would ask me what it is. But also, how willing people were to teach, regardless of the level of experience you had coming into it.

Do you have a favorite spot at Tyson?

We've been spending so much time in bottomland forests that I've started to really appreciate the lowland, muggy, shady kind of spot. There's a lot of cool like fallen logs and moss, and I found a salamander a bit ago. That's always fun.