Becoming Visible – Adania Flemming

Adania Flemming pulled rubber waders on over her clothes, grabbed a net and stepped into the murky creek, stained with tree resin. She was looking for the tiny swamp darter — a quick, feisty fish that’s difficult to spot, with its blotches that blend with the tea-colored waters.

While the life history of the swamp darter’s Northeast populations has been widely studied, its Southeastern populations are largely missing from scientific literature. By investigating the darter’s life history in a tiny Florida creek, Flemming, a collections technician at the Florida Museum, said her research could lead to better management and conservation laws for these Southern populations and other species with similar geographic distributions.

As a novice ichthyologist, the project affords Flemming, a graduate student in the biology department of UF’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, a great opportunity to learn about a fish in its entirety, she said.

When there are more women scientists of color to serve as mentors, more opportunities present themselves for women and people of color, Flemming said.

Flemming hopes her experiences serve as inspiration for others who identify with her, be it as a female, a person of color, or an international student. She hopes that, ultimately, “a greater diversity of role models in science will translate into a greater diversity of ideas and innovations.”

Years of being outnumbered by men in science classes and labs created a desire to be as self-suffient as possible. She learned through some negative experiences to never to ask a question that she could find the answer to herself. Asking questions creates the idea that “you don’t know and you can’t do it,” she said — and that’s uncomfortable territory, since the bias that science is a man’s world still lingers today.

But ichthyologists are opening their eyes to gender inequality in the field and encouraging minorities to participate, she said.

The dialogue currently taking place among scientists around the topics of gender and race equality assures her she’s not alone and that other scientists know it exists and that they are willing to do something about it, she said.

“We can see change happening,” Flemming said. “The fact that we’re openly talking about it publicly…I think that’s a step in the right direction.”

It used to be that you’d go to a science conference, she said, and most of the women were wives or daughters of the scientists making discoveries — now, they’re the discoverers.

As she dissected a darter under a microscope in the ichthyology lab at the Florida Museum, investigating what it’d been eating, she continued to ponder the path that brought her to where she is now.

“I’m not sure any of it was really luck,” she said. “It was all hard work.”

Credits:

By: Kristen Grace and Alyson Larson/UF News

Published Date: December 11, 2017

Becoming Visible - Adania Flemming

Becoming Visible – Adania Flemming

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