E-mail a friend.

During her final semester at PC, Carly Eargle ’09 presented research on Capitol Hill during the Council on Undergraduate Research’s “Posters on the Hill” event. Eargle was one of only 60 undergraduates from across the country invited to participate.

“It is such an honor,” Eargle said, “and I am humbled that my research would even be considered. I am really very proud and surprised.”

Eargle presented her research at the Rayburn Office Building, a congressional office building for the U.S. House of Representatives. While in Washington, DC, she also toured the city and met with her Congressional Representative and Senator.

Eargle worked on most of the research, which was her Biology Honors project, as a junior, a year earlier than most students begin their projects.

For her research, “Pollen Profiles in Pond Deposition Basins and Associated Plant Community Structure in Young’s Pond, Clinton, SC,” Eargle took sediment samples to see if the pond’s pollen samples in the sediments were a true reflection of the plant communities.

According to Eargle’s research mentor, biology professor Dr. Michael Rischbieter, scientists sometimes assume that ancient pollen samples taken from the bottom of lakes and ponds can help determine how global warming, glacial episodes, and other climatic fluctuations have affected the earth.

“What we came up with,” said Rischbieter, “was the idea of testing this assumption with a fairly small environment to see if this assumption was valid.”

After taking the samples, Eargle made slides of the pollen that was extracted from various sediment levels, determined what kinds of plants the pollen was from, and then compared this with the plants from the surrounding area to determine if there was a statistical match.

“We found that the pollen distribution did not match the true distribution,” Eargle said, “thus raising questions about previous assumptions that paleoenvironments could be reconstructed on the basis of pollen analysis.”

The biology major and English and chemistry minor first presented her findings as part of PC’s Honors Research program during the fall semester of 2008. She continued with the research and completed it by the end of the spring 2009 semester.

In addition to presenting on Capitol Hill, Eargle presented at the Big South Undergraduate Research Symposium during the spring 2009 semester.