During her many years of experience and research as a wildlife rehabilitator, Lou Rea has:
- developed highly successful protocols for rearing orphaned infant and juvenile gray, fox and flying squirrels, eastern cottontail and marsh rabbits, and opossums;
- written a manual on rehabbing gray and flying squirrels, which provides standards of care to meet their physical, nutritional, emotional and social needs, based on knowledge of the natural history of these animals;
- developed and taught squirrel rehabilitation classes in the community education program at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Florida;
- pioneered the technique for removal of the parasitic larvae of bot flies from their squirrel hosts, without the risks to the animals of anesthesia or surgery;
- developed a tooth-clipping technique for treating and managing squirrels suffering from malocclusions without the risk to the animals of anesthesia;
- designed a nestbox to reduce predation on squirrels in the wild;
- cofounded and served on the Board of Directors of Florida Wildlife Care, Inc., a volunteer-run wildlife rehabilitation organization in northcentral Florida;
Her publications relevant to wildlife include:
- Kenyon, L. R. 1999. Diarrhea-free! Successful infant rabbit rehabilitation (part 1). Wildlife Rehabilitation Today 11 (fall): 4-9.
- Kenyon, L. R. 2000. Diarrhea-free! Successful infant rabbit rehabilitation (part 2). Wildlife Rehabilitation Today 11 (winter): 34-38.
- Slansky, F. & L. R. Kenyon. 2000. Lumpy squirrels-- bugged by bot flies. Wildlife Rehabilitation Today 11 (spring/summer): 24-31.
- Slansky, F. & L. R. Kenyon. 2001. Bot fly (Diptera: Cuterebridae) infestation of nest-bound infant eastern gray squirrels. Manuscript submitted for publication to Florida Entomologist.
Lou Rea received a B.S. degree in Nursing from the University of Wisconsin (Madison), where she also took graduate courses in nursing, psychology and social work. She furthered her graduate studies in the Nurse Practitioner program in the Schools of Nursing and Medicine at the University of Colorado (Denver). She is now retired from her 20+ year career as a professional registered nurse.
During most of her adult life, Lou Rea has worked to protect the environment, especially through her activities as a member of the Sierra Club in Wisconsin and in Florida, where she served on the Executive Committee of the Suwannee-St. Johns Group for several years. She cofounded and served on the Board of Directors of Friends of Alachua County (Florida), a community-interest and environmental activist organization.
Frank Slansky has been interested in insects since early
childhood, when his older brother showed him a monarch butterfly
that he had caught. As a professional entomologist, he is
especially interested in the nutritional ecology of insects-- his
research addresses the question of how the nutritional and other
characteristics of the diverse foods eaten by insects influence
their physiology, behavior and ecology. He has coedited a book on
this subject (F. Slansky & J. G. Rodriguez (eds.), 1987.
Nutritional Ecology of Insects and Related Invertebrates, 1016pp.
John Wiley and Sons, New York) and publsihed over 60 papers in
scientific books and journals, including:
- Scriber, J. M. & F. Slansky. 1981. The nutritional ecology of immature insects. Annual Review of Entomology 26: 183-211.
- Slansky, F. 1986. Nutritional ecology of endoparasitic insects and their hosts: an overview. Journal of Insect Physiology 32: 255-261.
- Slansky, F. & G. S. Wheeler. 1992. Caterpillars' compensatory feeding response to diluted nutrients leads to toxic allelochemical dose. Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata 65: 171-186.
- Slansky, F. 1992. Allelochemical-nutrient interactions in herbivore nutritional ecology, Chapter 4, pp. 135-174 in G. A. Rosenthal & M. R. Berenbaum (eds.). Herbivores: Their Interaction with Secondary Plant Metabolites, Vol. II Ecological and Evolutionary Processes. Academic Press, San Diego. 2nd ed.
- Slansky, F. 1993. Nutritional ecology: The fundamental quest for nutrients, Chapter 2, pp. 29-91 in N. E. Stamp & T. M. Casey (eds.). Caterpillars: Ecological and Evolutionary Constraints on Foraging. Chapman & Hall, New York.
- Slansky, F. 1993. Xanthine toxicity to caterpillars synergized by allopurinol, a xanthine dehydrogenase/ oxidase inhibitor. Journal of Chemical Ecology 19: 2635-2650.
- Slansky, F. 1995. Manipulating the nutritional ecology of pest and beneficial insects in IPM. In D. Rosen, F. D. Bennett & J. L. Capinera (eds.) Biological Control and IPM: The Florida Experience. Intercept, Andover, UK.
- Engelbrecht, N. E., R. P. Yeatts & F. Slansky. 1998. Palpebral myiasis causing preseptal cellulitis. Archives of Ophthalmology 116: 684.
- Slansky, F. & L. R. Kenyon. 2000. Lumpy squirrels-- bugged by bot flies. Wildlife Rehabilitation Today 11 (spring/summer): 24-31.
- Slansky, F. & L. R. Kenyon. 2001. Bot fly (Diptera: Cuterebridae) infestation of nest-bound infant eastern gray squirrels. Manuscript submitted for publication to Florida Entomologist.
Frank received a B.S. in Biology from the University of Illinois (Chicago) and a Ph.D. in Entomology from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. He has held several postdoctoral positions involving research and teaching at the Universities of Iowa (Iowa City), Oregon (Eugene), California (Irvine) and Wisconsin (Madison). He is currently a Professor in the Department of Entomology and Nematology at the University of Florida (Gainesville) where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in general entomology and insect ecology. He is a member of several scientific organizations, including the Florida Entomological Society, Entomological Society of America and American Institute of Biological Sciences.
He has worked toward environmental protection in Florida through his activities while on the Executive Committee of the Suwannee-St. Johns Group of the Sierra Club and as cofounder and member of the Board of Directors of Friends of Alachua County (Florida), a community-interest and environmental activist organization.