Peter Fowler walks around the MSU Pollinator Performance Center to his two multi-colored hives. “This is Clive the Hive and Smelly Melly—the disease tends to create an odor,” he says, as though insisting the name isn’t needlessly cruel.
Fowler is a third-year PhD student in the MSU College of Veterinary Medicine’s Comparative Medicine and Integrative Biology Program. He’s studying apiological diseases and “beehavior” to;
1) better understand how the disease European Foulbrood (EFB) kills honey bee larvae and, 2) identify routes of transmission between honey bee colonies and geographical regions.
“Most of the [EFB] research has been done in Europe and Asia, which is surprising because there’s a huge commercial beekeeping industry in the US,” says Fowler. “EFB is a really bad disease here in Michigan; it’s very prevalent among beekeeping operations. Currently, beekeepers have only one antibiotic to control it, oxytetracycline, and antibiotic resistance is a big concern.”
Fowler is finding out how prevalent EFB is in apiaries through basic surveillance and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for the pathogen, Melissococcus plutonius, in honey bee larvae. Once he plates and grows the pathogen, he’ll test the isolates for antibiotic susceptibility and conduct whole genome sequencing to help clarify transmission routes, as well as genes with pathogenic potential.
“Because many commercial beekeepers migrate to fulfill important pollination needs, understanding strain types circulating in different regions could provide insight into the most common sources of transmission and spread. Based on that, we can identify possible mitigation steps, beyond simply keeping the disease in check with antibiotics.” Fowler insists he’s a while off from that point. “That’s a very large skillset I’m trying to develop. I’m in the beginning stages right now, and I’m new to all this.”
Fowler originally studied commercial photography, but saw early in his career that it wasn’t his ideal fit. His family’s good relationship with their veterinarian always hovered in the back of his mind. After an unhappy decade in advertising, Fowler restarted at community college, and worked his way through an undergraduate degree at the University of Washington, where he became interested in public health. This eventually led him to Michigan State.
“I knew as soon as I got into vet school that I wanted to pursue research as part of it,” says Fowler. Research always was on my mind. That I’d be working mainly with insects and arachnids, I had no idea! That just kind of happened, but I’ve really been enjoying it. There’s a lot of research that needs to be done, and I think veterinarians have a lot to offer the beekeeping world.”
Fowler had no research experience coming into veterinary school, so he signed up for the College’s Summer Research Program. Fowler worked with Associate Professor Dr. Jean Tsao in the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences to conduct tick research. “That was my first introduction into research in a structured way. It was formative for me. I loved doing field work, and Dr. Tsao continues to be an amazing mentor, even though I’m not in her lab anymore.”
COVID struck as Fowler entered his PhD program, so he continued his field work on the lone star tick with Tsao before he connected with Dr. Meghan Milbrath, assistant professor for the Department of Entomology and coordinator of the Michigan Pollinator Initiative with the MSU College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.“Dr. Milbrath was already doing a clinical rotation on honey bee medicine with veterinary students—which I missed out on because I was involved in a clinical rotation doing poultry research in Nepal—so, she was super excited about having a veterinarian come on board. We were awarded funding through the Rackham Endowment from the Rackham Foundation, which pays the majority of my salary. We’ve been awarded a few others, too, because there’s a lot of questions about honey bee diseases that haven’t even been approached at the very basic level.” (Fowler’s salary also is funded by Project GREEEN, which addresses key priorities and issues identified by Michigan’s agriculture industry groups. His work on EFB is in direct response to what beekeepers identified as a key problem.)
While Fowler’s current research is abuzz, another non-avian, winged creature has caught his eye. “I could see myself doing bat research. Bats have been in the background all through vet school for me. My first summer in vet school, I did an internship at the Organization for Bat Conservation. I also helped found The Bat Association of Michigan State University with my friend Ryan Mosley. We do bat walks and bat conservation education, as well as helping people who have bats in their homes—disease-wise, it’s obvious with coronaviruses that they’re super critical for research. Every once in a while, I’ll look at opportunities for veterinarians to do bat research in other countries.”
“Either way,” Fowler goes on, “I hope to continue bee research or, at the very least, work with beekeepers to help diagnose diseases in their hives. Veterinarians who know bee diseases are desperately needed right now.”
DVM, College of Veterinary Medicine, Michigan State University, 2020
Currently pursuing PhD, Comparative Medicine and Integrative Biology Program, College of Veterinary Medicine, Michigan State University (date undeclared)
Publications: see his full list at orcid.org/0000-0002-4369-6007