Researcher Spotlight
Meet Lydia Mathger
Research Associate, Hanlon Laboratory, MRC 214
Anyone who has spent time in New England has seen them. Slapped across car bumpers like a badge of honor, the stickers read: “This car climbed Mount Washington.” Climbing the summit by car is a popular way to explore New England’s highest peak, but taxing to car engines and brakes, as the nearly 8-mile road (with an average 12% gradient) can put a significant strain on a vehicle.
Now, think about biking up Mount Washington. Lydia Mäthger, Research Associate in the Hanlon laboratory, did just that last year, competing in the all-uphill race that’s quickly becoming known as the toughest hill climb in the world. And did very well, too, finishing 10th in the women’s category with a time of 1:24:47. She planned to ride in the August 2007 race as well, but the event was cancelled due to sleet, ice, and wind gusts of 75 miles per hour on the mountain. Clearly, this race is not for the faint of heart.
For Lydia, a native of Germany, biking is second nature. “I’ve ridden bikes all of my life,” she says. “Kids don’t drive in Germany until they’re 18, so if we wanted to get anywhere, we had to go by bike.” And the steepness of Mount Washington doesn’t seem to bother her. “As far as I’m concerned, the more hills the better,” she says. “I don’t want to go down, I just want to go up.”
Lydia participates in road biking races quite a bit, but mostly closer to home. The races are typically 20 to 30 miles in length. Most recently she raced in the Sterling Classic Road Race and the Myles Standish State Park Road Race in Plymouth. She belongs to the Cape Cod Cyclist Club, whose members get together twice a week to ride together around Cape Cod.
Lydia also trains by biking to work from her home in East Falmouth. “In the summer I don’t drive at all, and in the winter, as long as the roads are not iced up, I’m on my bike,” Lydia explains. She says the 45-minute ride is not only a great source of exercise, but a way to clear her head to and from work. “By taking the back roads, I’m also avoiding much of the frustrating summer traffic.”
Lydia received her undergraduate degree from the University of Sheffield, UK, where she studied with John Messenger, a colleague of Hanlon’s and co-author of his book Cephalopod Behaviour. She continued her education at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, UK on the southwest coast where the focus of her research was on the properties of reflective cells in squid skin, supervised by Sir Eric Denton.
In 2002 she received a prestigious Royal Society Postdoctoral Fellowship to study at the Vision Touch and Hearing Research Centre, Brisbane, Australia where she worked on a variety of projects, including reflective properties of fish and cephalopod skin and feathers of birds of paradise.
Lydia joined Hanlon’s group in 2004 as a postdoctoral student. Her research at the MBL focuses on the basis of color patterning in cephalopods like squid and cuttlefish. In particular, she is interested in light reflectors and how the different structures in the skin act together to create body patterns. “People don’t know much about how the different structures in the skin of cephalopods interact to achieve patterning,” she says. “My work seeks to determine the mechanisms and potential functions in the skin that enable cuttlefish to show uniform, mottle, and disruptive patterns.”
Lydia’s work on the transmission of polarized light in squid skin provided the first anatomical evidence for a “hidden communication channel” that the animals could use to remain masked to predators during camouflage. And her behavioral work on cuttlefish confirmed that while the animals change their appearance based on visual cues, they do so while being completely colorblind.
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Employee Spotlight
Meet Mike Toner
Painter, POM Shop
Michael Toner is a familiar face around the MBL. As the laboratory’s staff painter, he’s a very busy guy, responsible for making sure that things like campus exteriors and offices are properly maintained with a fresh coat of paint. At times he may be walking on rafters to reach the cathedral ceilings in the cottages, or reaching from the cherry-picker to paint the pinnacle of the Lillie Building. Michael has worked at the MBL since 1996, succeeding Walter Gonsalves. And for eight years before that he worked as a painter at WHOI.
But it was acting, not painting, that first brought Michael to Woods Hole. While studying political science and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1970s, Michael became intrigued by drama. “Instead of going into journalism, I thought of the ancient Greeks and what drama meant originally,” says Michael. “Ancient Greek theatre was a form of journalism. To me, drama is audio, visual, visceral — life stories on stage.”
In 1975 Michael moved back to the East Coast from Berkeley, first to Boston, Massachusetts and then to Woods Hole to perform in the Woods Hole Theater Company’s production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. This was a time when regional theatre was really coming into its own and New York City wasn’t the only place to be involved with quality companies, Michael recalls. “Woods Hole is a great place to perform,” says Michael. “And it’s a cosmopolitan area. There’s science and art—it’s wonderful.”
Michael became a permanent Woods Hole resident in 1985. For many years he performed in 3 to 4 full-length productions a year. He still manages to find time to perform in one-act plays at the Woods Hole Library and Fisher House for the Woods Hole Ladies’ Club, as well as read short stories at the Library. This winter, Michael will perform in Anton Chekhov’s “The Marriage Proposal” with Phyllis Goldstein and Valerie Schmidt on January 8, 2008 at the Fisher House. He will also be reading Saki’s “The Lumber Room” this winter at the Library.
While he prefers acting, Michael has directed Woods Hole Theatre Company productions in the past including the “Hitch Hiker,” made famous as a radio drama performed by Orson Welles, and this summer was a part of the lighting crew for the Company’s production of “Glimmer, Glimmer & Shine.” As a private non-profit, the Theatre Company depends on its volunteers to keep going, explains Michael. “There are many different ways to get involved,” he says. “From the technical end of things like lighting and sound, to costuming and makeup, to publicity and promotion.” But what about acting? “All you have to do is be human to act, and not fear the illusion of being on stage,” he says.
Michael has rented the same apartment across from the MBL campus for the last 22 years and is deeply rooted in community life here. He fondly remembers his first day on the job at the MBL and recalls a story of President John F. Kennedy, who, at one of his first press conferences, was asked the question, ‘What is the best part about being president?’ Kennedy answered by referring to an old Irish saying, which says that the best job is one you can walk to. Kennedy said, as President, all he has to do is walk down the stairs.
Michael’s first assignment at the MBL 11 years ago was to paint at the laboratory’s David House directly across the street from his apartment. “All I had to do was walk down the stairs,” he says with a grin.
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