Owen WallingfordYou’ve probably heard the term “invasive species” before: plants and animals that have been brought to an environment they aren’t native to, that then wreak havoc on that environment’s ecosystem.
You might remember hearing about the (justified) panic over emerald ash borers, the insects that have killed hundreds of millions of trees since 2002, or maybe you remember the viral “murder hornets” from a couple of years ago.
What if I told you a student at UK is doing research that just might be able to predict the next invasive species?
Sophia Bowden, a senior biology major in the College of Arts and Sciences, is doing just that.
One of six recipients of the 2026 Summer Sustainability Research Fellowships funded by the Student Sustainability Council and Office of Undergraduate Research, Sophia’s research is focused on comparing the allometric rates of different organs within animals.
Now, allometric rate is a very technical term, but if you’ve heard someone say: “Your brain isn’t fully developed until you’re 25,” then you’ve heard an example of an allometric rate. In simple terms, it’s how fast parts of your body develop compared to how fast your body develops. In this example, human brains have a negative allometric rate because it isn’t fully developed until after your body.
Previous research has shown that several invasive species have similar allometric rates in certain organs, but that data hasn’t been compiled into a single dataset yet. Sophia’s research aims to do just that.
Since she started researching in June, Sophia has combed through hundreds of research papers and has catalogued extensive data on eighteen different organs.
Not all of those hundreds of research papers come from modern sources. Many of them are decades old, and Sophia says they’re really showing their age.
“Papers from thirty-plus years ago are often very inconsistent compared to what we have now, and that’s been frustrating,” said Bowden. “But finding a perfect research article from back in the day is worth all the hassle of analyzing the old ones.”
For now, Sophia is only looking for data from mammals, since most allometric rate studies have been focused on them, and she says plenty can be learned from what she has already.
“My research reveals what gaps there are in data related to mammalian organs, which may have implications about how mammals function in their environment,” said Bowden. “There is much to know and more to find out!”
