Our Ecosystem at Risk A student’s study of bacteria in water suggests low levels of antibiotics could have an outsized impact By Andrew Thurston In early fall 2015, Corliss Kanazawa crouched at the edge of Hall’s Pond in Brookline, Massachusetts, and skimmed a test tube along the surface. Her shoes sloshing, Kanazawa (’16, SAR’18) took the sample back to a lab at the College of General Studies, where she is scrutinizing the pond’s tiniest residents—the bacteria—to learn how antibiotics may alter the ecology of our water. Early results of her study, conducted with natural sciences lecturer Sandra Buerger (CAS’00) as part of a grant for undergraduate research from the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning at CGS, suggest low levels of antibiotics could affect the types of bacteria that thrive in ecosystems like Hall’s Pond.