The semester comes to a close

It's been a while! I've been busy busy busy this semester teaching first year Environmental Science. It was a fun course to teach, we read three books, Silent Spring (Rachel Carson), A Short History of Progress (Ronald Wright), and Shovelling Fuel for a Runaway Train (Brian Czech).

The first addressed the increasing contamination of our environment with synthetic chemicals. The second addressed historic society collapses and highlighted how we are on a similar path. The third speaks of a different approach to economics, one that strives for a steady state and not economic growth.

The students had to complete a term project that investigated the Saint Mary's University Campus and suggested ways to improve sustainability. The projects ranged from reducing waste from Tim Hortons Cups to reducing the impact of water coolers by replacing them with hydration stations (water bottle fill-up sites) to powering the campus gym with energy harnessed from stationary bikes.

Today my students are writing their final exam (in fact I'm sitting here moderating it currently... perhaps I shouldn't be typing). I cannot believe a whole semester has went by. It feels like I've only just started - too bad I don't have a course to teach next semester! I really enjoy telling people about something really interesting (to me) and then seeing that knowledge come up at a later point (on an exam or in an assignment) - it shows that they were actually listening (and that I can actualy teach!).

Now it's onto the dry stuff, marking finals, marking term projects, inputting marks... I almost don't want to do it, because then it will really be over. I guess this means it's time for me to start a new chapter, and hope that my students move on from here with a positive attitude about the environment and continue taking courses in Environmental Studies (one can hope) :)

Continuing on a new path

Sorry for the second hiatus. To get you up to speed: I moved back to Halifax, started teaching, am continuing writing, and just picked up a 2nd part-time job doing program-related research for a Geography prof...

I don't think I'll be writing on fieldwork any more for a while, mostly because I haven't done any in almost a year. What I can write about is teaching while writing your thesis while doing research.

Teaching is actually much more fun than I thought it was going to be (don't tell my students I said that!). I teach a first year course, and I enjoy shaping developing minds (the students take everything I say as absolute truth, which is nice for a change after being a grad student). The prep isn't fun, but I like to talk, so the lecture part is relatively painless.

The writing is going well. I'm finishing up the first draft of my last chapter, and my first chapter is almost ready for submission (to a journal, not to my committee!). If I can get it accepted before I submit to my committe, then I won't have to do any revisions! At the same time, my supervisor just went away for a month, so I'm not sure how soon I'll be getting his edits back...

And enough of the hiatus

I've been back from the east coast for two weeks now. My computer was fixed as soon as I got back. It's all shiny and new with a new keyboard (I was previously missing the Esc key) and everything. The pink screen cover is even a nicer pink, more of a rose, than the original salmon.

I haven't written anything for the past two weeks because I have been working day and night writing, editing, and packing. I'm moving back to Halifax next weekend. I have a sessional lecturer position for the fall semester teaching 1st year Environmental Science (Environmental Challenges) at Saint Mary's University.

The position was difficult to get as I am techinally not finished my M.Sc. yet, but as I am nearing the end I had to get my supervisor to write me a letter confirming that, as well as submit a recommendation from the professor who regularly teaches the course (he's going on sabbatical this year).

As a SMU alumna, the professors and administration are familiar with me (which likely gave me an advantage). Either way, now I'm in the process of writing and editing a thesis WHILE prepping for a course (which starts in less than a month). As far as I can tell, I'm a sucker for punishment!

There are many benefits to this turn of events:
A) I get to move back to Halifax (I'm not the biggest fan of Peterborough)
B) I get a job in September
C) I get teaching experience
D) I get to drop down to part-time and pay less tuition :D

D is especially important, because if I didn't get this job I would have had to stick around Peterborough and pay full-time tuition in the fall. There is just no way I'll be written, revised, submitted to committee, defended, revised, submitted to the grad student office before Sept. 26th (the tuition cut-off date).

So all in all, it's a good thing! And I'm looking forward to moving :)

Heading east

This week I'm heading back to Newfoundland (where I'm from) for some much needed summer vacay. I figure I don't have much time left to take vacation when I want, for how long I want so I might as well take advantage while I can. Once I get a 'real job' and stop living in this fantasy world called grad school days off become a thing of the past (though a real paycheck will be nice).

So, between flying half way across the country and sending my computer back to Dell, I may be internet challenged for the next two weeks or so. Consider this my warning: I may post half as often (given my current rate of 1 post a week).

I'm both looking forward to the break in writing and dreading it. I don't particularly enjoy writing, but I'm at the point where it's going to slow me down to have to stop for two weeks... and it will be hard to get back into the swing of things when I resume.

Update: Finished first draft of chapter 1 (of 3) and have received it with editing from my supervisor. Working on first draft of chapter 2 now :)

The worst possible thing happened to me... with not so bad results

This past weekend, as I'm starting to feel the pressure of my thesis looming, I decide to take papers home and work. On the weekend. Now I know many of my fellow grad students do this - all the time - however I do not. I made a deal with myself to not work evenings and weekends, and to treat my graduate degree as a job (and a low paying one at that) after the torture of completing my undergraduate honours thesis while doing six courses (in an effort to go to vet school, which I didn't even end up doing).

But now, with deadlines looming and the aspect of paying ANOTHER semester's tuition, I have decided to get my ass in gear. So I brought home papers and set myself up in my desk, upstairs in the house I am house sitting for a prof. Perfect office, with windows all around and a great breeze, a comfortable chair and lots of light. The only thing is it's as far away from everything else in the house as you can get. Mind you, this is just a two-storey house, so it's not that far, but when you're in the middle of reading/writing/searching, the walk to the kitchen seems like forever.

It was in the afternoon when I decided to take a break and do some laundry. As the TV and laundry are both downstairs, I balanced my laptop precariously in the laundry pile and walked down the stairs. On the very last step I shifted my weight and tipped the laundry pile... spilling my laptop onto the hard floor. I heard cracks and saw plastic fly.

Want to make a grad student have a meltdown? Throw their computer. My computer, with all my pictures, data, chapter files... I couldn't breathe. I picked it up (gingerly) and ran to the kitchen to plug it in. I PRAYED it would turn on. It did. The screen lit up. I signed in. Apparently the only damage was to the casing. I sighed a huge sigh of relief and IMMEDIATELY plugged in my external harddrive and backed up all my data/writing/music/pictures (something I had been lax about for the past few months).

Then I called Dell. Since I have complete care, they will fix all the broken bits. I just have to send my laptop to them. Unfortunately, that means 10 business days without my computer. Luckily I'm going on vacation next week, which makes up at least 5 of them. And I will borrow an old laptop from my supervisor until I get mine back. So after two years with my computer, it's going in for an overhaul and will come back (hopefully) like new.

Not too bad for throwing my whole life on the floor.

To graph or not to graph, that is the question...

I have generated most of my statistical graphs in Systat, the statistics program I use predominantly (learning R was too hard (read: time consuming), though I realize its MANY great advantages). The problem with these graphs is that they are not easily edited and often appear jumbled together.

I am preparing my thesis in manuscript form, which means ready to submit to journals for publication. I've been sending my supervisor bits and pieces, and the terrible Systat graphs were one of the things he pointed out as needing to change. Just regraph them in Excel, he says, no big problem. And it wouldn't be, if I could find my spreadsheet with all the data. Apparently I generated it in Systat, and then accidently only saved the graph, not the data sheet.

So after spending two hours searching through every data sheet I had on my computer (in Systat, Statistica AND Excel form), I come to the conclusion that I definitley do not have it. So I'll have to start from scratch. Redo it. The most dreaded of all stats problems (at least for me).

And then I did it... took all of 30 minutes! Some quick calculations and a pivot table and I'm done like dinner. I could have saved myself two hours if I had just done that to begin with. Sometimes I think it's subconcious procrastination. My mind knows it will be faster, so it convinces me that it would be more work... and then I go about it the roundabout way (usually with distractions).

Hybrid flying squirrels are not science fiction...

Recently the PhD candidate in my lab, Colin Garroway, along with our supervisor and other collaborators published a paper "Climate change induced hybridization in flying squirrels" in the journal Global Change Biology (see abstract/PDF here).

This is big news for climate change proponents... two species of flying squirrel at their respective northern and southern range boundaries have been shown to be hybridizing. The range boundary of southerns has been moving north with climate change, and therefore has increased the contact between the two species. This could in effect reduce biodiversity as two species merge to become one.

Anecdotely, I had southern and northern flying squirrels using the same nest tree at the same time, though I could never find the cavity and therefore I could not confirm if they were using the same cavity or not.

But more importantly, this story is not restricted to the academic journal. It has been featured on the Trent University website.

It is slated to appear in the Globe and Mail, and they have been in contact with science television programmers. This is great! Getting the story out to the public, those who influence change (since climate change is a policitically controlled issue) is critical. I'm glad the that the communications offices at Trent and MNR understand this and make an effort to publish these stories!

Wanted: A productive work environment

Graduate student offices have a reputation for being crappy. Crappy location, crappy desks, crappy ventilation, the list goes on. But here at the university who shall remain nameless they are especially bad.

Now that's an exaggeration. The old university buildlings have nice grad student offices, they even have windows! It's the new buildling that seems to have been built with a lack of foresight. The major grad student office is in the middle of the building, surrounded by classrooms and offices on all sides. So no windows. NO NATURAL LIGHT. How do they expect people to work without natural light? That must be an OHS issue (note to self: look up OHS regs).

At other universities I have visited, supervisors have an office and a lab, often in close proximity, where their grad students work/have desks. I like that idea because then the students develop a working relationship with the other students in their lab, and always have access to their supervisor. On the other hand, your supervisor would then ALWAYS have access to you.

That's the one thing I like about this windowless office full of corralled grad students. ONLY grad students have keys to this office, so there's no way your supervisor can sneak up behind you and catch you on Facebook... for the third time... this morning.

When it's all said and done, these offices aren't all bad. But, since I'm moving into a house with an open concept office (with windows on 3 of the 4 walls), I may just move my desk home. That way I can know the weather without having to look it up online!

Cold feet... warm heart?

One thing I try to avoid while doing fieldwork is getting cold. It makes everything seem longer and more trying when you are cold. If you are warm, you can go all day in the winter and enjoy being outside. It's not so easy if your hands or feet are freezing.

On that note, I'm not sure why winter hikers for men and women are so different, but I can tell you that men's hikers seem to be made with much higher quality than anything I can get for myself. After working in snow for a month in 'winter' hikers (and consequently, freezing my feet for a month), I broke down and bought snowboots. Huge rubber bottomed leather topped boots with a removable liner - they showed promise.

I worked with the PhD student often, tracking squirrels all day in the snow. Me in my honkin' snowboots and him in his winter hikers. Me in huge overall snowpants and him in lined khakis with gators. Me in a huge winter jacket and him in a light raincoat. Me in a hat and him with a bare head. Basically I was dressed for a blizzard and he was dressed for cool fall weather. Guess who ALWAYS got cold and started to complain? Guilty as charged.

Besides his man hikers, the other thing he wore that I envied were a pair of long leather mitts. They were from Mark's Work Wearhouse and I developed a false hope that maybe, just maybe, they would carry them in an x-small or small. I finally broke down and dropped by Mark's after one extra-frosty day in the woods. I found the mitts and searched the sizes. Medium and larger... probably all sold out I thought to myself. So I found an employee and asked to get a pair in - apparently Medium is the smallest size. Who makes mittens from a M up? Men's mitten companies, obviously.

So, to date I have not found comparable products... but I keep the hope that I was not the only woman requesting comparable winter hikers and mittens, and that maybe that information will get passed on to the powers that be. Maybe then women can get some decent winter work clothing.

Do I have permission to trap?

Trapping on or near private land is always interesting. I trapped on both public land (which was surrounded by cottages) as well as in a private sugar stand. Both situations had their benefits (and disadvantages).

Trapping on public land that is so close to property owners means their interest is instantly peaked. And yes, informing the public about research is very important. But EVERY day, EVERY time you go to do field work having to explain yourself and what you're doing (until each individual resident is informed) can be a bit time consuming. You'd figure, with human nature, that word would get around about what you're doing and why you're there... And then there's the dog owners who think it's a great idea to follow your trapline with their dog as their afternoon walk (which is obviously conducive to catching squirrels).

On private land it's a bit easier, as you explain yourself to the owner once and that's taken care of. BUT neighbors like to keep an eye on each other's property, and then send the cops in to check it out if there's a vehicle they don't recognize on the farm next to them. I speak from personal experience. Luckily I was wearing my Trent University t-shirt and pink rubber boots, so I looked pretty harmless... and the cop was really only interested about how the turkeys were in the sugar stand (apparently he hunts them there - I assume when he's off duty).

AND then there's the men who stop (usually when I'm parked on the side of the road with my field truck, getting ready to track my squirrels or check my traps) to ask me if I need any help. Because a girl can't just stop on the side of the road and walk into the forest... she MUST be in distress.

Or the gas station attendant, who assumes I am harvesting the squirrels for their furs!?!?! Honestly, these things are smaller than chincillas.

But overall, I usually get along ok. I don't ever have to worry about having to replace a flat tire or being broken down. Someone will always stop. Somedays it's good to be a girl :)

And now I'm writing, writing and writing some more

I haven't written anything since I got back from CSEE '09 because I've been incredibly busy doing and redoing modelling selection for my squirrel nests. Logistic regression + AIC by hand (and by hand I mean excel spreadsheet) is time consuming. And even more so when you input values as words and not as 0s and 1s, because Systat doesn't tell you which it labels as 0 or 1. Of course, I don't realize this until I'm sitting in my supervisor's office proudly showing him my results (which I hadn't looked at in-depth yet). He asks me, which is 0 and which is 1? I stare dumbfounded at the results.

So back to the drawing board, I recode my data and run 3 series of logistic regressions for 3 different questions... plus all the AIC model selection all over again. Needless to say, all my data will be coded from now on. Such a simple thing, but I assumed that it would tell me which one it coded as 0, and which one as 1. And you know what assuming does... Seems so reasonable, but I have to remind myself that it's a statistics program, it is made to be overly complicated and tricky. It can't have its user's analyses go smoothly :S

And so, finally, with the modelling done and redone, I'm actually at that point in time. ACADEMIC WRITING. The bane of my life, the culmination of two years of hard work, sweat and tears.. I'm not looking forward to this.

On the bright side, it means I'm ALMOST done. Almost being a vague word meaning anytime with the next 2-6 months, depending on my work ethic. Too bad I live in Ontario, land of tempting camping trips and sunny afternoons too nice to sit in an office.

Back in one piece

After a particulary long wait in the airport on the way to the conference, the trip back was quick and short. I even had time to sit in Toronto and eat a nice lunch before heading back to Peterborough.

CSEE '09 was big. There were many talks going on in many rooms at all times, so none of the rooms were really full. The talks were broken into rough categories, but with so much overlap, sometimes seemingly related talks were held in different rooms, often in different buildlings. This meant that in between each talk you had to leave during question period and scramble to another buildling to see the next talk you were interested in, often after the speaker for the next talk had already started.

The conference package included a reusable mug (excellent idea!), a reusable bag (excellent idea!), and a t-shirt(who actually wears them?). The coffee breaks had good munchies and the lunchs (in the Dalhousie cafeteria) were hot and delicious. Strangely enough, the 'banquet' on Saturday night did not have a sit down meal, instead hors d'oeurves and roast beef sandwiches (no veggie option)... I was under the impression that banquet meant a feast, so I googled the definition:

"A banquet is a large public meal or feast, complete with main courses and desserts" according to Wikipedia. I thought so!

Compartively to OEEC, I was expecting more in the talks department. I actually didn't see any talks interesting enough to discuss here, except the plenary speaker, Krebs of the snowshoe hare cycles fame. He spent his first 3 slides lambasting the government of Canada for not providing enough research funding (Canada actually provides less than Israel currently) and for specifically not providing enough funding to ecology and evolution research (physics gets 3x as much). It was captivating, especially since NSERC representatives were giving a talk right after his.

My presentation went well, I even got the "You did good" from the supervisor... I'm going to ignore the slightly suprised tone he used and I will try not to be offended. And now it's back to the grind... time to write this damn thesis.

Prepping my presentation

I'm in the airport on my way to Halifax for the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution (CSEE) conference. I'm flying a few days early to spend time with some friends... and that meant showing my presentation to my supervisor on Thursday. Now, if you read the last post you know I did the chemical immobilization course all last week (in fact, until Thursday at 12). Guess when I had to present to my supervisor? Thursday at 12.

Needless to say, I did not have any time to change my presentation from the OEEC conference. I do plan to present some additional data but that had to be added verbally on the fly while I presented to my lab. The two PhD students went before me, and of course both of their presentations were well composed and they were well spoken. Then it was my turn... every slide had a problem, sometimes my intonation was wrong, my conclusion was weak... and I was missing some data (which I likely will not get analyzed in time for the conference).

Groan. Not my finest moment, but at least all the bad things have been pointed out to me and I conveniently now have a week to fix them. I'd rather make an ass out of myself in front of my lab than a whole room of CSEE conference goers! That's my first task for tomorrow - edit presentation. Wish me luck!

Do you have immobilization?

Well up to now, no. As I'm nearing the completion of my thesis, I've been applying for jobs and school programs. I'm trying not to put all my eggs in one basket, and all other sayings that basically recommend having options. And in this hunt for jobs, I've been asked "Do you have immobilization?"

Sure, I've seen it done. I've even helped draw up drugs in an emergency situation when I was volunteering with a vet. But no, I do not have the chemical immobilization of wildlife course. And with this in mind, I approached my supervisor. I asked him if I could get in on the next immobilzation course. He asked me if it would benefit my thesis... and I had to say no. Then I added that it would greatly benefit my life AFTER my thesis. And since a scientist cannot argue with logic, he agreed that I could do the next course that was offered.

That was Friday. Guess when the next course started? Monday. I scrambled and showed up Monday ready to go. So what have we learned? Lots of protocols, guidelines, drug names... lots of dry stuff. But then this afternoon we went to a firing range, learned how to set up tranquilizer darts and shoot dart guns. This is where it got really cool. We even got to try blow darting... very jungle-like. And then we finished off the day by doing two necropsies, a wolf and a fisher. Not too shabby!

Tomorrow's d-day (cue impending doom music). The dreaded test. I need 80% to say I "have immobilization". Now back to studying...

Where flying squirrels go to count sheep...

I tracked squirrels to find their nest cavities, which I then measured (eg. volume, the direction the opening faces, opening area). Flying squirrels are secondary cavity nesters, which means they use cavities excavated by another species, such as a woodpecker.

A regular cavity looks like the one on the right. If you're lucky, once you track a squirrel to its tree you can hit the tree with a stick and a squirrel will either stick its head out of the cavity or actually run out and up the tree. If you're REALLY lucky, you may even get a glide right out of the cavity to another tree. That's always fun to see :) If you look really closely, you can see the nose of a squirrel towards the bottom of the cavity circle.

But then sometimes northerns shrug convention and do this to me. It's not new news that flying squirrels build leaf nests. It was just a little unexpected given the cold winter temperatures. Southerns do not even build leaf nests this far north. So when I stumbled upon my first nest, I thought it would likely be an outlier. But then I found more and more leaf nests...

So that brings us to this winter. This winter I collected several known leaf nests from last winter and deployed them with temperature loggers to look at the difference between outside (ambient) temperature and temperature inside the nests.

So far analysis of that temperature information shows that leaf nests are likely equivalent to tree cavities for buffering capacity. Stay tuned for more rigorous comparisons soon.

Students go to conferences to give talks?

Apparently. And I was under the distinct impression it was to drink entirely too many free pitchers and party grad-student style - all kidding aside, I just got back from OEEC 2009. If there's anything I know about science, it's that it LOVES acronyms.

OEEC is the Ontario Ecology and Ethology Colloquium, which was held at Queens University in Kingston this year. Students from universities from all over Ontario come together to give talks about their research or to show their research proposals. The subjects included sexual selection, climate change, population biology, environmental contamination, animal behaviour... the list goes on.

As with every conference, there were some good and some bad. Some of the interesting talks included one about nest morphologies in the yellow warbler by Vanya Rohwer at Queens University (supervisor: Paul Martin - what an unfortunate name to get stuck with). Yellow warblers make thicker and warmer nests up north than they do further south. He tested the temperature differences in these nests and found the thicker ones (which incorporated feathers and fluffy plant material) to be warmer. The thinner southern nests are more appropriate for warmer, wetter weather, which you find in southern Ontario. Whether they are locally adapted or showing plasticity remains to be seen.

Another interesting talk was about male seismic (vibration) signaling in jumping spiders by Sen Sivalinghem at University of Toronto (supervisor: Maydianne Andrade). I had no idea jumping spiders did mating dances to attract females, nor that they actually vibrated when they did them. First he classified different frequencies of vibrations, from courtship to aggressive courtship to male rivalry. Then he looked at virgin females and mated females and which behaviour the spiders exhibited to them. The males were more likely to make courtship vibrations for virgin females and aggressive courtship vibrations for mated females.

My talk went well. It was titled "Thermal properties of tree cavities in winter and implications for flying squirrels". The fact that I study flying squirrels usually helps take the edge off, and keeps people's attention (at least a little bit). Of course I spent the two days before the conference putting in 12 hour days trying to prep my talk, after assuming that the last talk I gave was "good enough". It didn't take me long to realize that I had to develop some new ways to display data when I looked at some slides that stated findings with no depictions of the results :S

Of course, I hadn't booked time with my supervisor to go over my presentation, and by the time I realized how much work I needed to do, it was Friday afternoon. And I was home. I sent my supervisor several garbled emails (to which he replied he did not understand) looking for stats explanations. Finally I broke down and called the PhD student, nearly begging for help. He walked me through my graphical dilema like a pro and I had a list of steps to create some nice depictions in no time :) Andrea:1 Procrastination: 0

Overall, the conference was interesting and good practice for the CSEE (Canadian Society of Ecology and Evolution) conference in May.

Flirting with my dream job

A couple of weeks ago The Daily Planet was at Trent University filming a segment of "Science in the City" with Alan Nursall for an upcoming episode. It was announced through a university news portal and on the morning of I went through extra preparations (and got up extra early): nice outfit, extra makeup, straightened my hair... I caught the bus and showed up in Gzowski (where they were filming). The photo above was taken by a Trent University publicist and was included in all their news items about the filming and subsequent broadcast of the segment.

There was a group already filming the experiment (which was putting together powerless MP3 player speakers), so I sat down and watched. The atmosphere was humming with energy, and I really hoped they would film it more than once. In fact, they did! After they took the mics off the group filming, a guy with a clip board approached us and asked if we wanted to be next - we said of course! After signing away all of our rights, we were given mics and the sound guy let us listen to each other talking in a big set of headphones.

Then we crowded around the table and started the experiment. If you said something particularly witty or well explained, they would ask you to repeat it. Overall, the experience was very exciting! I'm just mad at myself for not sticking around to chat with Allan about his transition from science to journalism. Being a science broadcaster on the Discovery Channel is definitely my dream job!

The anticipation of the last three weeks, waiting to see if I made the cut, was almost unbearable... It aired last night, and I made it!!! I've posted the link here - I'm the girl with the blonde hair (you'll recognize me from my display pic) and he calls me by my name, Andrea. Enjoy!

How to find the needle in the haystack, that is if you've deployed it with a radio collar

I've always wanted to radio-track an animal, ever since seeing it on National Geographic or some other Discovery Channel program when I was a kid. We've all seen it, a scientist holding a huge antenna (or maybe it's mounted on the back of a truck), tracking tigers or mountain lions or bears - something big and ferocious (and far-ranging).

So when I took on my project, I was really excited to track my first flying squirrel. Luckily, the antennas are much smaller (because squirrels don't move nearly as far as larger mammals) and the larger the antenna, the further away it can detect a signal. Especially since we don't drive around in a truck, we hike through the forest to find the squirrel's tree.

Since I was interested in squirrel nest trees (and more specifically, the cavities they used), I would trap squirrels at night, attach a radio collar and let them go. Flying squirrels are nocturnal, which means they are active at night, so we would leave and come back in the day when they were asleep in their nests. That way I could find the cavities they used.

To find them, you just follow the beep. Whichever direction is the strongest sounding beep on your received is the direction they are in. Every now and then a rock face or hill can throw you off, but you soon discover your error as soon as you get to the top, and the reception is clearer. The trickiest part is when you get down to two or three trees that are close together. Squirrels tend to nest high in the trees, so it's not as simple as pointing the antenna at the tree at face height. You have to angle and twist and turn to make sure you have the right tree.

Looking for cavities always helps... if there are two trees, and one has several obvious cavities and the other has none, they are more likely in the one with the cavities. You still need to double check though. My favorite way is to hit the tree with a stick - if the cavity isn't really deep, a squirrel will poke its face out of the cavity to see what's hitting its tree (which doesn't seem like a great survival strategy I know). Years ago this was actually how biologists caught flying squirrels, by netting them out of their cavity holes (it seems like such a cowboy tactic - squirrel wrangling).

All in all, it's like playing hide and seek with such an advantage that the seeker always wins. And finding a squirrel's cavity is very satisfying (especially if you can get an impromptu glide out of a squirrel by banging on the tree)!

Winter gear: Just mush

The field site where I measured cavity temperatures was at a research property owned by Trent University. It is an old farm property complete with mature sugar maple forest. There is a gate and dirt road in the summer, but in the winter this gets snowed in, so you have to walk into (and around) the property.

To set up temperature loggers in the cavities I outfitted them with microchip detectors (to detect any flying squirrels that went into the cavity) and used a "treetop peeper" (camera on an extension pole) to check the cavities for any other small creatures that could be using them. This was to make sure the cavities were empty when I recorded temperatures, so that I was getting the insulating effect of the wood, not any heating effects of animals sitting on my temperature logger.

The microchip detectors had to be attached to large batteries, and the treetop peeper was stored in a large waterproof case, so getting gear in and out of the site was no easy task. Instead of carrying it all, the PhD student had the brilliant idea of taking a snowmobile sled, loading it with the gear and attaching the tree lanyard as a harness. Now getting all the gear in and out was a breeze... unless the snow was wet and sticky, which in that case it was still pretty difficult to pull the sled. BUT once you broke a trail, it was smooth sailing all the way back out.

Not to mention my legs were in excellent shape by the end of the winter!

Learning to climb

My research requires both inserting temperature loggers
into cavities and measuring the internal dimensions of cavities. Many of these cavities are out of a ladder's reach, which means we have to climb trees to measure them.

Yes, climb - not the free-climbing of your childhood, when you had not yet realized your own mortailty. This is the safety equipment riddled, muscle aching, uncomfortable climbing of adulthood - complete with spurs, harness, lanyards, helmet and rope.

I was taught to climb by two male students in my lab. Now I am dedicated to equality of the sexes, especially being a female graduate researcher and all, but they just make it look easy. The upper body strength of a rugby player versus my upper body strength (where my workout is carrying groceries home from the store) does not even compare. It's hard work, and I'm glad I did it in the winter (when you can never get too warm and there are no biting flies!).

That aside, it's pretty fun! And getting that high in a tree
offers a great view of the surrounding countryside! Once
you get comfortable and lean back, it's actually quite relaxing
(until you have to start climbing back down).

The scariest part is if you lose your footing. The lanyard and harness are there to slow your fall out of the tree, and turn it into more of a slide, but a very uncomfortable one at that. I know a person with scars going up his stomach from sliding down a large portion of a tree with the lanyard and harness attached.

You try your hardest to get a good footing, and stick the spurs in deep. There's no kicking involved, just stepping straight down on them and letting your body weight do the work. But every now and then a piece of tree flakes off (the piece with your spur in it) or the tree is just too frozen/hard to get your spurs in very deep. That's often when you slip. It's not that I'm afraid of heights, but I certainly am afraid of falling. There were a couple of times last winter that my spur slipped and my heart skipped a couple of beats (and it kinda felt like it left my chest and made a new home in my throat).

All in all, climbing is an interesting and challenging skill to have, and I am glad I learned it. Will I climb just for fun? Probably not... I still get the rugby player to climb "tough" trees for me :)

Trapping is an art best left for tall men

To trap flying squirrels, I mount brackets on trees and place tomahawk traps on top of the bracket. The higher the trap is on a tree, the more capture success it will have. Now picture your 6' co-worker setting traps as high as he can reach, and then sending me (5'4) to set them.

See the problem? I spent half of my winter trying to scramble up trees with traps totally out of my reach. And to put the bait in the trap (peanut butter on the little peddle that shuts the door once its stepped on), I need to be "face and eyes" into the trap.

After about the 6th time climbing a pine's dead lower branches and then sliding down the tree, getting stabbed by the nub left by the branch when it broke off on the way down, I decided I needed a step of some sort - and I choose a milk crate for that purpose, because it was light and sturdy. The milk crate was my sidekick all winter, giving me the extra height needed to set traps with ease.

Spring is here - leeks are sprouting!

Yesterday I was in the field collecting the last of my winter cavity data when we noticed wild leek sprouts. I was ecstatic! The PhD student I work with, Colin (I will likely mention him a lot), and I picked as many shoots as we could... which equalled out to be just enough for each of us to sprinkle on a salad (or in my case, left over Pad Thai).

There was a big patch of "untouchables" - why? As Colin was leaning in to pick some, he noticed how there was much less snow in that patch than elsewhere... and then he noticed the hair... apparently deer do not have the profound respect for leeks that I do and have no problem bedding down on them the previous night.

If you've never had leeks before, their flavor is in the middle between garlic and onions... if you have, you know how delicious they are! I have posted a picture of the sprouts I took - it was exciting because I have a new macro lens that I haven't had much practice with yet... needless to say after lying on the ground for 10 minutes in my cargo pants I was feeling the effects of melting snow (luckily it was 10oC and the day was almost over).

My Project (the dry stuff)

First things first, what do I research?

I'm looking at two species of flying squirrels (Glaucomys) in Ontario. Southern flying squirrels (G. volans) are moving north with climate change, and that could have impacts on the populations of northern flying squirrels (G. sabrinus) that live further north.

What are my objectives?

I'm interested in the possibility that these two species could be competing for nest trees (cavities) when they live in the same area. As well, southern flying squirrels could be passing a parasite to northern flying squirrels that northerns are not adapted to. Both of these interactions could put negative pressure on northern flying squirrels.

How will I test my objectives?

Nest cavities would be most critical in winter, when temperatures are low. I will record tree cavity temperatures during that time, and model which cavities are warmest using measurements from inside the cavities.

I want to know if southern flying squirrels are nesting in the warmest cavities, so I will also measure known flying squirrels nest cavities to see where they fit in the model. I think that in sites where they are only one species, both northerns and southerns would use the warmest cavities. In areas where there are both species, I think that southerns would use the warmest cavities (they have been shown to be more aggresive than northerns in defending nest boxes).

I will also test both species for the parasite Strongyloides robustus. It lives in the intestine and has no measureable effect on southerns, but causes harm to northerns. To test for the parasite, I will collect scat samples on a north-south gradient in Ontario, to see if it is moving north with southerns.

So that's the gist of it - my Coles Notes version :) Now onto the interesting part, field work - the good, the bad, and the ugly... stay tuned

I just want to introduce myself...

Here I go. I'm new to the blogging scene, but have followed the travel blogs of several friends. And since I'm not going anywhere exotic anytime soon, I figure instead I will write about what I do every day = scientific research.

Now, before you go cross-eyed and leave, bear with me. I believe science can be both fun and interesting - and that's what I intend to show in this blog :) First I will discuss my graduate research, which is on flying squirrels in Ontario, and then from there, who knows? New research, field work I help with, etc. etc. The possibilities are endless!

I don't take myself too seriously, and I hope you enjoy my light hearted look at biology, field work, and whatever else science has to offer :)