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.