Some National Geographic Sh*t aka Eider Banding

In August I had the opportunity to help out with banding male eider ducks off the coast of Nova Scotia - this is some real National Geographic Sh*t! I'm not kidding, this type of field work is why I became a biologist in the first place!

Some background: Eiders are the largest ducks in the northern hemisphere. They have several stages of plummage and moult twice a year. Females raise the young without any help from the males. For more detailed information about the common eider, check out the Hinterland Who's Who site here.

This sets the stage for catching eider ducks to band. In late summer, males create large "rafts" offshore and moult their breeding plummage. For 2-3 weeks they cannot fly as they grow back their flight feathers. This is when we target them because otherwise they would just fly away as we approached.

This is where it gets exciting. It's a big operation, including a fishing boat, two zodiacs and a helicopter. The helicopter flies to find the rafts, which can be seen from the air. Then the helicopter radios the fishing boat, which travels to the rafts (you can spot them on the water once you get in the vicinity).

Raft of ducks

Once the fishing boat finds the birds, the zodiacs deploy with two people each. They stay ~180 degrees from each other and circle the eider ducks, forcing them into a tight cluster.

Circling the ducks

Once the ducks are in a dense group, the helicopter flies over the fishing boat and zodiacs, and a gunman (harnessed to the helicopter) shots a net gun into the group, efficiently netting the birds. Each net is packed with an inflatable tube, which is triggered by water. Once the net inflates, a zodiac sweeps in and the person in front drags the net of birds into the boat. The birds are then brought to the fishing boat for processing.

Netting the ducks - they learn fast and start to dive!

On the boat the birds are untangled from the nets and packed into fish crates to await processing. Processing includes sexing (99% are male but you get a few immature females too) and banding birds, which are then released. The aim is to process as quickly as possible so the birds don't spend too much time out of water.

Picking birds from the net

We can learn a lot about eiders by banding them. Duck bands that are recovered elsewhere in the world can tell us what locations they migrate to and their flight paths. Age can also be derived from bands, some of which have been found 20+ years later!

My first banding!

Needless to say, it was an exciting two weeks, and I look forward to helping again next year :)

The states finally got something right!

And those things are USGS Webinar Courses for Natural Resource Managers. The United States Geological Survey has a "Status and Trends of Biological Resources Program" which is a great source of information for any biologist, especially those working in academia or government.

The courses are free, all you have to do is register for them. You can watch them live through an online webinar window, which is great because you can also ask questions at the end of each webinar. If the timing of the webinar is inconvenient, you can also watch the recordings at a later time - and all slides/notes/data are provided!

Upcoming courses are listed on the website (link below) - and many of them have been done before, so you can even review the notes before the course starts to see if the topic is one that will be useful to you. I've already completed the "Modelling Patterns and Dynamics of Species Occurrence" course, and am currently signed up for the "Learn R By Example" course.

You can access the website and register for courses here.

Care to go WAPing?

The first opportunity I had to do some fieldwork with my new position came about due to an agreement between Regional Services and the Wildlife Division. Due to staff changes, the Wildlife Division became responsible for checking a portion of the Regional Service's WAP (Wood Acquisition Program) submissions from private woodlot owners.

These WAP submissions indicate whether the wood buyer practiced silviculture or planted saplings on privately owned lands. It is Regional Service's responsibility to go out and check the sites (they are provided with maps and GPS coordinates). Sounds simple, right?

1. Go to site.
2. Check site for silviculture or saplings by counting trees on a grid centered on the affected site.

Piece of cake! Except...

Most forestry technicians do these in the fall, after the ferns die off, or in the spring, before everything (i.e. ferns and thorny plants) grow up. The technician who trained us to check these sites was incredulous at the thought of us doing them at the height of summer. He suggested it was as close to hell as we were ever going to get, and he wouldn't even consider doing them himself.

Both of which I was really glad to hear before we ever got started. There was an end-of-the-month deadline, so delaying them was not an option.

So we travel to the field camp (which is a fire station in central NS - great lodgings!) and got to work.

Calling it hell was being nice. I have never experienced something so awful as trudging through chest deep brush from a thinning operation, all the while getting dive bombed by horse flies that can bite through jeans. Or struggling through 6-ft tall trailing thorn vines, which wrapped around you and dug into you through jeans. Or pushing through thick, thick regrowth only to disturb a wasp's nest and get stung (5 times, through jeans). See a pattern?


The above image is me at one of our first sites... All geared up with my 1m measuring stick. I was still enjoying it at this point. That didn't last long.

Between the heat, the sweat, the blood, and the exhaustion, we managed to get the WAPs completed before the deadline. And now that I know what doing WAPs is all about, if the same opportunity comes up next year - the summer students can have at'er (unless it's in the spring, of course - then I'm game) :P

Back at it!

So it's been a loooong time since I wrote about science... that's because I was doing a bunch of short contracts, and none of them had little, if anything, to do with biology (or fieldwork). Luckily, all that has changed!

I submitted my thesis to my thesis committee at the beginning of December and ran off to Australia to explore while my committee did their thing. I got back in January, completed revisions, submitted in January and defended in February. I cranked through revisions, got my thesis in by the March 1st deadline and got back 1/2 of the winter semester's tuition. Whoot!

Andrea, Master of Science. It has a nice ring, don't you think?

Shortly thereafter, I applied for an internship with the provincial government of Nova Scotia. I interviewed (and was very sincere about my desire to work in wildlife management) and got the job! My specific position is "Population Ecologist", and I'm responsible for modelling population dynamics from harvest data for furbearers and large mammals. This information will help guide management decisions.

I also get to help out with the other programs, and assist with fieldwork when people need help... so I have interesting things to talk about again :D I'll save them for another post, but I'll leave you with a picture of one of the first places I helped out with some fieldwork (a pond near some cut overs).

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.