Data: sweaty, sweaty data

Thought it was about time i let the world know how my life is at the moment, you lucky, lucky people...

So my time at the Zoo has been fun, good to catch up with old friends and giggling like a school boy with my supervisor about "Boning" my way across the US. But not I am in America and it a whole different country.

My flight was textbook, surrounded by a family that were hell bent on not leaving me in peace wanting to talk, walk and indeed scamper over my seat due to their excitement at flying into Orlando and presumably Disney world etc. yay.

The bus journey after was interesting. A diverse set of highway signs leaving me with the impression that Floridians are obsessed with real estate, abortion, various arrangements of meat, and the size of their alligators.

My arrival in Gainesville was pretty late but i got to my hotel to find the biggest bed ever conceived by man, which was a welcome sight as the next day i was up at the crack of dawn to start my boning....

So it turns out, that they have moved the collection of fossils for my study out of the museum collection proper to a storage facility located on the outskirts of town near a bowling alley called "Alleycatz", which seems to be busy at all times of the day. The facility is teeming with crazy fossil specimens and casts of Dire Wolf jaws, whale skulls etc. However, I have been told to keep a low profile, and this combined with my supervisors desire to have me bring back some sloths in my suitcase makes me think i may be involved in an international fossil smuggling operation and am some kind of patsie.

Right, so i have to get back to boning now. So many fossils, so little time. Hope all of you are having a great time. I look forward to seeing you all.

J

Amphibian antics

Bit of an update from me...

As those of you who I've grumbled at will know, I've had to abandon all French fieldwork plans as there are just no tadpoles around for me to monitor at the fieldsites in the Pyrenees due to a freakishly cold winter/spring. So, instead of a rousing hike up to a montane lake to do my work, its now a sweaty commute on the tube to a ridiculously hot lab! Not quite the same. But the opportunity to see gorillas, komodo dragons or oh-so-creepy slender lorises at lunchtime compensates to some extent! (as does the subsidised bar...).

I'm still doing a project which is looking at chytrid disease in amphibians, but now its abit more about why in some areas the disease wipes out whole populations whereas in others they persist relatively unaffected. Its pretty interesting stuff but the associated evolutionary biology is hurting my brain quite alot!! Its been quite slow progress getting on with the lab work as I'm still waiting for samples (...*cough* dead tadpoles...) to do PCRs on, so I probably won't have my data together til August (the organised person within is starting to panic!) but I'm making slow but sure progress with the write up while I've got some time. I even shocked myself today by playing with some dummy data in R - Olivier would be proud!

So, other than the lengthy commute, things are going OK. Even if I am bitter than I'm not amongst eagles or marmots in the Pyrenees, or crayfish in the Yorkshire Dales, or cetaceans in Scotland, or Lyme disease in...OK, you get the picture!

Great hearing what everyone else is up to!

L

A better shot of our awesome whale encounter. Kevin had just told me that day that minke whales rarely breach. This female begged to differ.

If you go down to the woods tonight...

So I've been here at The Forest for a while and it's not too bad. Nestled in a gorgeous summer it's beautiful oak woodland full of butterflies and deer and lyme's disease which I am perhaps a bit too cavalier about as there seems to be a mini-epidemic of it at the research station this summer, my supervisor showing me the 'scar' of it that he needs to get his antibiotics for.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to spend too much time in The Forest catching lyme's disease seeing as I oh-so-cleverly arranged to borrow the mobile lab which I'm not going to have for another month. This means I am spending quite alot of time sitting in a cupboard writing the best god-damned introduction ever written, trying to make what I'm going to be doing seem both 1) new and 2) useful, (probably failing at both) and coming down from the hubris of thinking I actually understood [R]. The fruit of my five-odd weeks here so far is having finally ordered some plastic pots to cut up and crudely fix around trees which over the next few weeks I will no doubt have to explain to the ramblers looking at the pretty butterflies, unaware that Lymes Disease walks amoung them, laying its victims low like when Night falls in Palermo.

I am also finding it difficult to adjust to having free time. The town I'm staying in is big enough to make me think I could be doing something with myself but small enough for there to be nothing to do.

Ah well. 'least it's sunny!

-R

Crayfish and shiz...

Hi guys and girls,

I thought it might be my turn to update you all on the status of white-clawed crayfish in the Yorkshire Dales! To be honest, it has been a sloooow process. I arrived by train to a town called Skipton four weeks ago, where I was kindly picked up by one of the guys from the national trust. I was driven to a hamlet in the middle of nowhere, and I stayed for 3.5 weeks. I had a... "Here is a valley, find us some crayfish" moment and that was it... I was alone in a valley with streams that needed sampling. Some are 12 miles away and I have a push bike. Fabulous.

I have literally spent everyday for the past 3 weeks measuring stones and manually searching for crayfish with no luck. Today however I found looooads :-) Also amazing. I was measuring one today and I put it in a bucket for like 2 minutes, and its eggs hatched and I had 1 mummy crayfish and five babies. They are tiny, about half the size of your little finger nail. I have photos, but they are so small and transparent you almost can't see them.

Im not gonna lie, it's wierd watching both the world cup and wimbeldon by yourself. But this week I am in a village that has both roads AND pavement, and a pub open past 9.30. I'm sharing a dorm with 4 blokes tho, and they snore like thunder. Suppose you can't have it all!

The place is gorgeous, green is everywhere, as are sheep, cows and tourists. I have loads of pictures of it too, but after a few they all start looking the same.

I hope everyone is good. I loveee being able to read about what everyone is up to. Good idea Lucy!

Much love

Nic xxx

p.s. you can almost see the baby crayfish in the top right photo...

Paradise

Hello from the Seychelles!!! I am currently sitting underneath a coconut tree on the beach and relishing my new found connection to the outside world!!

As you can see its beautiful here, the day I arrive I was pretty knackared and as I got off the

plane the 80% humidity hit me - seriously I am never dry!

Any hoo I have been swimming in them the oceans, and its like having a warm bath, no umming and erring, dipping my toes in first. Floating has become my favourite past time.

A couple of days later I went up to the jungle, It was an absolutely grueling walk, 2-3 hours scrabling up hill side. Its so difficult to breath too because of the humidity but worth it, it was an amazing wilderness... Saw snakes, spiders, giant millipedes and those damn tiny frogs... They look exactly like little bits of leaf, damn, that's my project down the drain....

Any hoo hope everyone is enjoying their projects and enjoying the release from 24 hour working days that this placement hopefully holds!

Soph xx