Clearly from my lack of posts, a blog isn't for me, at least not right now. So, this is just a note to say that I definitely will not be updating this part of my website, but I'm leaving the few posts here for now. Instead, you can follow me on Twitter! One day I'll make a fancier website with my feed embedded.
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We finished all of the field work over the summer and I'm happy to report that all went well out there! Thank you, again, to everyone who donated to my research and to everyone who helped support me; I couldn't have done it without you! I was able to buy all of the supplies that I needed and stay focused on my work instead of stressing about how to pay for everything. I also have to say thank you to all of my volunteers that helped me in the field. I feel incredibly lucky to have had such a good group of hard working, dedicated, and enthusiastic students on my team! It was the first time out in the field for several of them but they all did a great job. On Friday, I took my first group of volunteers out to my field site. I had already given them some practice with the methods that we're using to measure the amount of cover and vegetation, but it was just on the UF campus. Because a portion of my field site is on a military base, I needed to get the volunteers through their base training for working safely on the base. It covers things like what to do if you have an emergency on the base, where not to go, and the hazards on the base So, we took a short day just to get that done and check out one site. The training was quick, as expected, then I had to get a few details ironed out before we left the environmental office. Then we were off to our first plot! Luckily, my site is such that I'll be able to drive us relatively close to many of the sites (with 4-wheel drive), because it won't be easy to walk through the vegetation for a lot of the sites. I've been places where it's taken almost an hour to walk ~100 m). I drove us as close as I could to the first site (about 125 m away), then we set out on foot. After only about 15 minutes into our hike, we found an eastern diamondback rattlesnake! It's only the 4th time I've ever seen one, and on a day where I had so much on my mind, I almost step on one. I knew they were out there and I fully expected to see a few throughout the season, but I wasn't expecting it so quickly! I suppose that's how the world works though, always when you least expect something... I have to give major credit to my volunteers for noticing it though and luckily no one was hurt. We stopped and looked at it for a minute, but unfortunately we couldn't stop for long. I would have loved to stay and get some good pictures of it, but of course we had to move on. It was the first time several of the volunteers had seen one though, and one girl's first ever wild snake sighting, so I did give them a minute to check it out (from a far enough distance). A photo of the diamondback taken by one of my volunteers. This snake, like many other rattlesnakes, never rattled. Of course, we didn't want to upset the snake and so did our best to avoid that, but also, many rattlesnakes don't rattle anymore. This is thought to be because those that rattled were noticed and killed by people while quieter snakes evaded detection and survived/reproduced. This is an example of artificial selection. After that, I found a pygmy rattlesnake, but this time I saw it before I was anywhere near it. On the bear front, I found a day bed and a lot of flattened saw palmettos; which means she was eating the palmetto hearts. I made a Fast Florida black bear facts video about the palmetto hearts, you watch it here (or go to the bottom of this post; Note: humor was intentional). The sampling point was pretty much what I expect most of the high use sites will be; fairly closed canopy and vegetation so thick that you can't see much of anything farther away than about 8 meters. All of my volunteers had a lot of fun out there; which is good because we are in for some long, hot days! My advisor, Dr. Madan Oli, sets up a workshop on population ecology modeling every year at spring break. He always brings in some of the best population ecologists to teach it. Our instructors (in addition to Madan) were Dr. Jim Nichols, Jim Hines, and Dr. Jean-Dominique Lebreton, and also a lecture by an alumnus from our lab, Dr. Jeff Hostetler. Some of what we learned in class included how to incorporate different life stages into our matrix population models and also how to incorporate demographic and environmental stochasticity into individual based models. In general, all of this is to try to understand how a population is growing (positively or negatively) and for how long it might persist into the future.
So, that's what I did over spring break. It's a pretty intense week, but it's also an incredibly good class! If only I had known back when in I was in engineering classes that all the matrix algebra that I learned could have been applied to animals... I would have switched fields to ecology back then! This week I began training my volunteers. At the moment, all are undergrads in wildlife ecology/biology. We just met for some practice in a small section of woods on campus but in the next week or two, we'll start heading out to my field site. So far, they've all done well and I'm looking forward to working with them! There are a couple more students that I have yet to meet with, so hopefully they'll do well too. My crowdfunding campaign ends this Wednesday, so please keep spreading the word about that and donate if you can! And thank you to everyone who has already donated and shared it! I started making "Fast Florida Black Bear Facts" videos too. I should have at least 2 more coming out before the end of the campaign. Here is the first one on palmetto hearts: I still have to finish up organizing a lot of details for the field work. Because I have so many plots, and most of my study site is on a military base, I need to know exactly where we're going every day and have a back up in case the area is closed that day. I'm also working on finishing up my 2nd manuscript and have some minor edits for my 1st manuscript. So, I need to get back to work!
Last week was UF's spring break. I had a great time over the break, but I didn't get a break. We had a workshop/class. I'll go into it more soon!
Thank you for whatever contribution you can make; be it a monetary donation or just a share if you can't donate right now. If you have any question, please ask either in the comments here or email me! The best thing about using crowdfunding for science is that it is aimed towards reaching out to people and getting them engaged in science and sharing what we do. That's something that I definitely support! I hope you enjoy learning about my project. Thank you!
I've started testing out my methods for my upcoming field work. I'll be performing vegetation sampling in areas of high and low bear-use. Later this week, I will be launching a crowdfunding project to help fund the work. I'll post the link when I get it! I'll explain more about what I am doing later, but there will also be more details it on the crowdfunding site when it is up.
Below is a picture of my colleague in the process of walking out 15 meters from me with a 2 meter tall board, painted with big white and neon orange blocks. This type of board is used to measure the amount of cover in an area. As you can see, that plot was pretty thick; you can just barely see the orange and white board in the center (don't confuse it with the pink flagging tape though). My first website is up! I am still working on it though, so please bear with me while I decide exactly how I'd like to lay out everything. Thank you for your understanding and for visiting!
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AuthorI'm a quantitative wildlife ecologist, currently working at the Natural Resources Institute at Texas A&M University. Archives
December 2019
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