Academic papers on them.
It was excellent.
I just picked up a new lab; I'm working for a graduate student who's studying the chytrid fungus (you know, the one that's been wiping out the better part of the world's amphibian population). My goal is to learn basic techniques in structuring and executing an historical epidemiological survey.
Which is a complicated way of saying that I'm learning how to study the history of a disease in a certain area.
May I just add how utterly fascinating the idea of a pathogenic fungus is? Apparently, this one has some incredibly weird behaviors, too. It swims. And some species are affected by it and some are asymptomatic carriers. Science is awesome. Prepare for more details once I do my reading.
But no worries, I'm still working on that project with the sea urchins. We're just waiting for our algae to come in -- we made the mistake of getting somewhat shady algae from another lab, and were quite distressed when the red algae turned green two weeks in, and then the brown algae did likewise. Once the algal cultures are happy and established, we can start spawning urchins. I suppose if I were a good scientist, I'd be up to my neck in urchin papers just now... but tadpoles!
All in all, I have the most excellent way to procrastinate on my genetics homework now. What joy!
Did you know that one of the English names for tadpole is porriwiggle? There are other lovely terms for them too in the same vein: purwiggy, pollywiggle, and pollywoggle.
ReplyDeleteWe just called them "pollywogs"
ReplyDeleteWhat species of tadpoles? Here at the UA, there is a woman (Martha Powell) that specializes heavily in the chytrid fungus.
ReplyDeleteWe're going to be looking at several species of tadpole--I'm not quite sure which ones, as we first have to figure out if the indicators of infection are the same across species.
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