Grantsy-pantsies (aka My Over-Achieving Graduate Students)

I love my graduate students.

They are intelligent, inquisitive, fun to hang with, and exceedingly capable of securing funding. What more would an advisor want?

Tony Frazier is studying the development of a brain region associated with spatial ecology in rattlesnakes, specifically focusing on the effects of testosterone on neurogenesis within this brain region. He is a field rat but is now being handcuffed to the cryostat to analyze the brains from his field experiment last year. He was recently awarded a 2010 Gaige Award for graduate student research from the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. Besides snakes and brains, he enjoys going for runs in the oak woodland and PBR.





Nick Pollock is studying the reasons why male lizards are more heavily parasitized by ticks than female lizards. As of yesterday he has collected all of the data from his multiple lab and field studies and will now be crunching data and writing. He won a 2009 Gaige Award, and was recently awarded a research grant by the Chicago Herpetological Society. Besides lizards and ticks, Nick enjoys cooking and engaging in questionable photo-opps.





Matt Holding is a new graduate student in my lab who is studying the effects of translocation on neurogenesis and the stress response in rattlesnakes. He is currently in the middle of some serious field work, and is TAing my Herpetology class. Matt was recently awarded a research grant from the Herpetologists' League. He was also awarded a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship, which is perhaps the most prestigious award that a new graduate student in the sciences can get. Matt enjoys asking lots of questions and daydreaming about being David Attenborough.





Congrats to my boys for being fabulous and recognized as such by their scientific societies!

So Much Snakey Goodness

There are two types of people in this world: those who hate snakes and those who love snakes. If you're in the former group, I strongly suggest that you refrain from walking around rock piles in hills this spring, because you will quickly see something like this:

The rocks are SNAKEY. We saw about 40 snakes over four days in the rocky hills at Chimineas Ranch during spring break. Of course, if you belong to the latter group above, head for the hills because I think it's just getting started. Here are some photos of snakes doing thier business over the past couple of weeks. Enjoy!

The wildflowers are out in force at Chimineas right now.

The ground squirrels have bred early this year, so babies are already running rampant and finding their way into the bellies of snakes. Some snakes were found in hunting posture:

This big boy was found out cooking his recently acquired meal, and upon feeling him up later I allege him to have eaten three baby ground squirrels (I felt three small skulls and a tangle of little limbs). Good boy!

(Recently some herper friends of mine on Facebook were debating whether posed photos of herps in the field are a good thing, or whether photos should be taken in situ. I like both kinds, but want to point out that all my rattlesnake photos are always taken in situ because I like to look back on what they are doing in various seasons over various years. That's also one of many reasons my photos aren't very good :-)

We saw about 10 male-female pairs of rattlesnake over a few days. This is called consortship, and usually entails a male sitting right next to or sometimes on top of a female:

Males will stay with females like this for days, presumably waiting until she is receptive to mate but we don't really know. We found one pair copulating, but my camera was- er- lost at the time so I didn't get photos. We also saw a rattlesnake eating a ground squirrel when my camera was lost. Luckily, Tony found it the next day under a fence we frequently cross, sitting conspiratorily next to an empty Hornsby's bottle. Oops.


So why are we out looking for rattlesnakes anyway? My graduate student Matt is beginning his thesis research studying the effects of translocation on neuroplasticity and stress reactivity in male rattlesnakes. He has been collecting big male snakes, getting blood samples, and putting radiotransmitters in the snakes to follow them around for the next few months.

We have lots of helpers out there to look for snakes, then Matt catches and tubes the snakes.

A blood sample is drawn from the caudal vessels:

Snakes are brought to the lab, surgically implanted with radios, then released. Here are two brand new radiotagged males out basking together the day they were released.

And of course, the omnipresent Western fence lizards lizards are especially abundant this year and are looking rather portly from a steady diet of the recent bloom of craneflies.

Good years for insects and rodents mean good years for lizards and snakes, but also birds of prey. The eagles have been soaring, and hopefully they will (1) refrain from eating any radiotagged snakes, and (2) reuse the nest they built last year on site:

Happy herping everyone!

Panamania

Over Thanksgiving break I traveled to Panama for the very first time! Not much herping was had, largely because the purpose of the trip was for Chad to make arrangements for the class he is taking to Panama for 2 months next year. So it was a working trip! We still got a wee bit of herping in, as well as some RnR. I am facing final exam week, so I felt compelled to make my post before the grading monster got to me. So it will be lots of photos and little text! Too bad my camera is terrible (Santa has been asked for a new one).

We arrived in Panama City (huge, hectic, skyscrapery place) and got the heck outta dodge the next day. We headed to El Cope, the teeny town in the mountains where Chad did his postdoc years ago and where his class will be based.

There is electricity but no internet in El Cope, although that will change before the class arrives. In either of the two restaurants in town, lunch is $1.50 and dinner was somewhat steep at $1.75. We stayed with Chad's friend Julie Ray who lives in El Cope along with her dog Lucy, who enjoyed a downward dog session with me.


Julie is building La Mica Biological Station there. The station is currently under construction, and is situated in a beautiful spot along a small river in El Cope.



Chad pointed out that next to the river, four plants my mom has in her house were growing in one square meter:


Julie at the cabin at la Mica:


The dorm foundation:


Chad's class will stay in this dorm from Feb through April, doing research on anything from frogs to farms and taking classes along the way. They will also venture out into other areas of Panama for trips of varying lengths, including a five day stay in the town of Marta. This town is at the end of a long road only accessible by 4WD in dry conditions (or walking in wet conditions).

The students will be staying at the electricity-free homes of the town's residents, eating meals with them, interviewing them, working in the community, and improving their Spanish.


They will also make a long hike from Marta to a plane wreckage way up in the mountains. This is where Omar Torrijos, the leader of Panama in the 70's until his death in 1981, met his death when his plane crashed under sketchy assassinationy circumstances. Although a U.S. Special Forces team recovered his body, the local people believe that he actually survived the crash and lives in the jungle near the crash site.


Even the school is called Omar Lives.

The kids were excited to see their photos on my digital camera after I took them. Allegedly none of the families even own any print photos of their kids!


Like other nearby towns, the mandarin orange is an important crop so there are orange trees everywhere, a familiar sight to me in California. But here the trees are also covered in air plants.


Then it was back to El Cope to go for a night hike in Omar Torrijos National Park, where Chad did his postdoctoral work on the effect of the amphibian decline on snake populations. Up until a few years ago this place was CRAWLING with ectothermic creatures of all kinds. Then the montane frogs in Panama, like many other places in the world, were crushed by an epidemic of chytridiomycosis, a fatal syndrome caused by a fungus. With no frogs to eat, the starving snakes ate all the lizards, and then finally died out, so now there isn't much at all in the way of frogs, lizards, and snakes. It was a beautiful place, but eerily "dead" for such a lush forest. We did manage to see a few frogs:


Katydid:

Vine snake:


An awesome phasmid (so-called because we watched Master and Commander a few days later, and the name stuck):


This snail-eating snake was on the road next to Julie's house:


The next day we went to El Cano, an active archaeological dig site.


There are large burial mounds all over this site, full of bodies from before 1500.

One site is excavated and on display to the public:



A gringo archaeologist looted the site in the 1920's, tearing intricate stone carvings from pillars such that this is all that's left (the carvings are on display in a museum in New York):


There is a museum there that some of Chad's students will work at:


They will also help with the active dig (nothing going on this time of year because it's so rainy, but in spring it will be back on):


Next we went back up to the mountains to a town in a volcano called El Valle de Anton. I had a 24-hour bug that day and missed most of the fun including the beautiful scenery on the drive up there. I slept the day away and the next day we visited the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center (EVACC), a frog conservation center run by Edgardo and Heidi (who Chad knows from his postdoc days in Panama). The area is famous for its populations of the golden frog, which thanks to the chytrid fungus can now best be viewed in tanks inside EVACC. This center is doing some really important work and has some great stuff. You can read more about Panama's amphibian declines and conservation efforts here. Here's the public golden frog display:



And some others:


We also got a behind the scenes tour from Heidi:




Here are the golden frogs (gorgeous!):


After El Valle it was off to the beach for a very non-gringoy Thanksgiving at the fabulous Playa Blanca Beach Resort, complete with said white sand beaches:


And even some water aerobics in one of the two giant pools:


Then it was back to Panama City for a shoporama prior to departure back to the states. I found New Moon in Spanish on the eve of the movie's release.


But the real treasures were at an artisan market that used to be the YMCA in the Canal Zone. Check out the baskets:


The molas made by the Kuna Yala:


And the tagua nut carvings!


Overall, I was struck by how different Panama was from the other central American countries I have visited. Different in small ways (lentils instead of black beans) and big ways (the riches in city compared to the poverty of the country). Very few people speak English there, so I was thinking in Spanish for a few days upon my return. I had a great time and can't wait to return for spring break in March.

Oh, one more thing. The cigarette warning labels in Panama are awesome!

Did you see the suffering smoker visage in the hourglass? But my favorite is still the dead rat and cucaracha.