What I do during the not-field season January 27, 2009

 On the one hand, I want field season to start up again, like today.  On the other, I still have so many specimens to process, so much data to analyze, so many journal articles to read, I could actually skip spring and summer this year and be busy for the next 12 months.

In the field biology realm, as it takes place in the upper latitudes, you have a field season and a lab season.  Depending on what your organism is and where you are, it could be 3-months and 9-months, or 6-and-6, which is how it is where I am.  For 6 months I’m almost never indoors and I’m cut up, bitten, sunburned, sweaty, stung and weary.  For the other 6 months, I’m rarely outdoors and I’m tunnel visioned, analytic, pasty, caffeinated, restless and nocturnal.

While I’m inside these days, with the sun low and cold and the rain ever present, I’m longing for the bucolic field days of summer.  When I’m traipsing around the back forty with vials tucked into my underwear, chasing my subjects and alternately being chased by them, those winter months sound downright cozy.

Dung beetles and the scarcity of scat January 26, 2009

This is a good review of an article in Neotropical Entomology (Jacobs, 2008 ) about phoresy and poo-diving strategies in dung beetles: How to Find a Turd in the Woods.

“Elsewhere, we hear of a research assistant who “reported that a fecal pellet from a bald-faced saki monkey, with dung beetles attached, fell directly into his shirt pocket as he was observing monkeys in the canopy overhead.” Fieldwork doesn’t get any better than that, y’all.”

True true.  I have a subset of specimens that I unknowingly sat on in the field and later peeled off my jeans – they’re still good specimens.  A bit flat.

Fang: a love story December 5, 2008

Now that’s what I call an Orb Weaver. This female was so enormous that when we released her later, she had trouble navigating and actually walking with that huge abdomen. We had found her in a large web built between two trees nearly 5 feet apart. She was as shy as a virgin bride and hunched every time we pet her through the bag. Petting spiders is a scientific procedure performed by trained arachnidologists and should definitely be tried at home. Pet the top part, not the fang part.

The site was also teeming with Argiope spiders with newly hatched young and they are some businesslike parents. We spent at least an hour watching one feed her wee spiderlings right over the top of our water cooler.

Confession: A couple weeks ago I talked to one of the other students I was traveling with in Taiwan and admitted I had sprayed the entire perimeter of my dorm room entrance with DEET on the day we arrived. For your information, spiders are unimpressed by DEET.

Trivia Hoedown #10 December 2, 2008

Has it been awhile, or what?  Let’s catch up.  Cut me a piece of that woecake, will you?

1.  Your last term will not necessarily be a cakewalk.

2.  Once insect specimens dry out while patiently waiting for you to pin them and then a couple weeks go by, no amount of relaxing will save your sorry ass and the heads of all your ants will pop right off and roll under the bench when you try to mount them.

3.  Elmer’s glue will facilitate head reattachment and dry invisibly.

4.  You have to make sure you’ve put the heads back on a) facing the right direction and b) in a normal anatomical plane.  The antennae go on top.

5.  In the fall months, you’ll want to be doing two things in the field: wearing blaze orange and making a good amount of racket.

6.  Hunters assume rustling in the bushes is game, not researchers.

7.  It’s true: when speaking, you don’t appear as nervous as you feel.  If your talk is filmed, you do appear as fat jolly robust as you are in real life, though.

8. Science conferences are good geeky fun where you can be with your own kind and tell yourself y’all are elite mainstream.

9.  Lots of visiting fringe groups enjoy free speech on public university campuses.  Don’t be alarmed, and don’t drink the Kool Aid.

What entomologists knit September 12, 2008

The Entomology pattern by Adrian Bizilia of course!

I have been thinking about this hat since I first stumbled across it on Ravelry, and then I went out and bought the book a few months ago but had too many other things on the needles to begin it. (The Pinwheel Blanket pattern is also from this book.)

This week I used my fully stamped discount card at my LYS for 6 skeins of Dale Falk in wine and oatmeal, and I took up my circs, and I knit. Stranded colorwork is so satisfying. It’s hard to put it down when the picture starts to emerge.

The model is Babe-o-licious, a cat our neighbors left us. He’s a beautiful, if bitey, specimen.

The ridges you see are where the pattern repeats begin and end, but it’s not lumpy (see picture below). I’ve tried to be very careful with tension as I’m a white knuckle/tight knitter but you can see the floats across the top of the circular needle, and they’re quite loose. (Is ther such a thing as too loose? I’ll be finding out.)

I like this braided edge. It’s made with purl stitches where you twist the colors as you knit and it makes a nice clean edge. Very good detailing, I think.

No stranded project may be discussed without pictures of the wrong side. I sighed a little when I saw the pattern in reverse on the inside.

This hat is part of a gift set for my mentor. She doesn’t need to know that I kept putting the hat on and squeeing while I was working on it. I suspect I’ll be making a few of these sets. I love this pattern.

Noro and Vanilla September 8, 2008

The beehive hat is at about 90% and this morning as I was lying in bed (because I had left it overnight on the nightstand where I could see it) and counted on my fingers how many months until I could wear it comfortably. Five. This is not a fall hat. It’s a dead-of-winter hat.

And the vanilla orchid bloomed. This isn’t the species that sets the beautiful beans, but it’s a beauty nonetheless. The leaves are bigger than my hands and nearly as thick. The flowers have no scent, but check out the ants at the base of the petiole. They’ve been there since before the blooms opened, and they don’t go into the flowers, they just hang out down there at the base. This plantlet was a cutting from a monster mother plant at the university greenhouse – it’s over 10′ tall and grows in a planter made out of a 3 pallets. It’s a beast.

Massospora and You August 15, 2008

I found this cicada in the Taiwan forest, hanging out on a branch, dead. Apparently infected with Massospora, he was eaten by the fungus from the outside in, leaving this empty exoskeleton, wings, and the dried fungal body oozing out from all of his cracks.

The cicadas in Taiwan were of two obvious phenotypes: the car alarm type – LOUD! ALARMING! 24/7! (but you get used to it rather quickly) – and the Rainbird type – cchh-cchh-cchh-cchh ccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! These were in the mountains and the city, respectively. I enjoyed them immensely.

Here’s a batch of the Car Alarm variety (as yet without a real species, but I’ll get them identified eventually) in my field pinning station – the desk in my dorm:

Collecting in the subtropics is not like what I’m used to. In the PNW, specimens are sometimes dry before I can get a pin in them, and I rarely use any type of preservative beyond periodic deep freezing of specimen boxes to kill dermestids. In Asia, however, the humidity is such that nothing dries. During pinning, the cicada’s legs would be flopping around, which is mildly unsettling. Then I’d get everyone pinned and placed and run them through the oven for a few days, take them out, and they’d all slack out on me again. Sadly, this cycle resulted in an interesting sweet, rot smell. Now that the collect is back in the states and everyone’s dry, they still stink. But I love them anyway.

Part of the stink may be the various Hemipterans and Coleoptera perfumes – some smelled like cucumbers, some like oily death. That could be such an interesting addition to the Linnaean games: identify the insect by smell. I’d know what bees smell like, and bumblebees and honeybees smell completely different, but that’s probably information most other people aren’t terribly interested in.

In anticipation of the collection being seized at security, immigration, or customs as I went through 3 airports to get home with my drying lovelies in my carry-on, I photographed them carefully.

Alas, I did make it home with the bugs feeling like I was drug running even though I had all my permissions in order. It only takes one officious asshole to destroy 4 days of collecting and careful preservation from an exotic locale. I was ingratiating and extremely cooperative every time I interacted with airport personnel.

Success.

(Click the collection image and then zoom-click to see everyone up close and personal. If you have ID information, I’d love it if you’d share it. Thanks!)

South Pacific July 28, 2008

In 24 hours I am off to the South Pacific for a week of entomological ecstasy and monsoon rains. Last night on the Weather Channel: a typhoon predicted for the island I am traveling to. Good times.

The packing commenced several days ago and because of the expected temperatures and humidity (never lower than 80F and 66%, respectively), my clothing takes up very little space in my suitcase, while the accoutrement of traveling almost to China hogs most of the room. I’ve labeled anything unusual so as not to encourage destructive testing by luggage searchers. I’m always tempted to be a smartass and label things like my UNDERWEAR and ANTIFUNGAL CREAM.

Because we’ll be collecting in mountainous jungle, I’ve taken a few anti-fungal precautions, like packing powder, Lotrimin, and too many pairs of socks.

Other things I’ve packed: an insect box and pinning supplies, a compass, lots of knitting, a stack of journal articles and books, my iPod, camera and extra cards, a sleeping mask (in the photo above, it’s the sleepy sheep face), travel journal, diarrhea kit – hee! (Cipro, Immodium and rehydration salts), DEET, snacks, more DEET, 3 pairs of shoes, 2 rain jackets, 2 hats, and partridge in a pear tree.

Today I’m charging up all of the electronics – camera, phone, iPod – and uploading music and podcasts to fly for a total of 30 hours round trip. It seems I pack of lot of things to entertain myself – I think it all helps me don the coat of ambivalence about discomfort. And I’m flying United, so I think we can rest assured I’ll be damn uncomfortable (may I have to post and retract this bitter prophecy upon my return).

I bought this carry on and didn’t realize until about 3 days ago it’s camo. Sezzy.

Field Kit + Knitting June 12, 2008

Initially I pictured field work framed by this bucolic and pastoral haze, and certainly there is some of that feeling. When the morning fog burns off and my research subjects start flying in earnest, that quickly ends and the day takes on a hot, sticky, smack-the-back-of-your-neck feeling…it’s just not what I envisioned.Nevermind, some excursions allow for plenty of knitting time.

This is the Pinwheel Blanket in progress for M’s bun in the oven (but because she won’t see it for a few more weeks, this post will not appear until after I’ve mailed her package). I was able to do a fair amount of work on it, and it’s finished now, just waiting for a warm enough day to dry after washing and blocking.

Yarn = Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend, 5 skeins
I can’t say enough nice things about this yarn, which makes me swoon.

Swarmy June 3, 2008

I had this idea that swarms would be a seething mass of chaos and angry bees, but it’s not like that at all.