When we go out into the field to collect frogs, we're actually collecting pairs of frogs as they're mating. We pick them out of the pond, male clinging to the female's back (this is called "amplexus"). Occasionally someone asks if we ever find a male-male pairing or a female-female pairing. The simple answer is "no", we don't. A female-female pairing is extremely unlikely because females use the males' courtship calls to locate them. Females don't do courtship calls, so they wouldn't be able to find each other to pair up. Male-male pairings can be induced by placing two males alone in a container - if another male is there, they'll pair up (don't ask me how they choose who's on top, I have no idea) - but that's an "if all else fails" sort of situation. The closest we've gotten to any sort of queer treefrogs are menage a trois of one female and two males. Presumably a male and female hooked up, and one male was just desperate enough to try to join in.
This is not to say that there are no gay frogs. There are...they just aren't our species.
On a related note, here is a hilarious article about gay animals and religion.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
Summer (and a bit of fall)
Contrary to what activity in this blog may suggest, I did survive the summer, relatively intact. I did lose a bit of blood to the several hundred mosquitoes I came into contact with, but other than that I made it. (And no, that number is not an exaggeration. At one point I had 107 bites on my arms and legs. Neck was not included in the total but I'm sure would have added a good 20 more to the count.)
Lab work at the beginning of the summer went well. I completed data collection for the Lombard experiment, began data collection on a second in-lab experiment (which turned out to be more time consuming than previously estimated), and then headed off into the field. Kind of. I was foiled by weather for a good two weeks, and spent the beginning of June sitting in lab hoping the temperature might breach 70 during the day and/or that it might rain. The rest of June and beginning of July was much more "frog friendly." I drove north, south, west, and kind of east, battled mosquitoes and ticks, was freaked out by the glowing eyes of (mostly) harmless deer, listened to raccoons amble by my tent at night, walked across and down part of the Mississippi river, and learned that I never want to live in a tiny rural town, ever. Oh, and I did research.
My goal was to find ponds where my frogs lived, and then collect data related to the frogs and vegetation in the pond, but due to the cool dry start to summer, I mostly only accomplished the pond finding mission, along with some trial runs for data collection. But, now I know where to go, and I have a pretty good idea of how to do things next year.
The rest of the summer (July and August) was spent in lab, staring at sound analysis programs, MS Excel, and various statistical programs. A combination of extreme monotony (sound analysis), confusion and frustration (statistical programs), punctuated by tiny moments of success (nice graphs and coding things correctly in stats programs).
Now school has started back up again and I am forced to drag myself out of bed at 7am three days a week so I can learn more statistics. Two statistics courses (eep), journal club, a couple seminars, proposal writing, plus the usual data analysis and writing of manuscripts occupy my time lately. And tomorrow I start up another experiment. Thus begins Year Two.
Lab work at the beginning of the summer went well. I completed data collection for the Lombard experiment, began data collection on a second in-lab experiment (which turned out to be more time consuming than previously estimated), and then headed off into the field. Kind of. I was foiled by weather for a good two weeks, and spent the beginning of June sitting in lab hoping the temperature might breach 70 during the day and/or that it might rain. The rest of June and beginning of July was much more "frog friendly." I drove north, south, west, and kind of east, battled mosquitoes and ticks, was freaked out by the glowing eyes of (mostly) harmless deer, listened to raccoons amble by my tent at night, walked across and down part of the Mississippi river, and learned that I never want to live in a tiny rural town, ever. Oh, and I did research.
My goal was to find ponds where my frogs lived, and then collect data related to the frogs and vegetation in the pond, but due to the cool dry start to summer, I mostly only accomplished the pond finding mission, along with some trial runs for data collection. But, now I know where to go, and I have a pretty good idea of how to do things next year.
The rest of the summer (July and August) was spent in lab, staring at sound analysis programs, MS Excel, and various statistical programs. A combination of extreme monotony (sound analysis), confusion and frustration (statistical programs), punctuated by tiny moments of success (nice graphs and coding things correctly in stats programs).
Now school has started back up again and I am forced to drag myself out of bed at 7am three days a week so I can learn more statistics. Two statistics courses (eep), journal club, a couple seminars, proposal writing, plus the usual data analysis and writing of manuscripts occupy my time lately. And tomorrow I start up another experiment. Thus begins Year Two.
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