Rainbow frogs

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.

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.

12 hours

Previously, our lab record for the most frogs in one night was 76. That was last year. Last night I got a text that said they got 65 frogs at one pond. That's rather a lot - a good night is usually 20ish pairs. So cool, we'll have plenty of frogs to test, and I can definitely make headway on my experiment. Then this morning I wake up to an email that says we have 101 pairs of frogs. That is a LOT of frogs.

I did indeed make good headway on the Lombard experiment. While I was there between 9am and 9:30 pm (seriously) we got 9 done (bringing this year's total to 10), and I left some undergrads there to keep testing into the night. I need 20 total for this summer, so I should be able to finish tomorrow. W00t!

However, 12+ hours in the lab makes for very long days. I have a short attention span...I don't think I've ever done anything for 12 hours consecutively (except sleep, but that doesn't count.) Right now I am trying to figure out if I'm hyper, from sitting for forever in lab, or exhausted. I'm leaning towards the latter, currently. Also, 12+ hour days require lots of food...

Only one more day of this, yay...

Oh hi

I need to be better about updating this thing. Sorry. I do still exist! Because it is late and I must be in lab early, we're going to do bullet points! (And by bullet points, I mean numbers.)

1. I have been quite successful with grants this year/semester, including one of these nifty things.
2. My waders did not survive the winter. I went out late April in 40 degree weather and discovered I had a leak in my left heal. Pond water is very cold that time of year.
3. I took a bioacoustics course this spring and we got some nice recordings of Western Chorus frogs (Pseudacris triseriata).
4. During one of these recording trips, I spent a rather long time bothering a large toad. Toads are hilarious. They just sit there and make this absurdly long call, over and over, and they don't move if you poke them. So I spent a good twenty minutes poking a toad, watching it try to mount the stick I was poking it with, and poking it's throat pouch to make its call change pitch.
5. I get a field assistant!! She gets here at the beginning of June.
6. Things are mostly set for my field work this summer. Now I just need cooperative frogs so I can finish off my Lombard experiment from last year and I can take off on my frog scouting missions.
7. We got a food processor, so now I can make homemade hummus. (Not frog related, but I'm excited about it.)
8. My fish died. :(
9. I got new waders, but have yet to try them out.
10. I have basically finished one year of grad school. The time went ridiculously fast...for the most part. Now only 4-5 more years to go!!

Hey

First of all, this has been a pretty good week with much cause to celebrate. First Iowa okays gay marriage on Friday, April 3rd, and today Vermont did too. We're up to four now! (Connecticut and Massachusetts are the other two, for those of you not keeping track.) Now if Minnesota can just get up to speed, I'll really be happy.

In work related news...
1. I have permits! My State Park permit came the other week, adding five more parks to the total I can conduct research in, so I should be good for this summer. Now I have to plan my route and try to figure out when I'm leaving. It's been pretty cold out lately, especially at night, so it's hard to tell when the frogs will start coming out.
2. Despite the gray treefrogs not being out quite yet, the chorus frogs soon will be. I'm taking a grad seminar on bioacoustics this semester, and we're doing a project with them. Said project is yet undecided, but will involve recording and being in a pond. Time to dust off the chest waders and break out the head lamp!
3. Assuming I get accepted, I'm going to Denmark in August for an international PhD course on animal communication. Sweet. Must get passport.
4. This fall/winter's experiment never got finished due to the increased non-responsiveness of the frogs. I only needed one more... We'll start up again with that part in August after the breeding season ends, but I'll be able to get some data during the breeding season as well.
5. Due to #4, I have a lull in research right now. It's nice.

Today I get to learn plant quantification methods. Yay?