More Baby Animals, More Cages, More Blood

So the lab-wide die off project is up and running. We woke up super early to catch the first ferry out and rocked it into the marsh by 2 PM. It was good, solid work and I'm looking forward to a veeeery good night's sleep. This was all over at St. Simons Island, in case I hadn't mentioned.

We're following up on my initial die-off project, looking at how snail climbing response to crabs and the subsequent grazing vary in a die-off context. Basically, we put my tiny crab cages in, and then we put bigger cages around them to exclude snails.

It's what's called a "factorial" design. Some plots have nothing. No crab, no snails. Some have snails but no crabs, then crabs but no snails, and then both. It's a fancy way of showing what happens with nobody, just one species, and then the combined interaction of the two. We're expecting lots more grazing in the both species treatment, none in the no snail treatments, and mild in the no crab treatment. Sorry if that's a bit confusing on paper, it's really pretty simple.

On a sidenote, though, while we were out there, we saw baby diamondback terrapins! Two of them. I have a third that was dead when we found him. I kept the shell, but it's a bit meaty still, so I'm going to let the fire ants and nature have at it for a bit.

 

Cute little fellas. On the way back I stopped by our visitor's center finally and picked myself out a shirt and got Jenn a medallion for her hiking stick. They're neat. Tomorrow? Data, data, data! Getting down to the last little hustle.