Data, Data, Data

As the title suggests, this is most of what's been going on this week so far. Tomorrow I'm going to pop off island to grab groceries, but in the meantime, starting tomorrow morning we're setting up one of my trailermates' projects. Which means cages in the marsh. Whooooo. At least I like working as a group. Is fun.

On another note, I may actually be setting up 3 projects this summer. Yes, you read that right. This one will focus on the same stuff (crab non-consumptive effects on snails) but in the context of die-off. Not sure what it'll be exactly, but it may be another thing going on tomorrow. In the meantime, since I wandered to one today, let me show you what a die-off looks like.

 

A die off, essentially, is a puddle of mud. With the saddest, most pitiful looking grass in it you'll ever see. They grow somewhat rapidly especially in dry regions, or in drought years, and the snail densities can be truly frightening inside of them.

 

I pulled 2 dozen snails off of the plant in the bottom picture (yes, there's a plant there) in a single sweep of the hand. I'm lucky to find plants with 5 snails on them elsewhere. 

Die-offs are a subject of heavy concern in the marsh, and a very prominent feature. The mussel mounds seem to mitigate the die-offs, a process we're looking into as a lab. I'd kind of like to investigate how the crabs influence die-off, given that mussel mounds tend to be packed with mud crabs. Not sure if the usually negative, climbing inducing effect of the crabs on the snails is mitigated by some other service of the mussels, or if the crabs divert the snails around the mounds altogether.

But I'd kind of like to find out.

The Infinite Soreness

So y'all likely remember my complaints about being sore and tired not but a couple of days ago. Yesterday was another one of those days. The morning we went out as a lab group to get transplants for a mesocosm (essentially. an experiment not done in the field but instead in a bucket or similar sized container) experiment. This consisted of essentially going out, finding a chunk of marsh that has the right qualities (in this case, it either had a mussel mound or didn't, and had a certain amount of grass). At this point, things get intensive.

First, you dig the edges out of this little plot, bit by bit. Then, as a team of 3 or so, you pry the block of marsh out with your shovels and flip it over onto its side. The bottom of the block is trimmed of root matter to make it sit flat in the tubs we brought with us. After that, the fiftyish pound slab is crammed into the tub, and lugged a few hundred yards off of the marsh and into a mule. Repeat 12 times for 12 plots. Fun, right?

We took each of these little mesocosms to the institute to chill out in a small pool of water. For those of y'all who have been reading for a while, they're for the drought project. The rain-outs just didn't come through for us, they ended up getting broken a lot during the storms and just didn't work out. These guys on the other hand are looking good.

Needless to say though my everything is now even more sore.

Yesterday afternoon on the other hand was data on the mini project, which I've dubbed Range. It got a bit tedious but was okay. Haven't entered it yet so I dunno what it looks like. I also had to fix a few aspects of the main project, dubbed Dispersion, so that the data will come out a bit better. Not looking forward to taking it, though. Update from today: Dispersion crabs are dying kinda a lot due to the heat, and I'm not really sure how best to take the data. It's gonna require an overhaul of some sort unfortunately.

Dunno. I think I've decided I dislike working alone. The morning was honestly kind of fun despite the intense labor. My labgroup is honestly great. A fun group of people. Working alone just gets kind of tedious, sometimes. It's hard to stay focused on 4+ hours of counting snails, or measuring their heights, or, like today, measuring the lengths of their grazing scars - radulations, they're called - on about 100+ stalks of grass. It's difficult to keep the end goal in mind. Sometimes it's even easy to lose sight entirely.

In general, though, this has been an interesting experience. In a short six weeks, I've had plenty to learn about the nature of field work and island life.

Heat is a fact of life here, and tolerance is paramount. When you're in the field, it's usually only in the upper 80's to lower 90's, but with the sun beating down on you and the superheated marsh water beneath you, it may as well be a desert. Some days I literally drink through an entire 2 liters of water on the marsh during a day's work. On a similar vein, the sun itself can be killer. It's darkened me by at least a few shades. My farmer's tan is still bad but I'm working on it! Luckily I've yet to burn myself to a crisp.

The mud, too. Mud gets everywhere and is everything. My first week I was a clean freak. Now? I don't care about it. My field shirts/pants are perpetually coated in the stuff, as is most of my body.

The work itself can vary greatly. Some projects? Data is easy. Others, like mine, it's mind numbing. The same way for the work involved to set it up. Some of it is incredibly physically taxing to assemble and break down. Mine was probably only somewhat. One of the roomies will have a very taxing project that will require all of us to chip in for coming up soon this week.

Honestly? Most of the time I don't get weekends. My work schedule is beyond irregular. Work is done when it's needed, which is most of the time, and there's no rhyme or reason to how long it takes.

It can be tough. And taxing, physically and mentally. But on the bright side? If I can do this, I can work probably just about anywhere. Oh, and I might still manage to get a publication out of it, which for an undergrad is outstanding. That's my light at the end of the tunnel.

Fluffy Stuff for the Non-Science Buffs

So if you're interested in the science and what I've been up to for the past 5 days, see the previous post. If not, and you just like the cool stuff I see out there, this post goes out to you!

Because last night, I saw a loggerhead turtle. Two, in fact.

These pictures are the same girlie, but she was pretty neat. We wanted to leave the other one be.

Yep. We went out to the beach just to swim (And also see the bio luminescence, another super cool feature of our beach. Basically swimming agitates little bacteria which glow bright blue. Kind of like swimming through a galaxy or something.) and in the process found a turtle!

Those pictures are edited to be in black and white because the original copies were red, actually. Bright, white light bothers the turtles, you see. They can't actually see red light, though, so it's more turtle friendly. So cool though. This was a great way to end such a difficult week - at some points it was really hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Ironically, too, I had just been telling one of the roomies that I'd really wanted to get out one night and see the turtles, too. Loggerheads are common on this beach at this time of year, but they nest in the wee hours (midnight to around 4 AM). This big girl came up onto the beach and dug herself a hole, but didn't do any laying. She'll probably be back tonight to lay proper.

I am debating going back out, but we'll see. It's  my day off so I have no plans. Whatsoever. It's beautiful.

The Longest Week Ever

Terribly sorry about the lack of posts. Let's break this down.

Wednesday I set out 18 plots, standardized them for plant size and density (by taking a whole lot of really specific data). Bamboo went in too.

Thursday I took radulations, caught a bunch of crabs for the cages, and picked out 6 more plots because we need a lot more control plots than we originally though.  Bamboo had to go into the new plots.

And yesterday. Yesterday I woke up literally before sunrise, and with the exception of a brief siesta during high tide, worked until nearly dusk. It has been a crazy hardcore week.

But it's done. It's finally done. All 24 plots have cages, crabs (when applicable) of the right sizes (a very specific range of like, 30-36 mm to make sure it was nice and even), and the cages are in the ground (I had to dig a LOT of holes yesterday), with bamboo. It is done. I am elated but dreading data collection. It'll be a doozy for this one.

The previously mentioned elation, though, is definitely not physical. I'm taking a day off because:

-I just worked a literal full day, after having worked most of this week for most of each day.

-The plots need time to even out anyway so that data isn't weird.

-My hands and arms. They are coated in very fine cuts and holes. I had a crab pinch me hard enough to draw blood yesterday; the hardware cloth and bamboo cut the heck out of my arms; and putting the cages in the ground is a recipe for puncture wounds. The edges of the hardware cloth (it's essentially a mesh) tend to be, well, the edges of a metal mesh. So pushing down on cages to get them into the ground more often than not resulted in a small wire (or a few) of the mesh going into my palm. I am cut straight to heck and back. To those of you prone to worrying (you know who you are) yes I am taking care of my wounds.

-Also digging holes and moving in the marsh for that long is physically exhausting. My everything aches.

But it's a good ache! Because this is what I have to show for it.

12 of these guys (6 with crabs, 6 without) with the cages spread out, like so.

And 12 of these (ditto) with the cages all clumped together.

Now, you might be asking, when is this guy gonna actually explain what this is all about?

Now. So if the science parts of my blog bore you, skip over to the next post which is about last night.

So if y'all will recall, my projects focus around the spatial aspects of the snails' climbing responses to mud crabs. My second project (not this one) is currently focusing on the range of this response, i.e how far out the snails bother reacting, and if it differs between the two crab species. This project, on the other hand, is taking that and applying it to what are called landscape effects. The technical term is "landscape of fear", which is pretty cool if I may say.

So the cages above are in two arrangements - clumped together, and spread apart. The question we're addressing is how these two spatial arrangements effect the snails' perception of this so-called "landscape of fear." In other words, how do the two distributions effect the crabs' spheres of influence and the strength of the effects? When the crabs are spread out, do you see more of this effect over a greater area? Or does a clumped up distribution manage to scare the snails so badly that they climb a lot more in the area it's effecting and just destroy the grass? Are the two areas of effect even comparable?

So it'll be fun. We're gonna look at snail heights and foot down data again, but we're also going to take radulations and maybe put some agar (a type of kelp) down in petri dishes to see how much they eat on the ground vs. the plants. All of this with respect to space, so that we can map out this landscape and how it varies with the two arrangements.

There are some small limits to this study - obviously no crab will stay put 24/7 for 6 weeks in the real world. But it's surprisingly relevant. On mussel mounds (a prominent feature of marshes) you can have quite a few crabs in a small space making their home there, like the clumped arrangement. Everywhere else, they won't be perfectly evenly spread, as with my other treatment, but they will be patchy. And of course as with any research, it has applications to the field in general. Pretty cool stuff.

Status Update

I hate bamboo, and I will never gather it ever again after today if I have my way. Also cages are cool but I thankfully only need to make 10 more.

Plots will be picked out and probably set up tomorrow. Presently I'm exhausted, so, wish me luck. More tomorrow.

The Infinite Business

So I have a list of things about a mile long to get done this week, including but not limited to:

Chopping down another half of a bamboo forest for pipes;
Making sure my gridded quadrat works and is sufficient;
Making about 50 more cages because apparently 4 crabs per plot is lowballing it;
Finding about 18 plots for my experiment;
Maybe getting some agar too for my experiment;
Setting it all up;
Taking data on both it and my current mini project.

So yaaay.

Today I made a gridded quadrat for use with the main experiment. It basically just makes a grid to look at what's where when taking data. Looks something like this:

 

So pretty low tech but still effective, assuming it works out properly. Had to use a dremel to make the holes for the fishing line, which was pretty cool. I like dremels.

Otherwise, I've been putting together materials for the project, and also taking data. Data was alright today, have yet to put it all into the spreadsheets, but I did spot some cool stuff taking it.

Hard to spot, but there is a very skinny spider on the left stake. He'd strung up a web between two of my bamboo posts.

Either a very oddly colored marsh/sand fiddler or a different species. I've yet to ID the guy.

Very upset with me, hence the frothing at the mouth, a classic sign of crab stress.

A Nice, Relaxing Weekend

So, an update. This weekend was nice - too short, but very chill. Got to make cake pops with Jenn and her grandma, do some shopping for necessities (and a few non-necessities, whee buy-2-get-1 at gamestop), eat a whole lot of really good food (I had forgotten what real food tasted like!), and watch the animated version of The Hobbit. Oh yeah and I swam in a pool - something that isn't the ocean for once! So I am nice and recharged and ready for the week.

...Which is good. Because it's going to be a hectic one. One of my trailer-mates is going to be putting her project up, which is going to be involved. Essentially, we'll be setting up 40 large (compared to mine, anyway - really only about half a meter squared) cages by digging up a chunk of the marsh, lining the underlying mud with some mesh to keep stuff from digging in, plopping the marsh back in, putting the cage on top, and filling it up with snails. This may be getting done in a day.

My own main project (pending some details from my adviser tomorrow morning) will also be going up this week, which will be less involved but still quite involved. I'm thinking we'll be setting up my little tube cages with a grid around them (hopefully not more bamboo.. maybe we could even use a gridded quadrat - fancy science speak for a big square used to look at stuff within a set area) in the mud to take positions of where the data is all coming from. Distance stuff, to look at the spatial aspects of my study. So that'll involve finding plots for it, laying all that out (easier than my trailer-mate's project), gathering up 50+ crabs, and trying as well to get that done in a day so that everything starts off at the same time and on a level playing field.

All that for 24 plots or so. Data collection is going to take forever, but it'll be worth it if it pays off. Which it should! Like I said, the initial data from the second mini project is looking pretty good. Some nuances, but they'll average out over time.

But yeah, busy week. And it's been really hot out since the storms passed. So wish me luck, both in getting this all set up, and in not getting a heat stroke! I will keep y'all posted with pictures and day to day descriptions.