Roosts and Die Offs and Parties, Oh My!

Apologies. As the summer winds to a close, I seem to get more busy instead of less busy, so thereby this blog suffers. Some days it's just very hard to make it down to the institute to publish stuff. Only so many hours in the day. And our trailer's wifi is...well, a poor excuse for wifi, as I'm learning right now. My goals for this week are as follows:

-We're setting up another die off project as a whole lab thing on St Simons where the snail densities and sizes are bigger and scarier. Mine's still going but this one will likely become its own paper, which I'm going to be co-authoring as far as I know. My involvement'll be building the cages and setting it all up.
-I need to do two surveys. Surveys are fun and not as good evidence as real experiments, but still a good addition to any paper. These'll be focused on my Range project, which was the one looking into the range of snail responses to the crabs.
-Assorted other data, and maybe taking out cages from one of my advisor's old projects.

Speaking of my advisor, he's moving to England tomorrow :( So we're having a get together tonight, rather soon. We just got done with a tennis tournament, and this morning we picked out plots for the aforementioned die off project.

Thursday if I recall was just a data day, and yesterday likewise, but the cool thing was, I finally checked out this roost I'd spotted on the edge of the marsh. No pictures yet, but there were wading birds of all description. Spoonbills, egrets, maybe some nightherons.

Oh yeah and I had a green heron check me out in the marsh one day. He circled me once or twice and I was like whaaat.

But yeah! Business! But I'm pleased to announce I should be fully done with this project and home by probably the end of next week (~the 10th). So yeah. Light at the end of the tunnel. That's something, isn't it?

Sweet, Beautiful Data

Data is probably the hardest part of being a scientist. Collection is tedious and time consuming as it is, as is analysis, but the suspense of getting "good" data, whatever your study constitutes as being good, is probably the most dreadful part of doing research. Even after setting up 4 different experiments this summer, it's impossible to get past the looming, very real potential horror of setting up an experiment that just doesn't work.

That said, today it all paid off. I took radulations for Range, my initial pet project looking into the range (hardy-har) of the snail response to mud crabs. And they're gorgeous. There's a huge effect in the first 10 centimeters, and very little beyond it. It's great. That was the final major piece of that project, and it's done.

That said, I still have die-off to do, and we need to validate to see if using bamboo to measure climbing heights (as we did in Range) mimics the real thing. That'll require a quick setup tomorrow and some data for the rest of the week. I was going to confirm some density data on Range too - just to be sure that the crabs don't make the snails migrate across the mud too to avoid them.

Oh, and I need to do some surveys to piece the rest of this project together and solidify it. But those'll be fun, honestly. A nice bit of icing on the cake.

Sidenote, I gave a talk to a room full of people today on my work. I winged it, and it was honestly kinda cool. Nerve-wracking at first. But yeah. Neat!

Reprisal

So apologies for the lull in posts - I went back to Tallahassee for what's likely to be my last weekend off. Mostly just hung out - saw the Dark Knight Rises with Jenn. I highly recommend it. I dunno if it necessarily tops the second film but it's very good nonetheless. Go watch it!

Today was another day of pure data. I regret to admit that dispersion may be getting set aside. Just wasn't working out. Dead crabs, crabs getting into control plots, and misbehaving snails that didn't show any real trend. Oh well, though. Die-off and Range still look good and I have a few other ideas up my sleeve. If nothing else this is a nice "welcome to the real world" - projects sometimes don't work at all despite all the effort you put into them, where others, even simple ones that were set up in an afternoon (die-off), pull through brilliantly.

Another cool feature of die-off apart from the obvious - there are enough snails and enough damage to really seriously bend and break some of these leaves. It may be an important piece of the puzzle and it's one I plan on taking data on when I do final radulations.

But, to make up for my lack of posts, I have two science crabs for the price of one to show off, and another marsh oddity.

This, my friends, is a mussel (black, center of the pic) inside of a dead mussel (in white, surrounding it). I dub it, MUSSEL-CEPTION.

This little guy may have picked a bit too big of a PVC pole for crab-catching. Why he'd want to catch more of his kind beats me.

Much to my chagrin, both the crab gymnastics program AND the new marsh research site marking Crab Flags (tm) product pitch failed.

Oh god. I just realized. I've become one of those people who makes lolcats. ONLY WITH CRABS. D:

Science Crabs Part 2

Ladies and gents, I present to you the second image in my Science Crabs series. Today's subject is a white-claw with a knack for meter sticks.

When I asked him, he said he was trying very hard to measure his armspan. Unfortunately, he can't read.

 

 

 

 

On a more serious note, I had some cool finds today. First off, I found an oyster cluster.

Note the mussel on the bottom left (upper right is oysters). Mussels naturally occur throughout the marsh, but these guys seem to have taken one for an anchoring point.

These are an odd sight in the marsh beyond the creeks, where they are abundant. These guys were close to a very small tributary, likely their source. Weird though.

Secondly, some very dry, drought-like marsh.

This stuff is bad news because it's one corner of the die-off trifecta. When drought stresses plants, they become more vulnerable to snail grazing and subsequent fungal infection, which is often lethal and clears out strips of the marsh. I don't think it's bad enough here - this is a path, actually - but the marsh is usually much, much wetter. Muddy like quicksand.

More Data, More Wilderness

So I'm up this early trying to register for an Ecology Lab, but y'all guys get a blog post out of it, so whoo.

The die-off project is up and has had data taken on it. Looking good so far. I take more today and some on Dispersion. I'll let y'all know how that goes.

On another note, 2 cool naturey things. First off, yesterday I looked out the window of our trailer to behold this!

 

Deer are absurdly common out here, but it was still kinda neat. Never seen them come into our area directly - they usually hang out on the outskirts. Including the albino deer.

Also as I sit here waiting to register for that course, outside are lots and lots of these little guys.

 

I really, really want to wrangle them. But I have things to doooooo. :( 

Update: 

Looooool.

Double update sorry lol:

So I was talking to Jenn earlier about my need to do a survey for my project. In ecology, a survey is anything where you're only taking data - no experimental manipulations, just telling it how it is. In psychology (her field) a survey is a questionnaire given to participants in your study. Well, today, at her request, I took a survey in the second definition.

Using the eraser maybe?

I don't think he understands pencils.

Fun fact - these guys froth at the mouth when stressed.

I am debating having a science crabs photo shoot. Maybe one a day.

Also here is a pregnant fiddler crab:

The eggs are that spongy mass beneath, being held in place by the plate of carapace just visible in this shot. See the crab anatomy lesson post - it's the broad plate that distinguishes female from male.

Cages and Blood

So aside from data, I've been very busy helping a roomie get her project up. This means cages. The big kind.

Building them by night at the institute.

Taking them into the marsh. Pulling a chunk out of the marsh and lining it with mesh so that crabs can't get in from beneath. Putting that chunk back in. Putting the cage on top of it.

Catching snails, counting them, measuring them, sorting them. Lots, and lots of work. I need a vacation.

Note: not a snail.

But we're almost done! And my die-off project is out as of today. So yeah, good times.

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.