… successfully, of course. Now we just have to turn it into a publication. I always give a short speech during the celebrations afterwards, and the theme was what Brittany, her personality, brought to the research project (Ryan Gregory’s great standard question). She was much too modest when she answered this during her defence, so I answered it for her:
her organizational talents (keeping track of the extensive experiments and field observations, all at the same time)her efficient and hard work (she counted more than 600 samples one summer, compared to my 90+ samples for my entire PhD)her intellectual contributions to her thesis, which looks very straightforward afterward, but it took us many iterations to understand and explain it this clearlyknowing how to handle me (important one!
Kaleigh Eichel, a student in Knowledge Integration, did research in Churchill for two summers. In addition to her research, she also created a web site translating some of the research in Churchill to the general public. One of the episodes features the projects done by Amanda and Brittany:
http://www.avioyak.ca/episode3.html
Enjoy.
My old lab space.
New lab space. Much more organized.
H.arcticus for my first LC50.
The box I constructed to control the light for my LC50.
Inside the box.
Sunset on the train
First day exploring Bluff A with Celia and Shelley.
Putting the finishing touches on Celia’s mesocosms before we put them in the water.
The final product? Not quite…for some reason they keep sinking. Still troubleshooting.
First day on Bluff D.
Shelley learning how we sample rock pools.
…and of course my first polar bear sighting. Right outside the CNSC.
Brittany’s first publication stemming from her undergraduate research project during the Algonquin field course has just been published. She was part of team IDH (for obvious reasons), and they worked their butts of to collect the data: finding an interesting question based on her previous community ecology course, interviewing park people to find stands with known time-to-logging, collecting the data, tiring out the TAs who helped them (or maybe slowed them down), breaking down her field vehicle, of course exactly on the one day I came out with them.
Mid august, and it is starting to feel like summer is indeed slowly winding down.
Amanda is also feeling signs ofFall in Churchill, and Brittany has just put an update about her first field season up there.
The Cottenie lab will be active in Churchill, Manitoba again this year. I arrived in Churchill about a week ago and Brittany will be joining me in a few short weeks. Check out our progress as Planktoneers!
Today Brittany and I took a walk over to the Arboretum to sample some of the temporary and man-made ponds, as part of an ongoing metacommunity study. With the warm spring we’ve been having, the zooplankton are in full swing, rivalling the communities we found in Churchill last year in August!Here Brittany is marvelling at the zooplankton and many aquatic insects:
Notice the tea-coloured water, it is stained by tannins leaching from the fallen leaves and detritus.