Tuesday, January 28, 2014

My Year of Darwin (1/28/2014)

 Charles Darwin

"Another of my occupation was collecting animals of all classes, briefly describing and roughly dissecting many of the marine ones; but from not being able to draw, and from not having sufficient anatomical knowledge, a great pile of MS. which I made during the voyage has proved almost useless" -Charles Darwin, autobiography 

"A great pile of MS." - this sentiment I get. I have a number projects that went no where. Some made it submitted manuscripts only to be crushed by reviewers. What I found though, that works, is collaboration with peers. I'm surprised that Darwin did not have a camera lucida with him. 
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Working on the Biological Conservation special issue. Editing is not, I'm finding, particularly enjoyable though it is interesting. Expecting bitter cold and the birds told us this was coming; flocks of Ring-billed Gulls and two Bald Eagles flew by campus yesterday indicating the freezing over of lakes north of us. May also work on the food web manuscript... speaking of piles of MS. 

On a brighter note, ended a section of lectures exactly at the end of class (that never happens), and ecology labs went really well. We used GenBank to download mitochondrial protein sequence data and used this to construct phylogenies. On top of this we're mapping ecological traits or distribution information. It's really nice when labs come together and students don't walk away frustrated or their intelligence insulted - that, I really hate. 

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