Planning 2021

One of the great things about a break is the down time to reflect and plan. I really haven't done either. I did one article review and my brain is not engaging fully. Still, I need to plan. 

Teaching

This spring I'll be teaching BIO 347 Biostatistics and Experimental Design and BIO 298 Economics of Conservation with a colleague from the Poli Sci department. As of now we're scheduled to teach in person but COVID rates are higher than they were in spring. Although vaccines have been approved I don't see widespread vaccine availability until mid-Spring. Just a guess though. One student in Biostats has requested remote teaching so I'll be recording lectures - live or otherwise.  Live recordings ("synchronous") are easy because the camera is just recording me talking and I use my notes that are all ready to go. Asynchronous recordings require much more time - usually about 5 hours of work for 50 minutes of lecture time. 

I'd also like to teach Field Zoology this summer but I'm skeptical it could happen. I haven't thought about it that much. Probably should soon. Also, I'd like to change it to Wildlife Techniques.

The fall semester is still up in the air. I will possibly teach Ecology. If not, I think Archosaurs again.  

Research

This spring I need to focus on DNA barcoding insects. It's gone horribly slow and it just comes down to following directions.  We are also sorting insects from this summer's pollinator pan experiment. 

This summer I need to survey birds in burned and unburned sites on gamelands. If I can have students we'll work at the same sites and catch bugs, birds, and mammals to work out food webs. I'll need to renew a zillion permits. My least favorite thing to work on. 

I'd like to keep with the pollinator study. I started the pollinator project last August and it went exceedingly well. This coming summer I'll add a blue and white plate to the yellow plate I was putting out. Hopefully, by next summer I'll have better wasp ID skills and the barcoding will be down pat. 

Publishing

Clay caterpillar paper is in review. This has four or five students on it (all graduated). This was rejected the first time around and now resubmitted.

I have Ph.D. data I could try to publish on urbanization and birds. I have a ton of post doc data on bluebirds across an urban gradient. Those data are 15 years old. I have the pollinator data we're working on now - that won't be ready for weeks or a few months. There's the prescribed burning data - if anything that needs serious organizing.

Then there's the Wilson Ornithological Society. I'm the chair of the conservation committee and we've been struggling to come up with some initiatives. It looks like most of us want to publish. But what do we publish? Threats to birds? I think I'll put coffee growing forward as a topic and see if this gets some support. 

Reflections on 2020

Academics

Stretching the brain a bit to go back to the spring. Here's what I remember. We took a number of students to Costa Rica in March for a class. Before the trip, I remember getting promed emails about something happening in China and thinking nothing of it. By the end of the trip people were masked at the airport and furiously wiping down their area. I didn't know if they were over-reacting or I was clueless and underreacting - or a bit of both. 

It wasn't long after we decided to close for two weeks, then to the end of the semester, then we closed until we reopened for the beginning of the fall semester. I was also teaching biostatistics and I recorded a few lectures. 

This last semester was BIO 225 Population and Evolutionary Biology - I did a third of the class and the all the labs. We had the fewest students - 29 and only two sections of lab. Normally we have three and we did have four sections one year. Table tops had clear plastic sheets separating students and we all wore masks. One student did not want to come in so I worked her into the labs as much as possible. She was recorder when we were taking measurements. Worked to some extent although I firmly believe that learning to handle equipment (e.g., micropipetter and thermocycler, etc) are all handy skills (plus you come to understand the work that goes into research on a very visceral level). The one student submitted her work through the LIVE system and it was just a matter of logging in and checking the work. 

I also had conservation biology. Although it could have been completely in person I recorded a number of lectures. I want to make this course completely online at some point (and add a lab). Something has to give (and now that I can't stay awake past 10 - more has to give) and I let the homeworks slide. Instead of 12 articles to read and answer questions I think they only had 4. That and 3 exams and journal club. I'd give myself a C+ for the course. 

Research 

This summer was about surveying burned and unburned sites in various state game lands. I covered new ground and hit a few sites I surveyed previously. This gives me more controlled data on how communities change through time (on short time scales). A few sites I wasn't able to get to but I hope to this coming summer. This makes the data messy but so it goes. I didn't employ the Wildlife Acoustics units. That was probably a mistake - they work great (but expensive). I also purchased a bunch of Audiomoth units. Much cheaper than Wildlife Acoustics but so far I'm not impressed. In fact, I have to get something recognizable off the units. I think they're really sensitive to moisture. The standard is to put them in a sandwich baggie and cross your fingers. I kid you not. 

I just ordered an acoustic vent, which is a membrane that transmits sound but not water. I have small tuperware containers that I'll drill a hole in and place the vent over the hole. I'll post a pic when completed. 

Towards the end of the summer I realized that I could easily study pollinators with pan traps. These are amazing. Simple, cheap, easy to deploy. A dream, yes?  The problem is the wealth of data you get. 

The picture above was typical of a pan after 24 hours.  That's right - 24 hours. I'll predict we get some 250 species of bee/fly/wasp.  We're also DNA barcoding the insects to see who they are. So far that's been going meh. 

Looks like the standard pan trap deployment is a combination of white, blue, yellow. I definitely want to do this next year so I need to up my pollinator ID skills. We're photographing everything as well but the iNaturalist crew has been slow to ID.  

I did submit a paper with five students as co-authors on Wednesday. Feels good. Years in the making and I had to figure out how to do raster extract in R. Which I did. Need to work on the next thing. 

The next thing...