For my Independent Project I have two ideas at the present moment.
1) While working at Trinity University, I worked on a study of the effects of a prescribed burn on the invasive red imported fire ant. I have some preliminary data from directly before and after the burn that needs to be analyzed. The data consists of pitfall trap counts of native and non-native ants and counts of other insects (to order only).
2) I am looking into a local spider diversity project. I'm not sure how much data would be available for analysis at this point. I should find out the answer to that question this week.
More to come on this...
Rebecca
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6 comments:
i think either of these would work.
i would go with whichever would get you closer to a submittable manuscript, but you might also want to chat with your major professor about it as well.
Hey Rebecca,
Sounds great. Do you know that Tom has had some students working on spider diversity projects too - are you tieing in with them?
Great name for your site!
Cheers,
Nicole
Hey Rebecca,
Terry Christenson also works with Dr. Sherry with these spider diversity studies that Nicole is talking about. I actually did some field collecting with him. It was a lot of fun! Now I am doing my own work on spiders. It's a different study on the priority patterns of Nesticodes rufipes. Anyways, I went to Trinity for the hurricane semester and am from San Antonio originally. With whom were you working?
Thanks for the comments, guys! Yes. Tom Sherry and Terry Christenson are both involved with the spider diversity project. They have 4-5 years worth of pre-Katrina diversity data from various sites in Louisiana. The next step will be to analyze the collections from last summer and continue collections and analyses in the coming years. I don't see this being my primary research focus, but it's a great opportunity to get my feet wet during my first semester as a grad student.
Busy, while I was at Trinity I worked in Kelly Lyons' lab. She was the resident invasive species/ plant ecosystems specialist. Did you get a chance to meet her? If not, who did you meet while you were there? I worked there for 2 years and became pals with all of those crazy folks in the Bio department. San Antonio's a great place! I love it here in New Orleans, but I sure do miss the Taquerias and Southside Icehouses! I look forward to reminiscing about SA with you some time!
Cheers,
Rebecca
All you spider people are mad! When I was at Auburn University I used to get so bored with seminars about cockroach extermination, I wish they had have done one for spiders, yes I know they are important predators!! But I think any of these ideas is great really. I can see beneifts from working on either of these a) getting some data for some work you have already done and trying to get it published (as long as it is not an LPU ha ha!!) or b) digging into that spider data and perhaps getting some ideas about formulating some hypotheses for your PhD research. After all, most hypotheses come from observations and its great that you already have some long term data to look for interesting patterns!
I did not get a chance to meet Kelly, but I did meet Johnathan King. He was really great! Anyways, I do miss some good huevos rancheros on occasion!
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