3 Weeks in and Goodbye Froggies

Well not really goodbye, I’ll be back to froggy business on Monday. Instead I am taking a break and going on a road trip to Edmonton, Alberta. So far we’ve been on the road for a day, stayed in a motel for the night and back on the road again. The sights are beautiful! We’re avoiding driving at night due to the abundant numbers of moose that like to venture onto the road. The ride has been quite uneventful to the common bystander, but for me I am having tons of fun. Listening to music, writing, talking. I love road trips. Ontario is huge, but beautiful. We hope to hit Manitoba tomorrow.

We stopped at Iron Bridge for the night and I heard Spring Peepers!!  I haven’t heard them for a week now in at my field station. It was so lovely to hear them again.

P.S. I love looking at the name of some of these cities, one we stopped in was Wawa… The things I find amusing. 

Data, where art thou?

I started my research May 1^st. That’s a problem. Like I mentioned before I work with frogs, female frogs to be exact. Well most frogs start breeding in April (in Ontario), which leaves me with only 2 out of 8 species to work with: the American bullfrog and the Green Frog (Grey tree frogs bred early this year). So my project has been extended to also study the tadpole. Tadpoles are much easier to catch, contain and study than females, you just use a big strainer. Fingers crossed that everything will work out!

I spend most of my days searching for my tadpoles in different marshes and my nights walking transects looking for females, so my entire day is frog-filled. 

Introduction

One of the first questions people ask me is “why are you in biology?” Almost always followed with “you want to go to med school, right?” Contrary to what my parents would like I have no will to go into medicine. It never interested me. Biology interests me: conservation, evolution, natural and sexual selection, phenotype, the list goes on and on…. FASCINATING!

So I have started a blog that will share my every adventure of doing a thesis project in my fifth year of University. Sharing everything I learn, the struggles I will [definitely] go through, and the finished result. The reason why I have named this blog “The Frogger” is because I study frogs for my research and figured it suited quite well.

Also I have started this 3 weeks into my project so I’ll have to do a quick fill in.

Sincerely,

Biologists, Herpetologist, devoted Frogger. 

P.S. Some posts may be different days but will be up at the same time due to bad internet connection.