Senior Capstone. Papers and research and bears, oh my!

Last semester of senior year of college. After five years of college (I switched majors from zoology to wildlife ecology, which set me back a little, and I may have failed chemistry a few times...) and nearly seven years since I graduated high school, I was nearly done with acquiring my degree and diving head first into the "real world." 

This final semester was busy. Not only was I working whenever I could squeeze it in at the Entomology lab, but along with classes I had to start job hunting and preparing for my big move from Maine to Colorado after graduation.

This meant trying to squeeze in as much romping through the Maine woods as possible while I still could. 

Senior year also meant a capstone project. This is a demanding project where the small class was given a study area, and our project was to access a piece of land, depending on a focal species (we all picked a different species) and determined whether the creature may be present based on signs (like animal tracks, scat, or even sightings) and if no signs were present then we surveyed the vegetation and determined whether or not it was suitable habitat for the species that we had chosen.

We went out on our own to do an initial survey, and made note of any animal signs that we could find. 

Tree cavity. I wonder who lives here?

Looks like coyote scat.

This was made by a yellow bellied sapsucker! This bird doesn't eat the sap, but makes these holes so the sap catches insects, and that's what the bird eats. Very smart!

Once we had looked for signs both alone and with the class, we formed smaller groups and created transects. We followed the transects through the woods, and made note of any animal sign that we found. My classmates Annie, Kacie, and I were in charge of setting up the transects for the rest of the class to follow. This task took us most of the day, and we came back cold and tired.

Tools needed for the transect process.

 One of us would take the tape into the woods, and we marked off a straight line as best as we could every 100 meters. 

Marker for the start of the transect line.

 My focal species was the North American Porcupine, and we spotted on in a tree on our first trip out. Looks like this is porcupine habitat!

We also happened upon a ruffed grouse on a transect line.

Because both Annie and I like insects, we mentioned perhaps finding some on transect lines. Our instructor told us we wouldn't have any luck. But it turns out she was wrong! We DID find some, but they weren't exactly alive.

Some of the signs we were looking for (especially me, as porcupines were my focal species), were girdling on trees. That's when a porcupine chews the bark off of a tree.

After making transects and marking off all of the animal sign that we found, we later picked random coordinates within the site and then had to go find them with GPS.  We did this to investigate the vegetation within the site. What is the average tree cover? What kinds of trees? What diameter are they? 

On our very last survey together, we had to get up early because we had a wildlife banquet to go to that night. So we made a quick stop for coffee and snacks. 

Ok, now we're ready to get lost in the forest.

Many of the plots we had to go to were swampy or difficult to get to.

On the way to one of our plots, we came across a huge tree, surrounded in porcupine scat.

Porcupine presents.

So of course, we needed a photo with the "porcupine tree"

 With surveying done, we were soon stuck in the library, writing, rewriting, and re-rewriting our final collaborative report for the area. The final report was about 126 pages! Go Team!

The course wasn't all hard work however. We were lucky enough to be brought along to a bear tagging by some bear biologists, who tag the baby bears every year and check on how the mother bears are doing.

This was, of course, a very exciting part of the course. We were warned not to get our hopes up, because sometimes the bears aren't there, but we were fortunately lucky.

The mother bear was darted, but she was a bit of a fighter and one dart was not enough to put her to sleep. So, she ran away, and while she was away we were able to hold the cubs while the biologists tagged them and weighed them. 

This is how little bears are weighed.

There were three boys and one girl. The girl was the grumpy one, and kept whining for most of the time.

Ok, I guess I was pretty happy.

Classmate is giving me bear cubs.

Annie looks happy too, holding the bear cub.

She has her hands full.

This was the bears's "den." Not all bears sleep in caves. Mom and the cubs can sleep here no problem, and still stay nice and warm.

Annie took this video of the female bear complaining.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu76VGoiJWk

And Annie was nice enough to take a video of me with a cub. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBQooKWixZc

Lastly, here is an article published about the event.

Article published on the bear trip

My capstone class was amazing, and I loved working with everyone, I really did have the best classmates, and I admire all of them for their intelligence, dedication, and fantastic personalities. I really hope that my future coworkers are as great as my classmates. 

Work in the Entomology Department

As a Wildlife ecology major on my last year of school, it was high time I got a science job. On wandering through Deering one day (the plant, entomology and soil science building) I found a job position advertisement! 

I applied and not long after got an interview, and as you might have guessed, I got the job! 

This is my all time favorite job, and I've worked a few places in the past that I liked. 

The project we were working on involved the invasive red fire ant Myrmica rubra. This non native fire ant was taking Maine by force, coming in from tree nurseries that didn't properly inspect the soil their saplings came in. Another possible cause of the red fire ant spread is from mulch infested with the ants. 

We were looking at ways to try to reduce the number of fire ants without hurting native any species. Most of my job entailed sorting through pit falls (a kind of trap where the insects fall into a hole, usually a buried cup, with water in it with a drop of soap. The soap breaks the surface tension of the water so insect can't simply climb back out again. They get stuck in the trap). I would sort all of the insects into their scientific order (butterflies and moths are Lepidoptera, flies are Diptera, ants, bees, and wasps are Hymenoptera, beetles are Coleoptera, etc). 

Another part of my job was to feed and clean out the dead fire ants that we had in a large tupperware container. This was for a separate project for another students thesis paper. After I pulled the dead ants out of the sample and fed and watered the rest (we wanted them to die of nematodes, not of dehydration or starvation) and the thesis student would then check them under a microscope for nematodes. Nematodes are these small parasites that kill ants.

She then later infected healthy ants with the nematodes she extracted from the dead ants. I'm not sure how her project ended, but once I find out I will edit this post again.

I had to srt through this plant matter and remove every insect I could find from it. Simple, but enjoyable work.

This is everything I was able to pull out from that sample!

The next few photos are some interesting insects I found and took pictures of via microscope. 

A collembula. These guys are pretty cute, and very small. If you look closely at a dandelion flower, you may see these guys hoping around on it!

Here is a pitfall sample. Depending on the density of ants and other insects in the pitfall, one pitfall could take us a week to get through. 

I can't seem to rotate this picture, but here you can see how many ants were in this thing. This was a medium difficult one to go through. Some were much worse, some a lot easier. 

Some fire ants and a cockroach

My sorting method. 

A jar of beetles

Closeup of a ground beetle. 

Ground beetle eye

Ground beetle back

Feeding the ants. 

Below is a picture of the fire ants in their container. The sides were coated with a material to prevent them from climbing the sides when the cover was off, but die to moisture problems the coating would wear off. To prevent the ants from escaping, we would put them into a large container that was also coated, and for any ants that climbed to high we would catch them in a little vacuum.

The sponge is where they got their water from. We would add a few drops.

This is what we fed them. On the left is tuna, and on the right, sugar. 

Here I am feeding the little buggers. 

And now, removing the dead and putting them aside. 

This sums up the work I did for the semester. My favorite job ever, and it reignited my interest in entomology.