Got my degree

Lots has happened since my last post.

I successfully passed my last exam which funny enough was from the previous year. The dreaded botany. It wasn't the theory that was giving me nightmares but the practical exam. It was split into three parts:

1. Algae, Moss, Fern, Lichens
For passing the first one you had to recognize 8 slides under microscope and 2 macro samples.

Diatoms

Green algae (Volvox)

Dinoflagellata (Ceratinum)

2. Higher plants
Those who passed were allowed to take the second part which consisted of 10 tree leaves (out of 80 we had to know) that we have to correctly name.

3. Flowering plants
Those who passed finally got to take the most difficult one: naming three random plants we never studied before using the incredible complicated key.

Three-toothed orchid (Orchis tridentata)

Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris)

Hacquetia epipactis

If you failed any of those you were back at the beginning. So basically it was like playing an annoying game withouth the opinion of autosave.

With the last exam I finished my BSC program. I was accepted into MSC program: Ecology and Biodiversity:) Its been huge fun so far. I believe we have so much more fun than our former classmates who decided to take Physiology and Structural Biology (no field work at all for them!). Plus our subjects are much more fun, not to mention the professors or assistants.
I am already looking forward to the whole month and a half of field days during the summer. It is going to be awesome;)

I will probably have different oppinion in the summer when I'll be trying to juggle all the field work, exams and articles that should have been written a month ago.

Btw there is a grasshopper hidden on one of the pictures;) Lets see how many of you can find it!

Sad news

In June we were tracking big carnivores in our forests. I already wrote about 2 year old lynx Maja and her three cubs.

Sadly on 10th July she passed away (and with her her three cubs died too). The offical cause of her death is still unknown. Hopefully after necropsy we'll be able to know more. Currently it is thought she died of natural causes (even though she was still young) or problems caused by inbreeding (heart faiure, skeletal deformation and often increased chances for leuchemy).

Currently there are about 20 lynxes on our territory. After being extinct for almost 100 years, six subjects were brought in 1973 from neighbour country (3 males and 3 females, two of them mother and son). At first (after couple of decades) it seemed the population was thriving, but in late 90s scientists noticed something was happening with lynx population. It started to drop. With help of genetics conclusion was made that because of low genetic pool of starter six animal population couldn't avoid inbreeding. But when the inbreeding factor was calculated the number was much lower than expected. With additional researches more possible reasons for their numbers have been found: illegal kills, low numbers of their prey and land fragmentation.

The number of illegal kills is still unknown, which with their already low numbers could drastically influence the gene pool. Because of that some suggestions have been made to add some fresh blood again, but the country from which the last lynxes were brought is struggling with the same problem herself.
The best (but probably impossible) solution would be to make corridors through which contact with lynxes from other populations could be established. This way with migrations new genes could be added.

Loss of Maja and her cubs is sad, but I hope things will finally start to change.

Gone batty

It is now 1.30am and I have just returned from another field day. This time it was bats:)

I have joined Bat Association to help with their current joined project Life at night. It is reasearching the influence of lights (especially church lights) on the behaviour of bats. They are trying 3 different lights (standard and 2 other - I think red and another one that I can't remember right now) too see if the new or same lighting in any way changes the time when  they start flying out to feed. They are mainly centering their attention on Lesser horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hipposideros) 
as it seems this species is more endangered.


The problem with lightning is, if the lights are too bright the bats will fly out later and not soon after the sunset when the insect numbers are the highest. This results in bats getting less feed as they miss the insect peak. If this happens too often there is a high risk of starvation.


Hopefully with these results we'll be able to see which lights disturb them the least (9 churches are included in the project, from 3 different areas. Three in the same area, each with different lighting for a year). I only hope, since the association will only be able to strongly suggest the new lighting (if it is different than the previous one) to the church and people, that they will listen and change it for the bats.

Cute female resting after returning from feeding.

I was also lucky enough to help with measuring of babies. Well actually I didn't do a lot of measuring since to be able to do that one had to first climb above the bells (mind you getting to the bells wasn't a problem), and as I am a bit on the shorter side, reaching all the hand or leg holds - no starirs! - that others before me (all taller than me by 10cm) used proved impossible. But then I got to explore other rooms next to the bells (where I was able to take this photo) as others did the measuring. As you can see I didn't find any baby bats, but this female was nice enough to pose for a bit.

Hopefully next time (in another church) I get to photo and maybe even hold a baby bat too.

The wonder snail

I've been having some problems with algae in my aquarium. Luckily it's just brown algae (which I read are common in new tanks and are easily removed), not like the last time when I had huge amounts of green algae.

I wanted to get something that would eat the algae and as I don't really want a fish I decided snail would be a way to go. Last time I tried with apple snails, which sadly didn't end well (for snails or my aquarium which ended overgrown with algae) so I did a bit of reading and saw how everyone were saying how great Nerite snails are. Since these snails need brackish water to grow up after hatching and no one here has managed to raise them yet I had to visit my local aquatic shop. They are a bit pricier than apple snails (ok a lot pricier), but I have to say I'm impressed.

After being in my aquarium for only a day the busy snail already cleaned about a third of one glass. Which is really impressive considering how much algae there was (and since I saw it crawling on my sponge filter which has quite some algae too, I imagine it ate alot more).
I am even considering buying a second one to help with the cleaning:)

(picture coming soon)

Going wolf

Today was all about ecology of the big carnivores. We were searching for signs of wolves, lynx and brown bears.

What we expected:

source: http://www.crownofmaine.com/paulcyr/stories/canada-lynx-monitoring/

How it really went:

Total of 10 cars in a row.

Sadly we didn't find the whole caracass, but only a few remaining bones and one hoof. We knew the kill was made by 1.5 year old female Lynx who has 3 one month cubs (2 boys, 1 girl). The kill was approximately 12 days old (usually kills are checked sooner, but as this female has cubs she needs lots of calories and disturbing the site might have caused other predators to find it). Female is called Maja and this is her first litter. We hope the cubs make it, but usually only 50% of litter survives and since Maja is still inexperienced if only one survives that will be a success too:)
This year the increase in numbers of rodents has been noted as Beech trees had a record yield last year (apparently it happens every 20 years). So hopefully she will have enough food to feed her young (though they do hunt young deer too!).
We were hoping to locate her approximate location by radio collar. Sadly she must have been in den with her cubs as we didn't get any signal.

The remains of a Lynx kill (probably 1 year old deer).

We also saw that brown bear has gotten to the caracass as we found a plastic box near that has been chewed on. Apparently they like to play after meal:)
The region we were in has the highest bear population per 100km2 (thats a square with 10km x 10km sides) probably in the world, with 12 adults in that small area.

We also wanted to check one wolf lair, but sadly didn't get that chance. Nor did we see any wolf droppings. But the surrounding area is stunning! The lair is located near the top of the smaller mountain covered with trees and higher altitude flora with a drop on one side.

Wolves in this region don't have much problems with humans as the grassland farming with sheep isn't really spread and they have enough natural game to hunt. Sadly in many other regions it is not so. People fear wolves even though there hasn't been any known attacks and wolves actually fear and run away from people (people trying to track them can tell that they have a hard time seing them, mostly they just find droppings).

We didn't get to see any wolves but we did see these:

Sadly you can't see the drop. Let me just say it was a long way down.

Cute caterpillar.

Cute caterpillar again.

Jumping spider.

I believe this is Horvath's rock lizard.

Sadly our assistant that organised the whole field day made a mistake of not limiting the number of students that can take part, so 40 students signed up (out of a class of 60). This field day was mandatory for biology students and we were only given two dates on which we can attend. Sadly most of the class has statistics exam (Oh joy!) on the other date so we had to come today.
Let me just say, its hard to keep quiet or even just walk quietly when there are 40 people walking through the forest, no matter how much they try.

And just because I couldn't resist:)

Living fossils

Not many species can claim this title but Triops certainly are one of them. They resemble Horseshoe crabs, but are much smaller. I first heard of them during a Invertebrate Zoology class and have been hooked ever since:)

Can you see three eyes;)

They live in shallow pools that dry out sometime during the season. Most species reproduce sexually (meaning you need both males and females if you want to breed them), but some species only have females that reproduce with parthenogenesis (females will lay eggs from which only females will hatch), so they don't actually need males (those do occur, but rarely). Another thing that is special about them is that their eggs are capable of surviving the dry period - diapause (when water evaporates, they stay in the sand and wait for water to fill the pond again). Scientists were able to hatch eggs that were dry for a decade (and older!).
Triops use their back legs (which work as gills) to get oxygen from the water and first pairs of legs to dig in the substrate in search of food. They also grow their entire life so they need to mould (shed their skin once it becomes too tight). This happens very often when they are small, but becomes infrequent when they age.

Triops mould

I ordered my first eggs from ebay 2 years ago (you can also buy a Trios kit in your store, but usually buying from breeders is better since you get way more hatchlings) and with that my trials started. For a creature that lives in muddy pools they can certainly be a handful! You have to watch this and that and they still won't hatch! It drives you mad:) In fact the more your try the less success you will have.
I found an awesome website www.thetriopsforum.com which offers great advice for beginners and more experience breeders. It really helps when your friends and familly are fed up with your constant whining how they just dont want to hatch:)

Can you see the eggsacks? 

Another think that happens quite often when you start buying eggs online is that you'll get a virus which will result in you buying eggs from multiple species even though you only have one aquarium. Those eggs will then wait in your drawer untill you grow bored of the current species you have and start a new one. I currently have eggs from four different species, but only keep the green aussie in my aquarium:)

Triops feeding on a piece of plant

I saved the best for last - most species of Triops only live for 1-3 months:) Comes really handy for students that would like to have an aquarium on campus but don't want to haul home the full one. You simply dry out the sand and try again when you are ready or have some spare time:)

Start of something new

I've been wanting for some time to start a new blog, but its always been ... I don't have anything to say/I don't have time ...
Today I finally decided to go ahead and start it:) The fact that I'm in the middle of the exam month might have something to do with it too;) I'd think I learned by now, but every time when I should be studying for exams I find many other more interesting things to do. In fact I download more movies during examination period than the entire time in between them. I already learned to stay away from Facebook during this time, since by some unknown magic time just flies and I lose an hour before I even manage to blink.


Hopefully I'll post new things regulary and won't quit after only few weeks.