I Think I'm Coming & Going

The struggle continues on many fronts, which I've found is the only way to get things done. I spent much of yesterday afternoon carefully reading the reviewers' comments on my tentatively accepted Southeastern Naturalist shiner reproduction article. One reviewer in particular had very good suggestions and critiques that will, as the saying goes, greately improve the manuscript. I'd been consciously holding back in some of my comments in the manuscript's Discussion section, and this reviewer urged me to flesh out my analysis of what we found. The big change I'll have to make in the manuscript is cutting out most discussion of my set of developing oocyte measurements. I think they're good, but the trouble is that for some months I only had a single female's oocyte count, making my reporting of results an unfortunate example of pseudoreplication. Yikes! But all three reviewers thought the rest of the data stand by themselves for a good article, so I'll edit it as such. I also talked today to my editor, Todd in Mississippi, to advise him of what I hope to do. He was very supportive for which I'm grateful, a lot of journal editing can be a very tense affair.

My proposed project to extract and quantify carotenoid pigments from scarlet shiners is on track. Abby, an undergraduate, is working with Jim, a colleague's husband, to set up the protocols for this process. If it works, which it should, we could probably do this measurement for lots of fish which is a study in its own right. It's for projects like this that biologists need a grounding in organic chemistry and biochemistry, as dry as they can be. These fields offer some very useful tools if you have both the chops and the imagination.