Drawing Scarlet Shiner Blood, etc.

Jennifer has figured out how to draw blood from scarlet shiners. If you're good at it, with a large alpha male, you can get 50 microliters. She was able to get blood from about 20 scarlets last week, which is now in deep-freeze at -80 deg. C. We're getting close to attempting ELISA for 11-ketotestosterone assays. Enrique was able to remove the brains from the scarlets after bleeding, so he can run some more Westerns on them to determine NMDA receptor levels. With any luck we'll get a full picture of various measures of sexual differentiation in the species.

I spent several days at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab last week for the Program Committee meeting. The Sea Lab seems to be in good shape, with summer school enrollment up and a range of interesting course offerings. The state of Alabama has allocated $4.5 million this coming year for the Sea Lab, up from this year's $3.8 million.

Rachel will do her Master's defense on May 25 for her black darter work. I just received the first full version of her thesis. There are interesting differences she found between the two study sites, such as one population being significantly bigger and more fecund than the other. I'll tell you the whole story later...