Field Trips This Week

I went out yesterday with Andrew and Taito to Limestone Creek. It was raining off and on in the area, but we were very lucky to go out in a mild drizzle for most of the time. I think seining goes better in the rain, and that was true yesterday, we easily caught the scarlet shiners we wanted. Just as we were about to leave we heard thunder, so that was the end of the seining. The creek was at low flow so that helped too. On the way home down the Interstate the rain was so heavy I slowed down to 50 mph. I feel lucky once again.

We're going out to Estill Fork on Saturday. There's a new moon this week, so the time is right for setting up the drift net. Brittany has done an excellent job to date counting and ID'ing inverts from July's drift netting, so I'm curious to see if there's any real difference this month.

Andrew told me that among the gill flukes we've found on scarlet shiners, most a new species of Dactylogyrus, are individuals of a previously described species, D. crucis, never before observed on scarlet shiners. So that's kind of fun, too. Andrew has put together a poster of his summer work with gill flukes for display at a group show of posters by REU students in a week or two. It looks pretty good, maybe he'll win something with it? And maybe I'm being too competitive for no good reason.

On Monday I had a 15 minute meeting with the District Director of our congressman, bluedog Democrat Parker Griffith. I was lobbying for more federal biology funding as part of the American Institute of Biological Sciences' lobbying week. It went well, I think, explaining who I was and why federal funding is important to both biology research and education. The Director took notes and promised to inform Cong. Griffith of my concerns, and took the handouts I printed from the AIBS site. I feel that this kind of politicking by scientists is important to explain what we do and why it benefits everyone, so I'd urge any other scientists reading this to get in gear and polish your lobbying skills. If you need advice, I'd be happy to talk.