Turtle Doc to Range Control – 1 PAX 1 VIC all clear of the training area. Well folks, the time has come for me to leave Cape Cod and say goodbye to all my turtle (& human!) friends that I have made this summer. I had an absolute blast out in the field and will [...]
These past few weeks in Cape Cod have been spent turtle tracking, reading scientific papers, and getting started on my manuscript! After some significant writer’s block, I have finally put some words down on paper and am getting way too excited about publishing this research for all of you to read! My summer office [...]
I am in denial that I only have two more weeks in beautiful Cape Cod. This summer has flown by and I don’t want it to end…OK I won’t get too emotional now because we still have a lot of turtles to track! Nicole, my roomie and turtle-tracking sidekick, is a pro at using radiotelemetry and [...]
Dr. Allender teaching me the art of the "shell-fie" These past 3 weeks have been spent tracking our Eastern box turtles with radio-transmitters on base for their second round of sampling. This time around was hotter and much more humid than before which slowed us down a bit in the woods. It was [...]
This week I will be showing you all how I process my samples once I get back to the lab. Whole blood samples get processed as soon as I get back for the day, and swabs/plasma get frozen for further analysis once I get back to the lab in Urbana. Depending on the number of [...]
What am I doing here? What is the meaning of all of this? Ok, don’t worry, this is NOT an existential crisis. I thought I would take a minute this week to show all of you the process I go through when processing box turtles! Each turtle has a different personality and varying levels of [...]
My tiny turtle friend! It was the best of times, it was the worst turtliest of times. What were these two turtles you ask? Spotted & Eastern Box turtles, of course! This was sadly the last week that I got to work with spotted turtles, but it did not disappoint! Like before, we [...]
My derpy roadtrip buddy With no turtles to track or trap this week, the team and I were able to catch up on some things in the office. I finally stained all of the blood smears that I have made over the past month, and with 120+ slides this was quite a task. [...]
A male painted turtle shows off his claws This week was all about Painted Turtles! John, the conservation biologist from last week, and I set up Promar traps in ponds to test for any uptake of lead in turtles caused by their use of the varied habitats surrounding the area. This information is [...]
This week I swapped my hiking boots for waders and set out to find spotted turtles in the swamps of Camp Edwards. This is the very first-time spotted turtles have been sampled in the Wildlife Epi Lab! John, a conservation biologist working under the Department of Defense Legacy Grant and graduate student at Antioch University, [...]
