"Why do you do research on Blanding's?" "Can I have a Blanding's turtle as a pet?" "How can the everyday person be involved in wildlife epidemiology?" "Do you ever catch other animals in your traps?" "Why does the Blanding's have a yellow neck?" Thank you to everyone who submitted questions to us over the [...]
When we don't get to sample cute turtles, we get to catch up on things around the lab! During field weeks, we collect samples such as cloacal-oral swabs, blood and shell swabs which need to be extracted. These samples are used to test for pathogens and diseases that may affect these turtles. You may [...]
Welcome back to another exciting installment of Michelle and Alexis doing stuff! Reading our blog may make it seem like we are field research super cyborgs sent to Earth to save the Blanding's turtles, but in reality we are human and do things outside of the swamp and the lab. This week we'd like to [...]
Welcome to our lab! This week Sam and I wanted to show you the other half of our day. Lab work is very different than field work, but it can be just as fun. In this vlog we walk you through the protocol and science behind erythrocyte sedimentation rate, plasma, packed cell volume, total [...]
Wow Michelle and Alexis haven't posted in a while, hope they haven't been eaten by a snapping turtle. Don't worry readers, the swamp has yet to take us and we have returned for another blog post. If Michelle could stay awake past 10 o' clock this would have probably been posted a lot sooner. Our [...]
We started this week by getting see the full cycle of Blanding’s conservation. Before headstarts are released as adorable baby turtles, they are first eggs that need to be carefully kept in temperature-controlled incubators. Sam and I had the opportunity to go to a local wildlife center that works with Lake County to incubate [...]
This week I had the honor of finding and sampling Blandings turtles in Illinois! I got bust out the waders from the storage closet and yes, they did in fact have water in them...STILL. After a three hour drive and coffee break later, it was time to check the traps! While the traps that [...]
Welcome to a special bonus blog! Now that you've seen a Blanding's work up, Sam and I wanted to show you how we carry all of our supplies. Check out the video below to look through Sam's backpack and see how we keep everything organized in the field. [...]
Setting up some traps. Hello readers, welcome back to your weekly dose of fieldwork propaganda. Last week was relatively slow for us, and yet somehow our blogpost was still up late. Despite Michelle voluntarily eating one of the raw sardines we use as bait in our turtle traps (as an offering to the [...]
After a week in the field, the days following get pretty crazy! The first thing we do upon our return to the lab, is unpack the truck and put the samples in the freezer. Most days, we still have unfinished lab work to complete for the turtles we sampled that day in the field, [...]
