A slow(er) week mainly spent in the lab for Team Snake here at WEL... We started off the week packing and organizing supplies for our Lake Erie fieldwork, which starts next week! Over 1000 swabs and Eppendorf tubes, 200 syringes and blood tubes, two centrifuges, four boxes of slides, over 2000 pairs of gloves, 300 [...]
Earlier this week, Turtle Team went camping! We traveled to Stephen A. Forbes State Park in Southern IL to catch Eastern Box Turtles. We caught 51 box turtles in two days, thanks to John Rucker and his turtle dogs. Watch our vlog to see how a day in the field works!
Hello, fellow turtle lovers! I (Kirsten) am doing a takeover this week because I was Sam-less last week! She went home to New Jersey for her sister's graduation. The highlight of this last week was the Blanding's Turtle Recovery Program celebrating World Turtle Day by releasing 91 head-starts into the wild! This program was started [...]
Hello again! I promise I haven't forgotten about you guys; it's been difficult to update my blog with all my adventures the past couple weeks since I haven't had access to internet! So much happened during Week 1, I hardly know where to start! The first week was filled with fun, new experiences, friendly visits [...]
This week we spend a day surveying ponds for Silvery Salamander larvae. In February, the adult all female species emerge from underground and head to the ponds to lay eggs. In the late spring and early summer, we look for the larvae. We catch the larvae, sample them, measure them, and release!
Hello WEL followers! Dragon team started out the week with a DNA emergency! As part of Dr. Keller's (our fearless leader and mother of dragons; pictured on the right) Nanniziopsis guerri research project, which is a cutaneous mycoses in bearded dragons, we had to extract DNA from samples veterinarians had collected from around the nation, [...]
Our first week together in the field! You can be as prepared as you want for field season, but there are some things that you just cannot plan for. We learned that the hard way on day one! Standing in the middle of a swale that was three feet deep after finding two turtles with [...]
Surprise! Today's blog we're taking a sneak peak at the box turtle team. Why might you ask? Well, while Kirsten is moving her personal belongings to Lake County, Sam is diving into a mini adventure with the box turtle team! "I know I'm cheating on the Blanding's just a little bit, but they are still [...]
The time of year we have all been waiting for is here... FIELD SEASON! Months of preparation have gone into this weekend, and we are so excited to finally move all of our supplies up to Lake County, Illinois for the summer. We were all coming off of our post-finals stress, so the Dunkin' Donuts [...]
Interested to see how a week of turtle team works? Watch our first vlog to see the process!
