Our second week turned out to be a whirlwind tour through several Illinois counties and turtle species! We were lucky enough to sample ornate box turtles and Blanding’s turtles within a few days! We missed our large crew of fellow veterinary students that we sampled eastern box turtles with last week but got to [...]
Kirsten Writes a Note to Self You will also see a picture of me working at my lab bench with a taped note saying “Literally please wait 5 minutes OMG.” As you can imagine, lab work does not always run smoothly. I am spending a lot of lab time this summer doing DNA extractions, and it [...]
We Felt Eggs It is that time of season where female Blanding’s turtles are becoming gravid (carrying eggs). These turtles have delayed maturation, reaching sexual maturity between 14-20 years of age, which this one of the reasons for an unsustainable population. The amount of turtles that survive to this age, avoiding habitat destruction, road mortality, [...]
Two weeks in and we are already famous (and a little rich in terms of vet student status since we passed our first pay day). Well not really, but we did appear in the background of a few news stories featuring LCFPD’s Blanding’s turtle head-starting program. What we really care about getting famous is our state-endangered [...]
The 2018 season of Turtle Team started off with a bang! Dogs were running everywhere, turtles were being found right and left, and everyone was having a blast! For those unfamiliar with what Turtle Team is, this week we will be giving a brief overview of the project. Turtle Team is an ongoing research project [...]
I had not planned on going to TN for the summer until about 3 months ago when I was asked by Dr. Allender how much I wanted to stay in Champaign- Urbana. As you can imagine, while I love my little school town, I was not opposed to leaving the area where I spend 99% [...]
Welcome to our Blanding’s blog, where we are excited to share our summer turtle adventures with you! The school year just ended, the field season has officially started and we are more than thrilled to get our feet wet (literally and figuratively). As a part of Dr. Matt Allender’s Wildlife Epidemiology Lab, we as veterinary [...]
I spent the last few weeks in Indiana soaking up as much fieldwork as possible before school starts up again! Three weeks ago, our group set out on a (short) road trip to conduct the first formal survey of Snake Fungal Disease in Indiana! Thanks to Dr. Sarah Baker and Seth LaGrange we found [...]
Our final week of turtle team began at 4:00am when Marta and I met at the lab to pack all of our supplies and equipment into a SUV. Just as the sun began to rise at 5am, we were off and headed to Tennessee. With only a couple of quick food and rest stops, we [...]
Most of our data collecting is complete and we are on to analysis! It was slightly sad to move out of our Lake County “mansion” and away from our 8 other phenomenal roommates, but cleaning out our bedrooms and field lab reminded us of all that we have accomplished this summer. Here’s a summary of [...]
