First trip to Trinidad!

Last week I took my first trip to Trinidad.  Even though it was the wet season, we needed to get fish to start a breeding experiment, so we took our chances.  Unfortunately, it poured down rain most of the time we were there, turning small creeks into raging rivers.  It started raining on our way home from the site we sampled on the second day, and the hour drive down the the windy, bumpy, mountain road we came up on turned into a dangerous, flooded, muddy mess, consequently causing the rental car agent to scowl at Cam when he returned the car.  Fortunately, we made it back and waited the rain out for the next 2 days by checking out sites and visiting the Asa Wright Nature Center, a renowned birder's paradise.  On our last day, we made up for lost time and sampled 3 sites in one day, and another team of researchers sampled a 4th site for us!  So in all, it was a successful trip, but hopefully next time it will be the dry season, and we will have more time to explore more of Trinidad.  I feel like this was my first "real" field experience, where we were basically camping at the field station - I had to sleep in a mosquito net - and I got more dirty and wet in one day than I have in an entire week!  Now I am officially a field biologist and I love it!

Using butterfly nets to catch guppies in Trinidadian streams

More photos here!

Upcoming conferences and talks

I am off to a fast start here in Fort Collins, but I am looking forward to the new experiences.  I just registered yesterday to attend and present a talk at the Guild of Rocky Mountain Ecologists and Evolutionary Biologists (GREEBs) in about a month.  This is a meeting that several members of the Ghalambor lab attend, and it brings together a wide range of local researchers from Colorado and Wyoming.  The location is also fantastic - in the Rocky Mountains when the leaves are changing! This will be a great opportunity to talk about my research to a new audience and meet other local scientists!

Also, thanks to Tim Higham for inviting me to give a symposium talk at the annual Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) meeting in West Palm Beach, FL this January.  The symposium is co-organized with Peter Wainwright, and is titled "New insights into suction feeding biomechanics and evolution".  Not only am I excited to give an integrative and forward thinking talk on complexity and integration, but Tim and I are also working on submitting a complementary review paper to go with it.  This will be a great opportunity to get some of my ideas out and share them with lots of other researchers!

CSU

I have officially arrived in Fort Collins, CO (although I don't technically start the fellowship until Sept. 1)!  I really enjoyed spending time with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law on the drive out!  We stopped in Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and the Continental Divide (NM).  I think we may have been the only ones with a rabbit at the Grand Canyon! But it was too hot to leave the boys in the car.  

Diego (dog) and Bruce (bunny) at the Grand Canyon!

I haven't had much time to settle in though, because a few days after I arrived my dad came to town in his RV.  So of course we took the obligatory road trip to get to know my new home state.  We drove through Rocky Mountain National Park where we saw pika, marmot, and elk and evaded a thunderstorm.  Then we Parked the RV at Cheyenne Mountain State Park and took the motorcycle to Pike's Peak and Mt. Evans, where it snowed both times!  We also saw a bighorn sheep and several herds of mountain goats.  On the way back home we stopped at the Manitou Cliff Dwellings to see the ruins.  See more photos here.  I guess now that I've been introduced to Colorado, it's time to get to work!

Mountain goat selfie!

Graduation and my journeys since

Sorry this post is so late, but I thought it was still worthwhile to mention that I walked in graduation!  I have also submitted all of the paperwork to graduate, including my dissertation, so the only thing left is the piece of paper to hang on the wall!  I had a really great time with my family that came into town from Texas, Maryland, and even Pakistan!  See more photos on my Google+.

Graduation procession

I've also spent some time doing those things that I haven't had a chance to yet, like heading to San Diego to meet up with the two people that I worked with during my undergraduate internship.  It was great catching up with them!  

Me and Tim Gerrodette at the new NOAA building

Me and Paula Olson

It was also a chance to do some tidepooling!  I went to San Diego twice, and on the first trip I saw an octopus!  I found it right before I had to leave.  I wanted to stay and watch it more!  On the second trip, I discovered that a particularly useful method for catching specimens is handing a net to a kid.  They put so many things in my bucket for me to identify!  Unfortunately, there are still several species of sculpin that are difficult for me to ID, including this one, despite consulting multiple field guides.  They can be so tricky!

Big sculpin someone caught for me!

I also drove up to CO a few weekends ago to check out Fort Collins and rent a house.  Because it's one of the most desirable places to live (apparently), housing is in high demand and it was difficult for me to find something that was available long enough for me to look at it.  So when I did find one that I was REALLY interested in, and that the landlord was also REALLY interested in me, Diego and I got in the car and drove up (round trip = 2149 miles!).  We ended up leasing a really nice place in central Fort Collins, right on the bike trail and a creek and about 2 miles from campus.  It was also a chance to meet up with Cameron and one of his grad students and see the lab.  I am really looking forward to the new experiences now (and another road trip)!

Utah, near the Green River

Diego in Utah

"The Summit", Colorado

Diego tuckered out at the hotel

 It's been a busy month, and now I have a ton of packing to do, but it's exciting to think about new places and new project and new phases of life.

Dissertation defense

I just did my defense this morning and everything went smoothly (I passed)!  Thanks to Tim Higham, Kim Hammond, Dan Ozer, and Matt McHenry for being on my committee!  I also really appreciate everyone's efforts in celebrating, particularly the Higham Lab!  Unfortunately I don't have any photos, but you can see my title slide below:

Thanks to one of our talented undergrads, Amy Cheu, for drawing this for me!