This week we are thrilled to welcome Pratik Gupte to the blog. Pratik is a research assistant at the Centre for Ecological Sciences of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. For more about Pratik, see the end of this post.  Last autumn, I was on the River Ijssel in the Netherlands looking for something – or someone – pretty specific. White-fronted goose No. 34 was somewhere close by and I was in the process of…

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I know I have said this before, but I’ve never been fond of spiders. As a Biologist, I can appreciate the way they move, the piercing colours and patterns of their delicate little bodies and their interesting behaviours. These wonderful characteristics are all beautiful and incredibly fascinating, until they’re getting close to me and suddenly that beauty is out the window…literally. Some of you may recall a close encounter I had with a rather large…

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We are excited to welcome Ashley Arnold to Dispatches from the Field today! Ashley is a graduate student studying microbial ecology at the University of British Columbia. Today she tells us about two very interesting weeks out at sea. For more about Ashley, see the end of this post.  Wait, you’re going where?! Will you have internet connection? I don’t get it…why are you going again? Do you get seasick? These are just a few…

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We are excited to welcome Lisa Buckley to the blog today. Lisa is a palaeontologist based in British Columbia, Canada, and today she tells us an unfortunate but equally amazing fieldwork story! Welcome, Lisa!   “I wonder how that would taste?” I can’t think of one field expedition lacking a humorous story about food-borne desperation. You have to laugh, or it just seems horrid. A quote often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte is “an army marches on…

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One of the current hot topics regarding human social trends is the use of social media platforms to document our lives, especially in terms of photos. Why not just live in the moment? You can take experiences with you, but you can’t take photos! These are just a couple of the common mindsets out there. I’m not particularly sure where I fall on this spectrum. I love taking photos, and I do upload quite a…

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Dispatches from the field is happy to welcome Katie Grogan, a postdoctoral fellow to share a post this week about a scary field safety lesson! Check out the end of the post for more about Katie. The second scariest moment of field work I ever experienced happened basically on campus, exactly one mile from our lab and office. Caught in the mist net. Photo by JRM. Some people may argue that catching sparrows in downtown…

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Science rules! And reading rocks! September 18 – 24th 2017 marks the second annual Science Literacy Week in Canada. But what is science literacy? The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) defines scientific literacy as “the ability to engage with science-related issues, and with the ideas of science, as a reflective citizen.” To us here at Dispatches from the Field, promoting scientific literacy means being able to effectively communicate and share the excitement of science…

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This week on Dispatches from the Field, we welcome Sarah Westrick, a Ph. D. student at University of Michigan who shares her experiences at Squirrel Camp! For more about Sarah, check out her bio at the end of the post.  As a biologist, I’m enamored with nature. Learning more about the natural world around us is what drew me to the field, and biological fieldwork provides some amazing opportunities for me to connect with the…

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This week Dispatches from the field are very excited to welcome a guest post co-written by a professor’s wife and 14 year old son when they went to the tundra to help with fieldwork. It is very rare that we have someone under the age of 20 contributing to our blog! For more about Paul, Anne, and their son Louis, check out the end of this post! Finally, this is it!  After all the preparations,…

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When exploring the recent trends of #ScientistsWhoSelfie and #ScientistInHabitat in the science communication Twitterverse, I realize I might belong to the #ScientistsWhoDontSelfie group.  In fact, maybe even the #ScientistsWhoDon’tTakePicturesAtAll group. As a biologist who gets to go to some really cool places, I always love to share how beautiful those places really are. There’s only one slight problem: I have trouble remembering to take pictures. You can describe a place using words but when a…

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