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Ever wonder what an alligator's breath smells like? One of the perks of my research is I get to hang out within sneezing distance of the amazing reptiles and I can tell you from first hand experience that their breath smells like death. Two of the major questions I try to answer with my research is what do alligators eat in the coastal Everglades and where do they eat it? To get at these questions, I use two different techniques: stomach contents analysis (SCA) and stable isotope analysis (SIA). For SCA, me and my team catch alligators at night using high powered spotlights and steel snares attached to long poles. Once an alligator has been caught and its mouth taped shut, we bring it up on board our boat, strap it to a long wooden plank so it can't move, place a PVC pipe into its mouth to hold it open, and then thread a tube down its throat and into its stomach. The other end of the hose is attached to a water pump which we use to fill the gator's stomach with water, and t...

When one thinks of a student doing research in the Everglades, one would assume that the researcher is an outdoorsy type who could never thrive in an office or indoor work environment. Part 3 of this series, however, is about grad student offices, which is where some of us actually spend the majority of our time. If you haven't been keeping up with this series, you can learn more about the other aspects of grad student life in Part 1 and Part 2 of "Grad Student Life Beyond Fieldwork." The picture above is my office, which I currently share with 3 other Earth and Environment grad students. Because I am working on writing my thesis proposal, I’ve recently been spending a lot of time here. You may notice that there are no windows because scientists apparently hate sunlight. You also may notice that the space was likely a lab before it was a grad student office. That means that at some point in the room’s past, the space may have contained heavy metals, carcinogens, rad...

The limousine pulls up to the opera house... The patrons step out wearing their summer fashion...   The red carpet is laid out, welcoming the guests... And the symphony begins… Hmm Hmm Buzzzz Bzzzzz Bzzzz….Slap Splat, Clap Smash…. Hmm Hmm Buzzzz Bzzzzz Bzzzz….Slap Splat, Clap Smash While conducting research in the Everglades you will inevitably come in contact with throngs of mosquitoes, especially during the dog days of summer in the mangroves along Shark River and Taylor River.  So let me back up a bit. In addition to the satellite images I use for my research (see previous post), I also collect water samples from the groundwater, surface water and pore water in the coastal mangrove ecotone. These samples serve as ground-truthed data, or in other words, a way to calibrate and validate the results from the satellite images (more to come). This requires going out in the Everglades every 2-3 months to collect samples, and that includes going d...

What data organization looks like (aka what I've been staring at all day today):

It is more than likely that you have already encountered periphyton of some form. You may have encountered it without even really noticing it or knowing what it was. Or you may have thought it was pretty gross. Periphyton is a bunch of algae, fungi, other microbes, and dead material either growing or aggregating together on or around a surface. “Peri” means around (like in perimeter) and “phyto” means plant. The plant part refers to the algae that are a major component of periphyton. Periphyton can grow on plants (epiphytic), on rocks (epilithic), on top of the sediment surface underwater (benthic), and even on animals (epizooic). Periphyton has been called “pond scum,” “muck,” or even “rock snot.” Periphyton in the Everglades landscape In the Everglades, you can find periphyton almost everywhere, especially where the water has low nutrients and isn't too deep. Usually it has a tan or beige color because of the calcium carbonate that enters the water column from the limestone bedro...

What do FCE grad students do besides trekking through mangroves, collecting water samples and battling mosquitoes? My four part series, “Grad Student Life Beyond Fieldwork,” is designed to give readers of this blog a general idea of what we do when we’re not in the Everglades. Whether you’re a prospective student wanting to know more about grad school life or a PI wondering why we haven’t finished analyzing our data yet, we hope this series gives you a more complete picture of what we do. Part 1 covered graduate coursework and degree requirements. Today’s post, Part 2, covers our experiences as teaching assistants. This is a picture of my classroom for History of Life Lab.  Today, my students did a genetics lab involving phenotype ratios in corn pollen and corn kernels. Many of us are financially supported by research assistantships , particularly those who are advanced in their PhD research. Others, including myself, make grad school financially feasible through teaching as...

To study American alligators that live in the coastal Everglades you need to be a bit of a night owl. Alligators are much easier to find and catch at night because their eyes glow bright red when you shine a spotlight at them, whereas during the day they blend in amazingly well with the water and the vegetation because of the sleek, low profile of their bodies.  Fortunately for me, my natural sleep patterns involve staying up late and waking up around noon. Even with the natural advantages of my sleep patterns, this type of research is easier to carry out if you camp out in the Everglades because you can quickly crash in your tent after a long night of alligator wrestling rather than making the long haul back to shore. Everglades National Park provides a surprisingly large number of great camp sites for researchers and fishermen to use. One type is called a "chickee," which is a very simple wooden platform that sits on stilts above the surface of the water. Photo credit   The...

For those of you who read Using "Sound" to See Underwater  and Everglades at Night ,  you've learned a bit about the DIDSON (an imaging sonar) and have gathered that some of my work occurs at night in the glades.  Below, I'll explain how I'm using the DIDSON to understand the role of predatory fish in canals of the Everglades. Canals were dredged  in the early 20th century to drain the wetlands and have now become a permanent fixture in the Everglades landscape.  I could write a whole separate article on the harm canals have done, but for now I encourage you to read  The Effects of Canals and Levees on Everglades Ecosystems  for a review on their history and role in the landscape.  Their relevance to my study is that the canals harbor large, piscivorous fish (fish that eat other fish), which is great for recreational fishermen but bad news for the little fish who have to fight for survival in these canals.  Small fish play...