debor042

According to legend, the story of the career of a biology PhD used to go like this: 1) student joins a lab, 2) student spends 4-8 years doing research and honing specific skills in their chosen field, 3) student gets a tenure-track job at a college/university and becomes a professor after 5 more years or so, 4) with essentially a guaranteed job for life, professor gets to do interesting scientific research and live happily ever after. Somewhere along the way another step was added between steps 2 and 3 (step 2.5: the post-doctoral research position). This story, whether actually the norm or not back in the day, is clearly not the story today. And it's freaking a lot of people out. It feels like almost every day I read another article or blog post about how screwed biology PhDs currently are in terms of the job market. Whether its the Washington Post  or the Atlantic Monthly  or many other news outlets, the prospects don't look too good in academia for biology PhDs. This "c...

Gastric bypass- a wonderful alternative to graduate school 'Tis the season of grad school acceptances and major life choices. Two years ago (!) I was an overly confident undergrad preparing to become a graduate researcher. Late night Googling of "how to prepare for grad school" further assured me I was ready. Have experience in a research lab? Check. Know I may have weird hours? Check. Secured some kind of TA/RA funding? Check. Today, reflecting upon this time of year, I wish someone would have told me about a few aspects of grad school that seem to never be highlighted on those "What to Know about Grad School" websites: 1. Yes, being successful in grad school is about working hard, but it’s even more about being creative . Probably in your undergrad studies, the more time spent on homework or a project was directly proportional to your grades or success. I assumed that since I was a hard worker and previously worked in a research lab, I would be a gre...

My research is on the diatom communities of the Everglades. To study how the communities respond to environmental changes, I have to identify and count each of the diatom species I encounter under the microscope. To do that though, the diatoms have to be stripped clean of any organic material and other 'junk' in the sample. The diatoms go through a harsh bath of acid and heat, until all that is left of them are their empty but beautiful cell walls. This is possible because diatom cell walls are essentially glass. Beakers of diatom samples mixed with hydrogen peroxide and nitric acid boiling away on a hot plate. Different amounts of organic matter (like peat or plants) and inorganic matter (like sand or clay) result in different colors and reactions. In the Everglades, the limestone bedrock adds a lot of calcium carbonate into the soil and periphyton. Some components of periphyton (especially mucilage-producing filamentous algae) attract calcite crystals like a magnet. The addit...

Somewhere down the road ecology evolved from this: To something like this: As a member of the Seagrass Ecosystem Research lab here at Florida International University I am, by default, a researcher in two long-term monitoring projects.  The first is the FCE-LTER seagrass monitoring project and the other is a seagrass monitoring project in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary .  Both datasets have resulted in mounds and mounds of data throughout the years.  As a side project to my dissertation I arrogantly decided to conquer said data mounds and turn out some ground-breaking revelations about benthic community structure in South Florida.  There's just one problem:  I am buried in MOUNDS of data!  To analyze these data, it turned out, would be much more complicated than just getting the R code ( R is a stats program that hates me, but it's free so I put up with the abuse!) correct so the program will tell me what I want to know.  Here is the first...

This guest post was written by Mari Soula, undergraduate researcher in Dr. Jenn Rehage's lab at Florida International University. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The most annoying thing for me to hear is “but I don’t know if I’m going to like it” or “they’re not going to accept me”. My mom has always said that I’d never know if I’d like something until I try it. (She’s a smart lady, so I assume the same could be said for the second statement.) What’s even worse is when people let that simple “fear” get in the way and they don’t even try. I find that when it comes to applications for programs, awards, funding, conferences, etc. people use this “fear” as an excuse to cover up their laziness. The way I see it, every application is a new door. And every door not taken is an opportunity wasted, an opportunity with the potential to change your life. We’re all ecologists here; this oppo...

Happy new year folks!   I am writing today to discuss extreme ecology! As much as I wish that “extreme ecology” is studying ecology while surfing or snowboarding, it is not. Rather, extreme ecology or the” ecology of extremes” is the study of how ecosystems change following very rare natural disturbances.   These disturbances are more like natural disasters, that include volcanic eruptions, biblical floods, hurricanes, super storms, and boiling heat waves.  Extreme disturbance events are so harmful because they often kill everything that happened to be in the path of the disturbance. On top of destroying ecosystems, these events incur billions of dollars of damages to humans.  The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens provides a good example of an extreme disturbance event.  Mount St. Helens before and after the 1980 eruption You can see in this picture that after the eruption of Mount St. Helens, swaths of forests  that are harvested for timber were ...

I've always been fascinated with the names of places and the history behind those names. Why is Paris called Paris, and why did somebody in Texas feel the need to use the name again? Why is the big rock in the middle of Australia called Uluru by the native Aboriginals and why did a white guy rename it Ayers Rock in the 19th century? The coastal Everglades is full of fantastically obvious (Mud Lake) and wonderfully enigmatic (Willy Willy) place names and I have bumped into many of them during my research. Here is a list of some of those places and where the names come from (or at least where I think they come from): 1. Shark River: There are sharks in it, though they are not easy to find sometimes. 2. Coot Bay: For many years I had no idea how this bay got its name or what a coot even was, then one day while driving through it early in the morning I saw a flotilla of water birds (at least a couple hundred strong) sitting together on the bay. They turned out to be coots from t...