Salamander Chronicles

First off, another big thanks to the Explorers Club who awarded me the Exploration Fund grant for the third year in a row. This grant will help me examining the role of the Bogert effect in Plethodon jordani.

The first couple days in Georgia have been pretty uneventful as I have been visiting low elevation sites. Also, since this is my first time visiting all of these sites I have needed to explorer a bit. I have yet to find any salamanders; however, after learning my lesson last year, I have set up protocol for collecting species diversity and general microhabitat data. So no salamanders, but I still have data. I have also found a couple fun herps, including a worm snake (Carphophis amoenus) and an eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina).

I am more optimistic for the next two sites I am visiting because one of them is a known site for the recently described patch nosed salamander (Urspelerpes brucei) and the other site seems to be in a more remote area. I am hoping the next couple days will produce some nice Georgia salamanders!

Well it has been a crazy month.  In all I applied for ~$75,000 in funding this year.  Much of this total came from applications submitted to 4 sources, National Geographic, National Science Foundation, the Explorer’s Club, and the Ohio University Student Enhancement Award, which all together totaled ~$63,000 .  I applied for several other smaller grants, but essentially without one of the large grants coming through I was going to be in serious trouble during the up coming field season.  During the final week of March I received rejections from most of these agencies including the National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant, which is not only very prestigious but also provides $12,000.  To put it lightly I was depressed and worried.

However, as it always seems to happen, with bad news came good news.  Despite already receiving an OCEES fellowship a few weeks earlier, which relieves me of teaching duties for a full semester, I was informed that I was awarded the Graduate College fellowship.  This fellowship is only awarded to 5 student in the university and provides a full year of tuition waivers and ~15,000 worth of service free stipend for the year.  This news really lifted my spirits  but I still needed money for research.  What good is time off from teaching if I do not have the money to do my research?

The end of the week rolled around and I assumed I would have to wait another weekend to find out about all of my pending grant applications, when Dr. Larry Witmer popped into my office to inform me that I received the Ohio University Student Enhancement Award!  This was a MAJOR relief because it provides $6,000 in research funds which would at least minimally support me for the rest of the year even if all my other grants fell through. Phew! relief has set in and now every other grant is just potential to improve my project.

Finally, on Tuesday April 2nd, I was notified that I once again received the Exploration Fund grant from the Explorers Club! This provides another $2,000 for my research which essentially ensures that I can deal with even unexpected problems this summer and still complete my field work as planned.  In all I have received $4,500 from the Explorers Club making them a big contributor to the success of my research.

I am still waiting to hear back from several other grants, but as of now I am comfortable, everything else will just be icing on the cake.

Essentially within a 2 week period I went from questioning my life in academia to a complete restoration of my confidence in myself and my project.  It is astonishing that many professors live so long and even continue working most of their lives, because I feel like I shave a year off my life every grant season dealing with these highs and lows.

JUNE 2012

The string of good news continues! The American Philosophical Society awarded me the Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research! This award allows me to start work that I did not think would be possible until next year. I will now be able to purchase long term data loggers w/ sensors for temperature, moisture, and relative humidity. My goal is to set up four preliminary long term microhabitat monitoring stations in both Wayne National Forest and the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Each station will be contained within one of my 1 m^2 plots. I will place a HOBO Micro station with one soil moisture sensor placed into the top 5m of soil of open ground (not covered by rocks, logs, etc.) and one soil moisture sensor into the top 5 cm of soil under a cover object. I will also place three temp ibuttons to record temperature 20 cm below ground, 5 cm below ground, and in the leaf litter. Finally, I will use a temp/humidity ibutton to record temperature and relative humidity just above ground level. Each station will be able to record data continuously every hour for over 6 months. These will be critically important data. Hopefully, I can increase the number of stations next year.

For now, I will start collecting data and refining my methods!

MAY 2012

After accumulating $500 in funding for my master research in 2 years, I have managed to secure $5000 for my PhD dissertation work.  This is after I heard last week that I received the the Rosemary Fund grant of $2000 from the Society for the Study of Evolution. This grant is only available to PhD students in their first two years so this was the last year I was eligible. SSE is a great society and they publish one of my favorite journals so receiving a grant from them was certainly a boost to my confidence. It will also greatly help my first two years of research. I will be able to purchase all of the field equipment I need to get started and even purchase some long term data loggers which I did not think would be possible until next year.

I have already made some purchases including a Kestral 3500 weather meter. This will allow me to record air/water temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, among many other weather variables in a nice hand held waterproof/durable yet still accurate weather meter.

I also ordered some waterproof high accuracy temperature probes and infrared thermometers from ThermoWorks which should be here next week.

The piece of equipment I am most excited about is the HydroSense II which I just received from Campbell Scientific earlier this week. This item will allow me to record soil moisture quicker and more accurately than some cheaper options making it a worth while purchase despite the hefty price tag. It also has a built in GPS so I will be able to confirm all measurements recorded are for the correct plot when I am entering my data.

I am really excited to get out into the field!

Still waiting on one more grant for the spring season…

APRIL 2012

I found out during my masters research at Texas State that funding can be hard to come by. In fact, I applied for over a dozen grants during my masters work yet I only received two, and that netted me only $500. Well, $500 barely paid for gas to get me out to my field sites and back, so essentially I ended up spending a lot of my own money.

Starting a new project up here at Ohio University I was fairly nervous that I would run into the same problem. In all, I will probably need a minimum of $10,000 to complete my project over the next 3 years, but in reality, closer to $25,000 would be ideal. The more money I receive the more continuous data loggers I can purchase, which can record soil moisture and temperature for months at a time. These data loggers will help me tie together all of my micro-habitat data as well as help make comparisons with macro-habitat data. However, the most nerve racking aspect of the project was that in order to collect preliminary data this spring I needed at least $2000 to purchase a handheld soil moisture meter and fund my travel to field sites. I also have already had several grant rejections which certainly magnified by nervousness. Well, luckily The Explorers Club came through for me and awarded me the Exploration Fund grant of $2500. The title of my grant proposal was “Exploring below the undergrowth:the role of micro-habitat in the evolutionary ecology of a bioindicator taxon”, which admittedly is a bit over the top. However, given that it was successful, I may be sticking with it, at least for a little while.