Inspiring a Love of Science

June 21st

Still at the field site. Just found out this morning that the Oakland Zoo’s turtle release is happening on Thursday, so we decided to just stay up here a couple of extra days, instead of driving back today and back again on Thursday. Plus, there should be plenty of turtle stuff to do. We found eleven turtles out of the water last night, which I think is the most any team has ever found in a single day. Pretty cool, especially since there were just three of us – me, Kristi, and my son, and he wasn’t working the whole time.

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By Wendy St. John, ago

Cobb Mountain

Up in Lake County today, drove up with my son this afternoon. The weather is beautiful here, cooler than back at home, I think, which is good. It’s starting to get a bit warm for me. Apparently, there have been turtles galore over the past few days, so we should be busy at the field site this afternoon. Which is good, it will make the time pass quickly. I just hope we don’t end up being out there until some ridiculously late hour tonight. We’ll see.
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By Wendy St. John, ago

Western Section Poster

Me and Nicole Christie, coauthors on “Timing of Nesting and Nest Site Selection in a Northern California Population of Western Pond Turtles (Emys marmorata),” presented at the Annual Meeting of the Western Section of The Wildlife Society, in Riverside, California.

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By Wendy St. John, ago

Richard Dawkins – Beware the Believers

This is my one of my favorite YouTube videos. The song is catchy, and it’s SO freaking hilarious, especially if you’re familiar with arguments about evolution vs “intelligent design.” This came out, IIRC, around the time of the Scienceblogs kerfuffle about the film “Expelled,” and honestly, I don’t know if it’s meant to lampoon ID creationists or Richard Dawkins and other atheist scientists (including P.Z. Myers and Eugenie Scott who are “featured” in the video) – but it does a great job of poking fun at both sides. Best of all, hip hop Charles Darwin! As someone who identifies as a methodological materialist (but not a philosophical one), I adore this video. Geeky science humor doesn’t get any better than this.

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By Wendy St. John, ago

Turtle Research

Since I am pursuing a bachelor of science degree, I will be writing a senior thesis. Of course, this means that I first need to do some research, so I have something about which to write. It looks like that something will be turtles, more specifically the nesting preferences and nest site fidelity of western pond turtles. I spent a a good part of last summer doing field research at a site up in Lake County, and this semester I am working in the lab with the data we collected, but for my own project, and also for a continuing project on temperature-dependent sex determination in turtles.

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By Wendy St. John, ago

Paleontology Illustrations

One of the things we were required to do in Paleontology was to keep a notebook with field notes, and also illustrations of specimens we’d studied in class. I’m pretty happy with the way some of these drawings turned out, so I thought I’d post them here.

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By Wendy, ago

A Photo of Me!

If you’re wondering about the black thing on the turtle’s back, it’s a radio transmitter. This gravid female had been captured the night before and given an ID number, weighed and measured, and fitted with a transmitter. Then, she spent the night in my car. This photo was taken right before she was released back into the lake the next morning. Then, over the next few days, her radio frequency was monitored each evening in the hopes of finding her out of the water and laying her eggs.

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By Wendy St. John, ago

That’s a Lot of Food

Today, I fed all the animals at the Wildlife Rescue by myself, for the first time ever. (Usually there are at least two, sometimes three of us). I don’t usually feed on Saturdays, but today I was filling in for someone who had surgery earlier in the week. I fed 56 animals today (well, 57 including Gizmo, whom I fed at home before I left this morning :D).

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By Wendy St. John, ago

Dissections in Vert Morph – For Science!

(Post backdated to 2010, when these photos were originally taken). 

Dissections nearly scared me away from biology. No kidding, when I first graduated from high school, I considered going into biology, but I always vetoed the idea, because I was convinced I’d never be able to handle dissecting an animal that had once been alive.

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By Wendy, ago
Vert Morph shark dissection