driving in on this highway... all the little ants are marching, red and black antenna waving

i know it's been a while since i've written, but i've been busy - ward is finally here and the research has begun! my butterflies are so cool. they have orange wings with green undersides and pink linings. they also have green fur! i'll try to get a picture of one of the soon. speaking of which i have a few more pictures on facebook. not many, but still... a couple are the painting i made for carol's door, the rest are from my field site or the drive to it. same link on the right -->

i would also like to direct you to a couple of other websites if you're interested. the first is a ny times article about the lab here. it's kind of neat because the three projects it talks about: butterflies, sparrows, and marmots are exactly what my roommates and i work on. there are lots of other projects going on here too, of course. that article is at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/science/22lab.html

the second website is an article by olivia judson, the author of my textbook on sexual selection (the class i wrote the bee paper for if any of you remember that...) she's doing a series of articles for the ny times on evolution in celebration of 2009 being the 150th anniversary of the publishing of the origin of species and the 200th anniversary of darwin's birth! it's a big year for us evolutionary biologists :) judson's articles begin at: http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/darwinmania/
(thanks to bill bowman for sending me this!)

so on thursday i went to my first field site! at 11,000 ft, dustin park is our lowest elevation site. it's a beautiful steppe terrain surrounded by forest. the butterflies only fly in the open fields so i don't even have to worry about allergies among the trees! the biting flies are still bad though... we saw a bunch of male butterflies, but only 1 or 2 females, so we'll have to go back at the beginning of next week to collect the females for our project. i'm so lucky i get to work on butterflies. they are only out during the day (about 9-5 at most) so i get to sleep in and be done in time for dinner. they can also only fly when the sun is out and they can warm up, so as soon as a cloud goes in front of the sun they're gone! the fact that butterflies only come out when the sun is shining probably contributes to the fact that we associate butterflies with happy, sunny days. they really are pretty cool.

i guess that's it for now. i have a some work to do in the lab today - i need to practice using the spectroreflectometer to measure the reflectance of the wings on the males we caught the other day. yesterday i learned how to feed butterflies. it's neat - you fill a centrifuge tube (with a yellow cardboard border to look like a flower) with honey-water, then set the bug on it. you use a pin or needle to unroll the critter's proboscis and stick it in the "nectar" to get it drinking. how cute!

at the end of another good day

ward is supposed to get here tomorrow and i can't wait! the other day carol sat down with me and explained exactly what i'm going to be doing, so now i'm really excited to get started on my project. i'm collecting newly emerged (and mated) females and measuring the reflectance of their wings. from that i can tell how much melanin they have. they have to be a certain temperature to fly (near our body temp) and so they bask laterally - by folding their wings and aiming the flat side to the sun - to heat up their bodies. since the amount of melanin correlates to how much heat they can absorb, we're looking at trends in melanin amounts. one of ward's grad students figured out that the amount of melanin has been decreasing over the last 40 years (by looking at museum specimens) and so we're wondering if that's correlated to warmer ambient temperatures due to global warming. after we measure the butterflies, we'll let them lay eggs on some plants i've been growing (hairy vetch) and we'll raise the offspring to adults, measure their reflectance, and mate them. then we'll do the same with the third generation. that part will be back at stanford because it can't all happen in one summer. once i have the reflectance of the three generations i can compare them (using the fancy stats i learned last quarter - oh boy!) to see if melanin amounts are heritable. if so it would show that global warming is affecting evolution even in this isolated population. if not, the less amounts of melanin are probably due to phenotypic plasticity, which can be attributed to the warmer larval temperatures, allowing us to still tie it back to global warming. hopefully then we can use butterflies as an indicator species and an example of the wide-spread effects of climate change in broader ecological contexts. it's a big project, but it's pretty cool.

i'm a little nervous about ward getting here though, because when he does i'm going to learn to drive his car (a stick) and while the practice i did with dad went well, i'm still not sure i'm ready. we're going to practice before i have to do any real driving though. he and carol both agree that i'll be fine, and he's taught lots of people to drive sticks before, so i'm sure it'll be fine,

this weekend was fun. friday we went into the field and found our first emerged speyeria! whenever it finally rains (hopefully today!) they'll come out in full force and lauren and heather will be really busy.

saturday we took the bus into cb and saw a movie! it was fun because i haven't been to the movies in a while. we saw wall e, which was cute but not just amazing as i was hoping. it had a good message that we are destroying the earth and should take care of it, but there wasn't a lot of hope about fixing it. it was still cute though - a future where robots are in control. before the movie, heather and i ran to this little everything store and i got some paints! i didn't bring mine because i didn't have room and i figured i'd probably be pretty busy, but it's so beautiful here that i am just too inspired not to paint. i already finished one painting that will probably become the sign for carol's lab. it's a scene of the mountains with a butterfly. the butterfly was supposed to be speyeria marmonia, but it ended up looking more like euphydrias gillettii - which is fine because carol's lab is working on both this year. i'll try to put a picture of it online soon.

yesterday i went to church - it was a neat service. very nature oriented. we even sang a hymn with butterflies in it! it is such a cute little church. i also didn't have to leave early this time because carol, heather, and lauren were coming into town to do laundry and go shopping, so they gave me a ride back. i got clean laundry and a shower (for the first time in 3 days) so it was a good day! we also went to the farmers market, which wasn't quite in full bloom, but i still got some good squash, peas, and cilantro. we also went grocery shopping, and i made a delicious dinner! i cooked the squash, then added it to a mixture of rice, beans, cilantro, and garlic-cilantro salsa. i topped it off with cheese and sour cream - YUMMY! it was so good. i'm much more creative in my cooking this quarter than the last. maybe i have more free time? it will probably taper off as i get busy with the research, but at least i've figured out some good recipes now. i can't wait till jen gets back from italy and cooks us some of the concoctions she's been dreaming up.

now i'd better get back to my bugs. hope all is well with all of you guys! :)

with the rain in your pockets you can change the weather

yesterday was so much fun! i started out by going to church at a tiny ucc church in crested butte. it was very nice - reminded me of brp. all sorts of age range. there were 14 kids at the children's sermon. there was a guest flutist who played beautifully, but for quite a while and since my ride left at 10, i missed out on everything after the sermon including communion. i wish i could have stayed longer, but it was more than i expected to get out here! ward should get here this friday, then i might have a car to take so i could come back whenever i want. i could also take heather with me.

after church heather, lauren, and i went for a hike. it was more like a long walk than a hike, but we saw some amazing scenes. there were fields full of purple flowers, incredible mountains all around, and we even found a waterfall! we were walking by this little pond when suddenly it started hailing on us! the weather here is really unpredictable, but it's fun. it reminds me of summers in kentucky.

later i went to a swing dancing class! it was just 6 people in the dining hall that wanted to learn social dancing. it was beginner level, so i didn't really doing anything new, but it was still really fun. my partner was very shy and wouldn't look at me, but he was an ok dancer. the teacher wasn't the best, so i sort of had to show him some of the moves, but it was still really fun. it was also a nice way to meet some new friends!

last night i went to heather and lauren's cabin to watch the rest of the bollywood movie we had started the night before. it was called salaam-e-ishq, and i think it's my new favorite movie. it was basically the bollywood version of love actually, so it had all the different sides of love, but with fun songs and dances. it was really good.

yesterday i also had great chats with a couple of my roommates. i talked with eleanora about living abroad and going back home. she's worried about how different it will be to live with her family after living on her own in this country for so long. we also talked a little about italian culture, and i compared her stories to the ones i'm hearing from jen. i also had a nice talk with tina about life after undergrad, and for her after grad school. how it is to move around and make and lose friends. there is so much scary stuff in the future, but there is also a lot to look forward to. i'm really glad i'm getting along so well with my roommates.

today i'm going to start preping some plants for my butterflies when they get here. i'm not exactly sure what i'll be doing, but it's nice to finally be getting started on my project! i'll keep you posted on how it goes. until then, be sure to check out the pictures from our hike yesterday. they're on the same facebook album as the other colorado pics (see below)

for purple mountains majesty

yesterday i went with lauren and heather into the mountains again, this time to collect caterpillars. we collected over 30 in an hour and a half. they were ephydrus gillettii (or something like that). i'm working on colias meadii, which live at a higher altitude in the alpine meadows above our camp. when ward gets here next friday we'll hopefully be going up to check them out. i don't think it's really a problem that he's not here yet because the butterflies are still in the larva/pupa stages.

today for the 4th of July we went into town (crested butte). there was a 1/3 marathon from gothic to cb, as they call it here. i volunteered to cut fruit for the runners when they finished. after the race there was a parade. it was so cute! the whole town came together for this. the fire department had a pancake breakfast and gave kids rides in the bucket on top of their ladder. rmbl, the lab, marched in the parade. we made our costumes entirely out of veratrium leaves (skunk weed). then we went down the street banging pots and pans and cheering about how we love to do science. it was so dorky but really fun - and somewhat stanford band-esque in that some people were wearing nothing but leaves... i just made a hat.

probably the highlight of the trip was finding a little health food co-op! it had all my delicious organic vegetarian food that i love :) i totally turned into my mom with my excitement at the health food. anyone who's been to whole foods with me has witnessed this, but it was even more exciting because it was so unexpected in the middle of the mountains!

the other highlight was having cell phone service! i got to talk to everyone in the family but jen (calling italy is a little more challenging than calling california), and i also got to talk to alex! totally made my day :) special note for kat: i got a compliment on my frog pooh and thought of you!

in the afternoon we came back and napped before the gib barbeque. it was delicious - they had veggie burgers and grilled corn. i sat down at the table with heather and before we knew it this man came at sat next to us. he was kind of in a flurry but seemed nice. when he got up to get a fork, lauren glared at me and asked if i knew who he was. i had no clue. turns out that was paul ehrlich, only like the most famous butterfly researcher ever. he's at stanford but i've never met him. i said something about how i thought i'd probably read about half of his papers for my project, and lauren shushed me. she's going to work for him next year as a ta, so i guess she really wanted to make a good impression. he came back and told us all sorts of stories of bears breaking into cabins and climbing roofs and getting drunk with birds in austrailia. he was a very entertaining character and brilliant man. i guess i will be talking to him more this summer...

after dinner we were talking about plans for the weekend, and i asked carol of by chance there are any churches nearby. turns out there is at least one other scientist here who likes to go to church! so i'm getting a ride with her into town sunday morning. if the service at the ucc church is the same time as her mass i'll get to go to that, otherwise i may see what's it's like to go to mass in the mountains. we'll see. it will be nice to have something familiar to do.

i guess that's all the updates for now. heather and lauren's caterpillar project is going well. the bugs were eating today, which is a major improvement from yesterday. i'm still reading about butterflies and plants, and i think on monday i will do some gardening to get ready for our critters when they emerge. i will also probably be driving a stick in a couple of weeks... ward and i will go to pick up the third car from gunnison - scary! thanks to cara, dad, and gt and michelle for helping me learn how to use those. we'll see how this goes. if it goes well enough i may also end up doing the church carpool runs so the lady who drives the two of us can sleep in on sunday mornings (she offered me her car, but said she'd prefer if i had a little more practice)

till next time, te quiero y te extraño!

pics are up!

these are from my first two days here!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2132143&l=d2ac8&id=220245

enjoy!

i want to know if you can see the stars

well, it's pretty amazing here. getting here was rough though. basically i missed my plane because united is very unorganized. but i don't want to relive that, so on to happier things.

my plane landed monday around 7pm. carol, heather, and lauren all came to welcome me at the airport! we went grocery shopping then out to dinner at this delicious mexican restaurant in crested butte. i had a really good tofu. then we drove to RMBL (rocky mountain biological laboratory) and dropped me at my cabin. there i met two of my roommates, tina and lizzie. they were both really sweet. our fourth roommate, eleanora, was out watching a movie. she and i are sharing the loft. she's really sweet too. and she's from italy, so every time i hear her talk i think of jen :) they're funny. they also remind me of my time at stanford with alex because they like to talk about boy drama :P

but of course, they're also serious scientists. lizzie is my age, a junior at michigan. she's doing something with birds. tina and eleanora are masters students at ucla studying marmots.

speaking of marmots, i saw some awesome wildlife yesterday! i saw 6 marmot babies hiding under my lab. i also saw a mother marmot and at least one of her pups by the river. when i woke up i stepped outside to see 3 fox pups playing between my cabin and the next. they are very playful and don't seem to mind the people walking around them and taking pictures. everyone here is so respectful and awed by the wildlife - it's refreshing.

last night i was really homesick. it's frustrating that my internet hasn't been working well and i have no cell phone. i think i'm going to use the lab phone to call home today because i really want to talk to my family. my roommates are nice, but they've all been here together for a while now so i just don't know them as well as they know each other. i'm getting closer to heather and lauren, carol's RAs, which is neat. plus heather and i can share memories from hopkins and that is comforting since it's familiar. and i thought my kitchen there was small and the bathroom was dirty! i guess i didn't realize how nice it was to have clean dishes and an indoor toilet. and i'm in one of the nicer cabins here :P this is camping though, and it's worth it for the wilderness. i don't have my camera cord right now, but as soon as i get it i will post pictures online, internet willing.

i wrote the above yesterday in anticipation of being able to post when the internet came back. here's what i did today:

since ward won't be here till next thursday, i tagged along with carol's group. we started out with a hike into their butterfly sites. we crossed a river to get to a beautiful meadow with a beaver-damed lake. we took pictures of our lovely crew with our huge butterfly nets. the view of our little town here was amazing. we kept going up till we saw the plants we were looking for. at each plant we stopped to count the number of larva we could find munching the leaves. we found 66 caterpillars, and one pupa (cocoon). it was so beautiful up there! my critters live at an even higher altitude, so i'm sure it will look somewhat different. i can't wait to explore it!

i'll try to post often but the internet here is pretty limited. basically it only works for me when no one else is using it (dinnertime).