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! :)