Dogfish Shark day at girls STEM camp

Recently, Lauren Jonaitis was asked to teach dogfish shark ecology, anatomy and dissection as apart of STEM's "Women in Science" summer camp to 48 young girls. She said it was wonderful to see how interested these girls were in learning about the sharks and to be involved with science. The camp's goal is to empower young girls and to help them realize women can be involved with science too! The camp also included talks on microbiology, meteorology and engineering. Below is a picture of Lauren giving a talk on dogfish shark internal anatomy.

N. American Congress for Conservation Biology

After returning from the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) N. American Congress for Conservation Biology (NACCB) I am excited to share with you my favorite parts.
Instagram Pic of Root Lab @ NAACB
1. The Science
        Our favorite topics about road, corridors, and connectivity were discussed at the conference. As well as conservation education/outreach, and species monitoring. Other main topics were climate change, communication, population modeling/dynamics, disturbance ecology, citizen science, conservation management/policy, invasive species,  and some special topic rooms on Monarch butterflies, bison, and Hawaii.
2. The message/theme
        The overall message that was presented at the conferences large talks were about communicating science to other people. There was info on communicating via pictures, news, and education. Communicating to children, different religions, stakeholders, the government, ect. It really helped everyone take a step back and think about how they have been communicating and what individuals can do to improve communication.
3. The location
        Being in Madison, WI for the conference was great because the town has green qualities. There are local/organic food places, good public transit, as well as being bicycle friendly.  All three of us that went love a product WI is know for: cheese. They also have a system called Bcycle, where you pay at a bicycle station to rent a bicycle for a certain amount of time and you drop it off at another Bcycle station.  These stations are all over town, so we were able to bike through downtown, campus along the lake, and back to our hotel.

As an FYI for those who don't know what SCB is, they are an organization of conservation professionals/students that are passionate about conserving the Earths biodiversity.

Instagram Account

To help show more people what we do and how interesting nature is we have created an Instagram account for our lab.  You can find it @root_conservation on the app, and with #rootlabratory search.  Here is a link to it on the web: https://www.instagram.com/root_conservation/

Remember we also have a lab web page as well: Root Lab Webpage

Darwin Day

Today is "Darwin Day", the 207th birthday of Darwin, the scientist most notably associated with evolution.  There are a number of other famous scientists that don't get their birthdays recognized, a short list would be:
Wallace: was also working on evolution at the same time as Darwin
Hooke: discovery of the cell
MacAurthor & Wilson: Island Biogeography
Watson, Crick, Franklin & Gosling: DNA
Fisher: population genetics
Leeuwenhoek: Microbiology
Linnaeus: classification of species
Mendel: genetics
Leopold: wildlife conservation
Soule: conservation biology

So remember, just because we celebrate one scientist today, it takes all kinds of scientists to help understand the world we live in.

Research Topic Updates & Pictures

While I have started a project involving watching seeds germinate, others in the lab are busy bees as well.  Matt is finishing up his PhD dissertation that revolves around box turtles.

Christian has been crunching the numbers on his bat data (roadside analysis).

Jen has decided to research bats for her work, focusing on the temperature variations and impacts of climate change.

Lauren has decided to do research on roadkill, to assess roads around Oak Openings Preserve and Maumee State Forest.

Here is a pick of Jen setting up the ash seeds in the field.  Keeping them in bags will help me know where they are.

Combination of fines and fences helping curb wildlife deaths on Banff highways |

Combination of fines and fences helping curb wildlife deaths on Banff highways |

Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake News

Eastern-massasauga-rattlesnake

Click the link above to read about the USFWS announcement to seek protection for the E. Massasauga rattlesnake.

Click below to learn more about the rattlesnake.

E. Massasauga Fact Sheet USFWS

Matt Cross, a current PhD student in our lab, has recently published work he conducted on E. Massasauga rattlesnakes while he was at Central MI Univ. In this research he studied the affects of prescribed fires on the snake by implanting radio transmitters and searching for snake locations directly before and after a prescribed fire.  Data was taken on prescribed fire temperature and fire movement near snake locations. To see what he found you can find the article here: Prescribed fire and Massasauga paper or search for it using this citation:

• Cross, M., Root, K., Mehne, C., Mcgowan-Stinski, J., Pearsall, D., Gillingham, J. 2015. Multi-scale Responses of Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnakes (Sistrurus catenatus) to Prescribed Fire. Am. Midl. Nat., 173:346-362.