The human animal

I've been a little lax about posts lately.
But, to be fair, I'm in the middle of a field season, so cut me some slack.
I generally use this blog to talk about general issues that face field biologist, rather a forum to talk about my own research, leaving that topic for my website.

But, in lieu of a post, here's a link to a recent article in a popular science blog that focuses on animal behavior, The Scorpion and the Frog.
The article uses some of my research on female competition in birds as a jumping off point for discussing female competition in humans.

A great example of how we can gain insight into ourselves by studying animals.

Unknown unknowns

New field site

When preparing to begin a remodeling project the usual advice is that the project will take three times as long and cost twice as much money as any estimate you calculate. This sounds a bit pessimistic but if you've ever done a big remodeling project you probably recognize the truth of that statement. It's accurate because there are a lot of unknown variables, even unknown unknowns, which are really fun. Generally speaking these things gum up the works, complicating, delaying and increasing headaches.

A similar statement can be applied to any new project, and the reasons are the same. Unknown variables. These variables include things like learning the quirks of new equipment, using new software, or optimizing a new assay. When you are working in the field this is amplified a bit because you have to deal with things you have 0 control over, things like weather, predation, forest fires and finding your animals.

When you've been working at a particular site or with a particular species for awhile you have a pretty good grip on how things are going to go and can plan accordingly. However, if you have a new site, new species, or new technique your introducing some unknown variable and things might be a little rough at the start.

I happened to design a particularly ambitious project for my postdoc research. I'm using a new species, in a new country, with new equipment and techniques. These things are combining to make the learning curve for this project a little bit steep. Consequently, progress has been a little slower that I had planned.

However, the data are finally rolling in, and that makes it all worth it.

Playing catch-up

It's not unusual to feel behind. In fact it is part and parcel of the job. There are just too many hats to wear, too many tasks to attend to. If you don't feel a little bit swamped you're probably not doing enough, or you figured something out and should let me know the secret. One of the many things I need to play catch-up on is this blog.

Here's the quick and dirty summary of events since the last entry. I received multiple post-docs offers, made the very difficult (and also very easy) decision to take the offer  in Australia, I wrote a dissertation, defended said dissertation, move to Virginia to teach for the summer, packed up my life, traveled the US visiting friends and family, and moved my immediate family to the literal opposite side of the world.

We've been here for 2 months now, which doesn't sound like a long time but we've packed it in. In those 2 months I've been busy as a bee trying to keep all the balls I'm juggling in the air. I am simultaneously working on getting some manuscripts from my dissertation work published, writing a book chapter over some of that research, completing all the paper work and jumping through all the usual hoops necessary to start a new project plus a few added hoops because I'm new in this country, learning the new skills I'm using for this project, writing proposals to get some money for this project, and starting the actual data collection for the project.

But don't think I am complaining. I've always been a better at multitasking than single-tasking. Plus, I really do enjoy what I do and I'm hard at work ticking things off the to-do list  one-by-one. So, on that note, here's an inspirational light switch cover we saw on our US travels.