Greetings from Ireland!

Greetings from Dublin, Ireland! It’s getting near the end of the summer (already!), so I thought it past time to fill you all in on my experiences abroad.

I’ve spent the duration of this summer at the University College Dublin (UCD) through a program known as CoBiD-UREKA. It’s a research-based program which accepts students from around the world for a 10 week, all expense-paid research internships. They tend to pick students who are about to enter their senior year – so current juniors, I’d look to see if they’re offering it again next summer!

This year the program accepted 11 students: 3 from Ireland, 6 scattered around the USA, 1 from Brazil, and 1 from Colombia. While we all arrived at UCD not knowing a single person, we quickly forged friendships and have had an amazing time together! Of course, a lot of our time Mon-Fri is spent working on our research projects. These projects span a wide range of topics, including plant genomics, limnology, paleobotany, vertebrate palaeontology, soil ecology, ecological modelling (that’s mine!), and BioControl. We’ve all gained valuable research experience, whether it was designing your own protocol for studying the setae of earthworms, going electrofishing to survey the fish of a certain region, creating a model of ocean currents, designing primers to study plant DNA, putting nylons (yep, women’s tights!) on plants to act as dust and study the effects, or creating pterosaur wing models and using a wind tunnel to test their aerodynamics.

My own research project has focused on the study of deep-sea chitons and habitat connectivity. We’re especially interested in the dispersal of these chitons, which mainly takes place during their free-floating larval life stage. We’ve been using Argo oceanography data and a program called Matlab to map out the ocean currents of the Central Indo-Pacific near our populations of interest. With this data, we have been able to model larval transport, to determine where larvae from our source populations would disperse to. Through this project we’ve determined how far the larvae are able to travel before metamorphosing into adults, allowing us to better understand the dynamics of chiton metapopulations – something which is heavily understudied as of yet.

Of course, it wasn’t ALL about the research! We’ve had the weekends to ourselves, and we’ve made the most of it. We’ve traveled throughout the country to see many famous and beautiful places, such as the Aran Islands, the Cliffs of Moher, the Blarney Castle, the Giant’s Causeway, and Killarney National Park (amongst many others). And of course, we’ve spent endless amounts of time exploring all that Dublin has to offer. Between the beautiful botanic gardens, the Dublin Zoo, the massive Phoenix Park, the theatre, the nearby markets, the gorgeous shoreline, the nightlife, and of course the friends, it has been a trip to never forget!

Dubliners tend to be friendly people in general, which was a big help in getting around the city at first. Even on our first bus ride, someone happily told us which stop we’d need to get off at, as well as narrated all of the local sites we were passing! Today Dublin is a fairly worldly city, so while it’s not as typically “Irish” as most of the other cities are, it’s still a great place to explore. It also has some killer Indian restaurants! And of course there’s also a great nightlife!

And for anyone who has seen the movies Once or P.S. I Love You (yep sappy romances but of course we all had to watch them after being here!)… yep we’ve been to a lot of those sites! Even more lovely in person than they appear in the movies!

This whole summer has just flown by, just like it has for Josie! I’m leaving a week from today, and it seems way too soon! There’s so much more I could still do and see here, my ten weeks was not enough to encompass it all. It’ll be a bittersweet homecoming, as all trips are. I’ll be glad to see my friends and share my experiences, but it will be hard parting from my new-found friends. Still, thanks to the wonders of the internet, we’ll all still be in close contact for years to come!

And if anyone wants a look at pictures - http://irishescapades2009.shutterfly.com/.

Cheers,
Katie
IBH class of 2010

Greetings from Kibale!

[This summer, like last summer and the summer before that, IB Honors students can be found all around the world. Here, Josie Chambers, UI class of 2010, sends her greetings from Kibale, Uganda where she is spending the summer doing primate research...]

I am writing to let you know that I’m having a wonderful time in Uganda, and that the research project is going well. I am working closely with University of Illinois PhD candidate, Krista Milich, who has helped orient me to logged and unlogged forest regions of Kibale National Park and the red colobus monkey groups that inhabit them. She has been habituating [getting the monkeys used to having people around] and collecting data on six different study groups for the past 8 months. I spent my first month here becoming oriented with the red colobus groups while helping Krista prepare her field assistants for data collection geared towards female reproduction. I am working with all 14 of her Ugandan field assistants, collecting feeding tree information and group scan data to begin assessing how forest degradation impacts female red colobus feeding ecology.

I have additionally hired a field assistant to help me map out home ranges for each of the six groups using GIS technology. My knowledge of Ugandan forest trees is expanding vastly, as well as my ability to identify females based on subtle bends of the tail, and to keep track of behavior of these mid-to-high canopy dwelling monkeys. When I return, I will be analyzing feeding tree and group scan data across the six red colobus groups, as well as mapping out the size and land cover of their home ranges, and eventually submitting a report to Uganda Wildlife Authority. I have had a wonderful time in the field this summer, and I know that the experience I’ve gained will prove to be incredibly important for future research endeavors.

There are constant daily challenges in the forest, such as avoiding falling into deep swamp holes and pulling small biting ants out from underneath clothing; however, spending entire days under the forest canopy with the incredible diversity of Kibale is well worth it, and getting stuck in the swamp multiple times has proved to be quite humorous. The forest primate diversity is particularly remarkable, and I usually see many primate species besides red colobus every day, including chimpanzees, black and white colobus, red tails, blue monkeys, mangabeys, baboons, and L’ Hoests. I have even managed to see one nocturnal primate – a dying bushbaby that I spotted sitting on a trail in broad daylight. I also had the opportunity to track chimpanzees for a day in another region of Kibale forest. There are forest elephants around during certain times of the year that can be quite dangerous, but fortunately they have not been around recently, as they can be very disruptive to completing field work. However, I had the opportunity to see elephants, as well as hippos, lions, warthogs, crocodiles, buffalo, and several bird species when I visited the savanna of Queen Elizabeth National Park in south western Uganda last weekend.

Everyone here is given a ‘pet’ name, which is chosen from a list of 12 names that people are typically called instead of their official name. The name Amooti has been bestowed upon me, which means ‘king’ in the local language, Rutooro. I have picked up a number of Rutooro phrases I like to use in order to attempt to impress the field assistants I work with, but I’m still learning! The food here has been terrific, and generally consists of a wide variety of starchy items, vegetable based sauces, and fruit. My personal favorite is the samosa, a mixture of peas, carrots, and spices, wrapped up in a crispy dough outer layer. There is some interesting local music here, but the majority of songs on the radio come from abroad. In particular, Dolly Parton enjoys widespread popularity in Uganda; however, more understandable figures can be found on any number of decorated items, such as Obama’s face, which can be seen on anything from belt buckles to shoes! Football is by far the most popular leisure activity, and I have enjoyed attending some local matches to cheer on the field assistants.

The people here are wonderful, and I have spent quite a bit of time with the many Ugandan field assistants I work with, whose hard work and vast knowledge of plant species and complicated trail system continue to be essential to my ability to learn about red colobus feeding ecology at Kibale. I have also met a number of other well-established researchers carrying out interesting work at Kibale, including primatologist Dr. Richard Wrangham, director of the Chimpanzee project, and Dr. Colin Chapman, who has been involved in a broad range of conservation oriented research at Kibale for many years. I have had a great deal of companionship from other students staying at the field station for the summer as well, some gaining fieldwork experience and others working at the local clinic or school. Time really flies by here, as there always seems to be something going on, whether it’s a potluck among researchers, weekly trip to town for food and supplies, local football match, or even a Ugandan wedding! I will be sad to leave here in just a week, but I look forward to having the opportunity to share my experiences and pictures when I return!

Best wishes,
Josie