Mice mice, baby!

Last month I volunteered, along with some other awesome folk, to help out a fantastic PhD student (with Edinburgh University) with her field study on wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus) in Callendar Wood near Falkirk. Amy Sweeny was looking at how nutrition affects the relationship between parasite infection risk, the immune response of the mice, and also their reproductive success in the wild. To do this there were 4 experimental grids of traps set out in the forest, two of them were used as controls where no food was added and the other two were supplemented with high protein food pellets - lucky mice!

Toni, Chris and Amy in the field

Apodemus sylvaticus - The Wood Mouse

Humane Sherman traps were set overnight 3 times a week baited with bedding and food, and checked the next morning to see if we had caught any unwilling participants :) Along the way we met many of the varied characters of the wood, including the distinctly smelly but charismatic bank vole, the occasional shrew, frogs and even a wren! When we did catch a wood mouse we took the trap back to the field base where the mice were sexed, roughly aged, weighed, measured, microchipped and had a wee bit of blood taken to check for infection. They were also checked for fleas, mites and ticks which were removed, so many of the mice were released feeling a lot cleaner for their trouble. Some mice were randomly treated with anti-helminthic drugs which got rid of any parasitic nasties such as tapeworms that they might have had living in their gut.

If any of the captured mice were pregnant or showing signs of being so or lactating, they were gently released back into the wood to provide for the next generation :)

Bag of cuteness

Bank vole (smells like cereal and wee!)

Of course science isn't all flowers and rainbows as you may already know, and a sample of the mice in the study that had been recaptured at a later date were sacrificed in order to carry out dissections and find out more about the kind of parasites they carry and the effects of co-infection (infection with multiple different parasites). This study falls under the fairly recent term of 'wild immunology', where scientists try to find out how animal immune systems deal with threats in their natural wild environment. It is somewhat easy to look at the effects of just one disease or parasite under lab conditions with inbred mice that are genetically alike, but much more difficult with many unknowns in the wild because there is tremendous variation to consider which has a bearing on how well the animal fights these infections. Things such as age, life history, infection history (what diseases/infections they may have had in the past), habitat, reproductive history, and genetics are just a few of the variable that add to the complex nature of wild immunology! You can find out more information here.

I had a fantastically fun and educational time helping out with the study so many thanks to Amy and the team for the opportunity :)

St Kilda

We have just returned from an action packed trip through the Outer Hebrides and a weekend of wildlife photography in Knapdale and Tayvallich! We saw the sights such as the Calanais stones, Butt of Lewis, blackhouses and brochs, but our main focus was on beachcombing and wildlife spotting.

The beaches of the western isles look like they should be somewhere in the Caribbean, with vast expanses of golden sand and turquoise water. The weather definitely reminds you that you in Scotland though that's for sure, the wind never really died down at all which was great in a way as it kept the midges away. In terms of finding stuff washed up on the beach, our hauls were not as good as we expected them to be, but still pretty exciting. Oystercatchers were EVERYWHERE being fiercely protective of their territories, as were Lapwings making their weird wittery noises in the fields.

Most of my beachcombing finds were bones and skulls. I have a couple of cow vertebrae, fulmar skull, some unidentified incisors, a wading bird skull that I've still to ID and an otter skull! We were also lucky enough to go on a trip to St Kilda, an isolated island 41 miles west of Benbecula which is now a world heritage site. It is also home to a prehistoric breed of sheep know as Soay which because they are isolated on the island, have remained virtually unchanged for centuries! There have been genetic studies carried out on the population for the past 50 years and so it was very exciting to meet some of them. Shortly after we landed we also met the St Kilda Wren which is a subspecies of the wren found in the UK but slightly bigger in size. There is also an endemic St Kilda mouse but perhaps unsurprisingly we never bumped into one :)

St Kilda Wren

Soay lamb

Gannet colonies on the stac

After we had climbed a little way up the hill to look over the cliff, met with a pair of great skuas (on 'bonxies' as they are known in Scotland) and their fluffy chick, and explored the remains of the village in the bay, we had a quick tour around the stacs before we had to head home. The sea stacs around St Kilda are important breeding sites for gannets, puffins, fulmars and guillemots. The inhabitants of St Kilda used to row out to the stacs and scale the steep craggy cliffs to catch the birds for food, they were definitely a brave and hardy folk! It was amazing just how many there were covering and flying around the stacs, and I'd never seen so many puffins in my life, there are thought to be up to 136,000 pairs!

Great Skua in flight

One of the many puffins and guillemots

Gannet on the wing

The end of an era

Well folks, I've finally come to the end of my four years as an undergraduate and I am pleased to report that I come away with a 2:1 in Marine & Freshwater Biology! :D

'What's next?' I hear you ask...well I'm not completely sure at the moment. I've been looking for an applying to ecology junior type jobs and also some on connecting nature and kids education, however in the meantime I will be doing some volunteering to help studying the wild immunology of the wood mouse, Apodemus sylvaticus!

In other news I am heading off on a trip to the Outer Hebrides soon and hope to report back on any creepy crawlies I might find on my travels. Also check out National Insect Week (20th - 26th June) and see if you can get involved in any of the activities, and there's also Glasgow Science Festival (which I'll sadly miss!) with all kinds of events running from the 9th to 19th June!

Sorry, I don't have any puns this time

Again, I appear after months of radio silence! If you're a student or academic then you'll understand when I say 4th Year Honors Project...I've been pretty busy doing that as well as revising for exams at the end of April.

Last time we spoke I had just identified all the samples of freshwater invertebrates that I took from 3 streams on the Campsies. I did a little spot of data analysis and found what looked to be a relationship between where my species of interest (the Upland Mayfly) was found and the order of the stream it was found in. So we went back out in January to gather some more data (in the form of more kick samples) at a different location - on a tributary of the Culter, which was charmingly covered in a good layer of snow at the time :)

I've since tested this data but it's not really showing a similar pattern to the first lot, but that may be due a number of reasons, but not to worry! On the whole I'm finding the data analysis very confusing and find myself frequently doubting what I've done. It doesn't help that when I do a bit of internet research for help that it seems to constantly contradict what I've been taught in the past. There are so many statistical tests that you can carry out and so many that have certain assumptions that it's very easy to become overwhelmed and lose sight of what you are trying to do in the first place. I'm hoping to get a bit of guidance this week to put me at ease - or alternatively I'll have to do all my analysis again!

In other news, I managed to get back out CRIMPing again for the first time since November, mainly due to the weather over the winter, and general lack of free-time. The haul was pretty good but I did notice that there were a few freshwater hoglice and blackfly larvae, something that I've never come across in my samples since starting the monitoring program, however there were plenty of mayflies and stoneflies present indicating good water quality as usual.

Here's a photo of a nice big stonefly, one of two that we caught.



Well, into the breach once more dear friends, see you on the other side!