Laboratory Hitchhikers

When most people have a job that requires “taking their work home with them,” it usually involves preparing for a presentation on the company finances or finishing a coversheet for their TPS report. This week, my work hitchhiked home with me—several of my “lab rat” fruit flies made a peregrination to establish a colony in the case of blackberries sitting by my window.

Now, the easy definition of peregrination is “a travel or journey,” but for everyone interested I have assembled a flowchart elaborating some of the etymology and related background.

Click for enlarged image. This is a prime example of how our brains work.

This weekend, I have the wonderful task of reading a 100-page dissertation that will inevitably lead to me sitting in a field getting stung by bees. Conversely, earlier this week found me simultaneously taking notes with a fountain pen, doing chemistry, and listening to classical music… now why on earth is it so hard to buy a bow tie these days?

Katydids and Strawberries

This week I went on my first real field collection. After transferring several huge demon-like wasps from my net to smaller vials, I am proud to say I was not as lily-livered as I thought I would be. Apart from being enthralled by a dung beetle – complete with dung! – and a katydid with astonishing crypsis, I coolly avoided walking into a fire ant mound and a giant orb-weaver’s tree-spanning web (the June bugs did not fare as well as I did).

Katydid with cryptic leaf-like camouflage.

My life isn’t all edible rainbows and unicorns, though. Regardless of the numerous Chinese takeout containers clearly marking my gumption for cooking (or lack thereof), I’m enjoying my daily repast of fresh blackberries and strawberries along with Spiderman Pop-tarts and blueberry muffins. My parents would be so proud.

Now, I know my dad is a trustworthy, honorable man, so I believe him when he says he invented the question mark… but I’m not so sure about these “movie reviews” he claims to write. I think it might just be a way for Pops to rationalize all the TV he watches.

And me? If I’m not spending my free time studying biology or searching Expedia for inexpensive plane tickets to Dublin or Moscow, I can be found watching a few episodes of King of the Hill or Pawn Stars—although I’ll leave the eight-hour Dragnet marathons to my dad. 

With jazz on the radio, an almost empty cup of espresso in my hand, and napkins (haphazardly inscribed with graphs and formulas) scattered about, the atmosphere here certainly seems transcendent of Texas. Thank the gods for Starbucks.

The Beast and the Bug: Welcome to Texas

The old agricultural building (early 1900s).

As people may or may not know, I am spending the summer doing entomological research at Texas A&M University. In short, I will be studying the effects of different foods on fruit fly larvae. So who is going to be cooking for the little maggots? Me. I spent last summer cooking for humans; this time I will be preparing dishes for Drosophila melanogaster.

Over this past year I have found an unexpected love with the Hymenoptera. While that word may inspire you to chant “Imhotep” in a crazed monotone (anybody else enjoy Brendan Fraser’s performance in The Mummy?), it is actually a group of insects including ants, wasps, and bees.

Working with these insects is both interesting and useful. Here in Texas, red imported fire ants are problematic (or alternatively check out raspberry crazy ants). Studying certain wasps provides ways of eliminating those feisty critters, improving the quality of life. But it’s not just about pest control; bees are incredible pollinators and need to be studied as well. While honeybees visit many diverse plant species, some crops would benefit from other types of bees specializing only on a particular plant. 

When touring the ecology labs earlier this week, several of my fellow researchers and I found a large spider running through the hallway. We weren’t sure whether it was an escaped experiment or simply an intruder to step on. A professor picked it up, mumbled something about Lycosidae (an esoteric way of saying it was a wolf spider), and left it to continue roaming the corridors as we exited the building. Even though we will never know for sure, I’d like to think it was a rogue… maybe, perhaps, someone is trying to recreate the origin of Spiderman?

Now, to me, heaven is a herd of wildebeest (minus the constant running from predators). Does that make The Lion King some sort of sacred text? Probably not. But it does explain why I spend so much time reading National Geographic.