Sunday, March 9, 2008

3/4 orb weavers and ithomiines

A big day of feeding spiders. I got good at wedging a butterfly into a spider web. There were a few unresponsive spiders, but high enough participation for us to say that about 50% of the butterflies we collected were not toxic! Interesting result. We decided to frame the study as a comparison between rates of toxicity in the '80s (as measured by a previous grad student of Larry's, using a bird as a bioassay) and today. Now everyone is happy, more or less. We might try to publish it as a note.

I'm exhausted today! My energy level is way below normal. There has been a wicked cold making the rounds, I hope I'm not coming down with it. Maybe it's just from working all day in the heat.

No comments: