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Yesterday and today there was a visiting scientist from the American Museum of Natural History, here to show us the online PBI inventory system (among other things). He proposed that the NHM join them as a participating institution. After looking at their user backend, I want to move over now. 'Cos we're currently using a very basic DB using Microsoft Access. It works, but it is by far much less impressive than PBI (a very well-funded project). Mick's hoping that I'll stay on for another year at least... there's so much he wants to get done.

Today - a bit of curation and specimen photog.

Research on Agamids

Current task for Biodiversity & Conservation: a comprehensive encyclopaedia article on a 'large-scale evolutionary clade' of my choice.

I am to cover the points on the niche, speciation, phylogeny, distribution, extinctions, imbalance in distribution of subtaxa among taxa, and generally the evolutionary ecology of the clade.

My choice?

The Agamidae family of lizards (representing ~381 species at of January 2005), which includes my favourites the Changeable lizard Calotes versicolor, the Green-crested lizard Bronchocela cristatella and the Common flying dragon Draco volans.

Finally, I get to do something with the reptiles closer to home.

^{Male Changeable lizard, female Changeable lizard, Green-crested lizard, Common flying dragon}

MSc

Application's in. Now I await.

Bumped into Johannes while in the SciComm office today: "So you really want to do this ey?" *me nods*

What they're doing looks pretty fun. And it's true - I don't see a single Asian in there.

I've a feeling my grades will pull me down. I'm betting my all on my CV and personal statement. But - no point speculating. After a month, I'll know.

New blog

For my FYP: The Selia of Old Norman

May I encourage all my fellow biologists to keep a journal for their projects - blogging is a handy tool!

Lee Valley

Lee Valley Park - we went to Chesthunt, about an hour's travel from home. Yesterday was a good day. In fact, one of my best field day-outs. We were blessed with good, sunny weather, a rare occurance in this drab winter season.

Strange as it may sound, barely 5% of my British bird photos are of passerines. This trip added many more record shots, plus 11 new species to my life list. Highlights - two of Britain's rarest birds the Great Bittern and Common Kingfisher, a Great Spotted Woodpecker, Green Woodpecker, Fieldfare, Redwing, Common kestrel, Long-tailed tit and Chaffinch (the latter are common garden birds but I haven't been seeing much of those).

The otters make their home there but we'll have to be lucky to see those.

The good/better/decent:

European robin (skinny one)

European robin (fat one)

Blue tit

Great tit

Swans in lake

Not-so-good/record shots:

Kamikaze?

Female blackbird with worm

Great bittern

Chaffinch

Common kestrel

Green woodpecker

Common kingfisher

Fieldfare

Long-tailed tit

Mick from the NHM says...

"Re: expert bug catchers, we have about 50, take your pick!"

*rubs hands in glee*

It's just my luck that Simon Leather was in South Ken for a conference today. I waved at him as he was weaving through the lobby. He squinted - is that you? - and then hopped over. Literally.

I hope I'm not overdoing my enthusiasm... I can feel the "!" in almost all my sentences.

"Hi Dr Leather!"

I'm not sure if I should call him Simon or Dr Leather, even though he calls me Jackie and signs off as Simon and we could easily have been on first-name terms. I've always felt that Titled People should be addressed appropriately with their Titles.

We talked about Silwood and the people at Silwood, and horse-riding "for rich people". And a bit about his history with the Scouts - he was wearing the same scout lapel pin I saw him wear during the zoo trip. I started with a "Happy belated Thinking Day (!)"... 22nd Feb yesterday was world guides/scouts day... and he just rambled on.

We'll meet next Thursday to discuss the OoP.

Sarah's the one who's doing Ian Owen's birds. So many of us had it as our first choice... it was her second choice and yet she got it. That really pisses us off (not the fact that it wasn't I who got the project, but that the system allowed such a thing to happen). But I'm not complaining. I'll never achieve the same level of buddiness with Ian as I could with Simon. And insects are trustworthier research subjects than birds. I'll see if the next time I'm down at the NHM I could hunt down an insect-collecting/sampling expert and bug *cough* pun *cough* him for advice.

Day off tomorrow. Day off yesterday. Day off next Tuesday. MSc application deadline next Tuesday. I wonder how Timmy's going with my reference, 'cos I'm not going too good with the ending bit of my self-written piece of science communication. You know the thing they call writer's block? I think I've got it.

Ent and more ent

In primary school, I was considered an authority on all things to be found in the Eco-garden: tadpoles, dragonflies, and the inhabitants of leaf litter. In secondary school, it became all things mangroves and reptilian. Some still remember me as the lizard girl. Aussie high school saw a shift in focus to birds, and now comes the Insect Era.

I've been allocated my 2nd choice for FYP. I'll be hanging out with aphidman! Just as I was saying in last night's post about how I'd love to have more of Tilly or Leather, I've got Simon Leather as my supervisor. In a way I'm thankful that I wasn't given Ian Owens' bird project in the end. Since first year, I've been looking up to him but he's been letting me down. He ignores all my emails, and other students' too. NG.

Might as well, since Leather's totally an applied ecologist and denounces the pure ecology side of things (ie. the lab-based work like molecular eco, genetics etc.) Suits me perfectly. Gotta meet up with him somehow in the near future to discuss the outline of the project, which involves designing lotsa pitfall traps and trapping lotsa insects.

Xi will also be based in Silwood; she's teamed up with Jeff, bryophyte dude. Soph too, will become a Silwoodian, working with Charalambous (eek) on crickets.

I'm growing extremely fond of the NHM. Xi and I went to the staff restaurant this arvo; I spent the rest of the day up in the insecty tower of Entomology. Working on data entry - imaging the old catalogues to be incorporated into the database. Mick's (my sup) drafted out a proposal to the higher ups to get funding for his uber-ambitious curation project. Some dude from the nat hist museum in California sent him a proposal for some cooperative; we're all pretty excited. Quite a monotonous day; Xi came after she was done in Botany and we surfed through the staff intranet pages. There'll be more insects for me to shoot next week, so I'm looking forward to that.

Thames at Night

Two photos from Saturday night after the LIMUNers left on the boat party...

FYPs, BCB and my PT

We can NEVER trust the undergrad office - or anywhere else in Imperial which even remotely resembles an office - can we? FYP allocations are two days late and counting. I knew this would happen. We're all anxious. Making us wait is torture. It shouldn't be allowed. If these were days from yonder years we'd be marching to Prof Wright's office "with pitchforks and torches" (Phoon, 2006).

Last year when I told Dr Barraclough my final-year options, he mentioned that he would be teaching in the Biodiversity and Conservation Biology course. It came to be that today was that day when he would teach. After this, I'm not sure if I'll be seeing him in South Ken campus again (or if I'll ever meet him again, for that matter). If I go to Silwood Park for FYP, I might bump into him. Good 'ole Tim, he's my personal tutor. Today after I passed him my postgrad request for reference form, he quietly sought out a dark spot under the stairs to have his salad lunch. Xi, Wink, Soph and I, watching from the other end of the lobby, thought he looked kind of lonely. After a bit of persuasion and nudges from my guilty conscience (for leaving my personal tutor all alone by himself), I went over to him in an attempt to make conversation. Maintaining a flowing dialogue wasn't the easiest of things. He's a bit of a shy person really, and I reckon he's feeling a little out of place in SAF. But otherwise he's quite a sweet chap, if I be allowed to describe a lecturer in such a manner. Tilly Collins and Simon Leather would both make excellent lecturer-buddies... if only they taught us more. I miss Tilly and her kids.

Biod&Consv is full of lecturers we haven't heard of before - Wilkinson, Cardillo, MacLean, Hudson, Milner-Gulland and Manning. Only Charalambous (who has, to our dismay, replaced Purvis as course convenor), Owens and Coulson reappear to swamp us with PowerPoint notes. I've kinda lost enthusiasm for this course now. Who teaches you does make a big difference.

All I can be thankful for is my timetable. No more practicals (time to discard that lab coat, or deface it!)... no full days... and one, sometimes two, free days each week.

I'm currently coursework-free, so it's time to work on that MSc application. There are a couple of aptitude assignments to complete, a CV to polish, a personal statement to write, and forms to fill.

LIMUN 2006, 17th-19th Feb

^{Clockwise from top left: delegates gathered for the closing ceremony; networking; opening ceremony at the V&A Museum; voting on a motion; ICJ debates; drafting resolutions}

I should stop making collages and work on processing my photos. Xi and I have taken over 1000 shots throughout.

Two things about LIMUN piss me off. Well, actually more than two, but if I mention the rest here I might take flak. What the rest of the OC did is not directly my business, so I shan't go on. The two things were my photography (they've got quite a lot of funding and Xi and I were working f.o.c., way overtime, for 3 whole days. We didn't really volunteer, but were volunteered. Lighting conditions were horrible, my flashgun was uncooperative, my VR + D70 combi gives problems, among others. I am not pleased with my shots.) and that I had to miss paintballing on Saturday with SingSoc. I've never gone paintballing before, and I really wanted to (since first year), but there's a duty to be done and again in the end it's that stupid moral obligation that I shouldn't abandon my friends who're slaving away at LIMUN. Providing almost 8 hours of photographic coverage does take some of the energy and spirit from you, and I knew that if I went paintballing, I might bail out on Sunday as well. And that wouldn't be good.

I don't think I can ever be a delegate. Not at an international MUN conference anyway. The delegates are all pros... they're freakingly good. Oji-san says everyone there has lots of 'eye power'. We all agree. They're so good that the Right Honorable Chief Justice of the International Court of Justice might have almost passed for the real thing. Hmm perhaps not quite exactly, but close. ;) Plus, the days are just too long. Friday ran from 12 to 8, Saturday started at 9 and ended at 12, and Sunday's also almost a full day. If I were to talk politics for such long hours, my brain'll just go bonkers.

But I think we've showed them. This is the first time Imperial College has made an appearance at LIMUN, and this is the first time that we're hosting it. A handful of our members came as delegates, while most others were on the secretariat staff. We've showed them that scientists and engineers too can speak United Nations. Nevermind that everybody else who's listed in the delegate handbook is doing BA Development Studies, or LLM International Law, or PhD War Studies, or MSc Human Rights. We've impressed them with our efficiency and facilities. We've helped the conference secure success.

*Group hug* to everyone. We've done Imperial proud.

London Wetland Centre

Quite pleased... today I finally had the chance to 'test' my newish one-month-and-a-week-old VR 80-400mm on some nature photography. I'm still far from mastering the use of it. My D70 doesn't like it very much for some reason... but otherwise I'm extremely impressed with its optical quality. It's just me who needs to 'upgrade' [my skills and techniques] now. It isn't quite the monster I had expected (and dreaded) it to be in terms of weight. Lugging it around wasn't that bad - no arm aches or anything. Although, compared with Kiat's and his real monster , who am I to complain? :P

O let there be more sunny days... on which I'm free. Let me make the most out of my baby monster.

Some of the species of birds here are still unidentified... I'll update again soon with names. Many species of birds there are alien to Britain... so I can't find all of them in the fieldguide.

Eurasian wigeon (male)

Long-tailed duck (male)

Long-tailed duck

Some duck

Some other duck

Mallards

Rose-ringed parakeet (very obviously alien, but they've long established
populations in around London and are now quite common)

A yellow rose for friendship

I was going crazy last night over FYP options. Deadline for choices is today.

And so it seems, no matter what the outcome, I'll be based in Silwood Park for 6 weeks after my exams in April.

In order:

Ian 'birdman' Owens - Colouration in wild birds (I want this one!!!)
Simon 'aphidman' Leather - Effects of pitfall trap design and bait type on catch size and composition (could be interesting, no?)
Tilly Collins - Visitorship of natural areas (I like her, she's nice)
Charalambous - Aggressive male behaviour in crickets (not that I'm really keen on it, but...)
Reader - Carabid beetles as bioindicators (from here on it's forced options)
Vogler, the coleoptera dude at the NHM - Latitudinal beetle species gradients (simply for the sake of needing to have a 6th option)

Side note: I've decided on a Lowepro Slingshot at the mo... since all the reviews and everything about it is so good. A backpack-slingbag hybrid, convenient for swapping camera lens and those little stuff. Perhaps I'll get a backpack only when I return to Singapore where the bags are much less pricey and I can actually try some on for size.

Am off to the NHM again now... prolly will catch Xi for lunch or something later. I just hope she won't be swamped by microscopic algae.

Time to get a new backpack?

For daily use, I mean. Not another one of those 65L backpacking sorts, but a photog backpack. Gotta support me little back and shoulders.

I'm having difficulty deciding on two of them:

Tamrac Adventure 6 (or 7) or Lowepro Orion Trekker II ?

They're both priced at about the same, and both have pros and cons.

I just need to get a new one soon - my current general-purpose backpack has been with me since Sydney, and it's got little holes and the zip track's broken in places, and the reflective lining layer is coming off. Plus it's got absolutely no padding so I'm a bit worried when I chuck in my baby monster.

Today's talk went quite well. I came up with one of the bestest Powerpoint presentations I've ever done, and Ian Owens laughed when I said that I could now recognise all the individual males - "They've got their own personalities." Prof Wright smiled a lot too.

We've got a week's break before I embark on the final module of my Ecology degree... on biodiversity and conservation. That should be good.

Monday and Tuesday's for NHM, Thursday's reserved for NHM at Tring, Friday's LIMUN, Saturday's most likely paintballing with SingSoc, Sunday's LIMUN again, Monday's back to school and deadline for project report. I'll try to squeeze in some shooting somewhere.

Now I've got a few gravid female guppies on my hands, and unexpectedly last night I found 6 - traumatised - fry in one of the tanks, so I had to rescue them and they're now in a rearing box. They're only a day old, and already the size of a month-old Betta fry! I think I might give up breeding Bettas in favour of guppies (not that I can help it - the pregnant females *will* give birth, sooner or later).

NHM Ent. Dept. Part 2

< This is the curator-supervisor-guy polishing up the cicada collection for my specimen photography session.

It's cool. I actually have a job title in the files. It's "Curator Entomology". It'll probably be more appropriate if there was a 'Junior' or 'Assistant' or 'Trainee' in front of it though.

This morning was an intro to the region (of origin) coding systems, and more on the database entry and such, and the mess to do with describing authors, binomial nomenclature, registry and drawer numbers. I reckon more work is done on sorting out the many different records held for a species (since the records and record-keeping methods date back to a couple of centuries ago) and synchronising them, rather that actual work on the specimens themselves. We've only done that for three hundred or so species of the family Cicadellidae (leafhoppers)... there's still a long, long way to go.

Meanwhile Xi's going to start volunteering in the Botany Dept. Something about culturing microscopic green algae. More research-based, then. I could do research too but then I'd be reassigned to the Coleoptera (beetle) section... whom I hear are pretty a ~~scary~~ aggressive bunch. The non-coloeptera people have to label parts of the refrigerator, cupboard and pantry as "NON-COLEOPTERA" to keep the Coleoptera freaks away...

Today

I'm in a celebratory mood... we're all so happy, but I gotta work on my report/presentation and I can't concentrate at all.

10am - 2pm was working the NHM
2.20 - 6.30 was ICMUN AGM & elections... handover's coming soon! Everything went really well... more on that later
7.00 - 8.00 dinner with old and new committee
8.10 - 10 SingSoc Rojak... just attending the meeting-rehearsals (I'm so terribly out of touch with SingSoc... gotta know what's been happening ey?)

Tired out!

Meet my new roommates

Me: "What will happen to the guppies after this?"

Greek demo guy: "You can... bring them home?"

Darn. He read my intentions. :P

Noting the questioning look, he added,"Yes, you can bring them home if you feel emotionally attached to them. It's ok."

So I've now got around 20 guppies in my empty tank (previously for my Betta fry). I say around 20, 'cos it's hard to count them when they're all frolicking around. I have only around 20 fish, since I didn't have anything bigger to contain them in and I didn't want to look greedy. The other demo dude told me to take all of them away if I could (I couldn't, of course, so Soph filled another two bagfuls and there were still many, many left), and asked if I wanted to keep the locusts too (some others were using them for the electroantennogram practical). I used to keep guppies when I was young... and those periods of guppy ownership were brief as they'd always die after a few days.

The males in the pic are those which we had used for our project - on male dominance and courtship behaviour. I've got those original 10, plus a few more, including a few pregnant females. One of them has an absolutely huge belly and is on the verge of exploding. I'm not really prepared for fry-rearing again, so if she feels like getting into some fun and offloading herself... ...

Oh, what fun. Souvenirs from Animal Behaviour. A little bit of something to distract us while we work on our project presentations for Friday...

NHM Ent. Dept.

Working behind the scenes of the Natural History Museum is like stepping back in time. Everything's so old... so fragile... so precious... and there's so much to take in.

I was given a crash course on curation and collections management. Learning all those terms for type material (holotype, syntype(s), neotype and what have you), and other species inventory documentation processes.

The curator (a kindly chap who's been working on hemipteras for the past three decades) passed me a catalogue book, leather-bound, from 1820 - in it were records of specimens presented to the NHM. I flipped through it, being careful not to let the pages fall off.

There were specimens from the Earl of Derby, HRH something, and a sailor on the HMS Rattlesnake from his tour in Australia, among many others. And to think that the *original* of these ie. first-ever described and classified, are on the tray right in front of me (they've got a red disc below their labels)... I could almost whiff the oodles of their 200-year-oldness... O_O'

They're currently working on data entry and creating a database of the collections which will ultimately be made available online. The aim's to make the records of the specimens, and the specimens themselves, accessible to all. The tough part is reading the hand-written labels!

The collections need to be re-housed (the entire old Ent. wing is being demolished), and help is also needed to re-organise and sort (classify) the collections to order or family level. The curator said I might be assigned to the latter task, since not all of their volunteer-staff have a scientific background. Other areas where I could help out would be the IT and computing bits and catalogue photography.

Coincidentally, the curator's the guy in charge of the fencing sports club at the NHM. I think I might go join them for a while on Wednesday, just to see how things run.

I have been wanting the Zoology department (birds and mammals!) but insects aren't that bad either; plus, there're lots of familiar bugs from the Southeast Asian region.

Lunar festival

World of Warcraft's gone oriental! Red lanterns, chongsams and fireworks mark the Lunar Festival, when "adventurers will have the opportunity to honor many of their elders, and by doing so, they will also honor their culture and their people."

But of course, these traditions have a different origin. Can't totally import the real world, eh?

Doublespeak

ICMUN received a hundred quid in sponsorship from EDB. We are extremely grateful. In return, we were given a blurb to put on our website, which includes the following:

"Our officers work closely with companies, both multinational and Singapore-based, to understand their needs, configure their business activities and assist in project implementation, in line with our strategic industrial plans. EDB also acts as a catalyst to promote entrepreneurship and develop new industries and technologies. As we forge ahead in a knowledge-driven world, we continue to enhance our pro-business environment ensuring that the right infrastructure and key manpower capabilities are in place for industries to flourish."

FYP

More than ever now, I want to do Ian Owen's "Evolutionary ecology and genetics of birds" for my final-year project. I'll be devastated if I don't get it.

It's on colour variation in wild birds. It'll involve swapping eggs and rearing chicks, and measuring their data and stuff as they mature. It involves NO genetics or molecular analyses. It's the only project of its kind. I've just spoken with the good Prof, and in a few words he's convinced me that it's all I want to do. But is it up to him to decide on the allocations for his own projects? That's what's worrying me. We have no idea how they carry out allocations.

Methinks there is seriously a lack of faunal-related projects. Everyone's on about genetics and molebio and bacteria and fungi and plants, so as a result there's only five on the list of 130 projects which appeal to me.

Other choices are to do with public conservation attitudes (which would tie in well with my potential MSc in Sci Comm), visitor usage of natural areas, biodiversity in beetles, aggression in male crickets, and pitfall trap designs.

On a side note, I've finally been accepted into one of the science departments in the NHM. They've decided that Entomology Dept needs a hand. After all, right now in this chilly winter weather, I don't think volunteering in the Wildlife Garden is the wisest thing to do.

Guppy courtship

Clockwise from top left: Male meets male, male meets female, male about to lauch into Sigmoid display, "which female should I choose"?

Animal behaviourists have the funnest pracs of all.

Guppy courtship behaviour is complex - Soph and I shall have this as our extended mini-project. Two full days next week in the labs watching males woo the females!

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Research on Agamids

Monday, February 27, 2006

MSc

Sunday, February 26, 2006

New blog

Lee Valley

Friday, February 24, 2006

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Ent and more ent

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Thames at Night

FYPs, BCB and my PT

Monday, February 20, 2006

LIMUN 2006, 17th-19th Feb

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

London Wetland Centre

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

A yellow rose for friendship

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Time to get a new backpack?

Friday, February 10, 2006

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

NHM Ent. Dept. Part 2

Today

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Meet my new roommates

Saturday, February 04, 2006

NHM Ent. Dept.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Lunar festival

Doublespeak

FYP

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Guppy courtship