Category Archives: Follow a scientist

First, read 2,000 papers, then begin your Ph.D. research

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Joan E. Strassmann

For my husband, David Queller , advice that stuck came back when he was an undergraduate at the University of Illinois and had last week’s seminar speaker, Doug Schemske , as a teaching assistant in a biology course. … Then there were the days at the University of Texas where Don Feener had always read more than we had and had a knack for picking the most important papers out of the new journals that lined the mezzanine of the zoology library in Patterson Labs. Continue reading →

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Why is Alan Templeton catching grasshoppers in the Ozarks?

Posted on September 4, 2011 by Joan E. Strassmann

Well, if it does, then the current populations of grasshoppers in glades where humans have suppressed fires for many grasshopper generations should be genetically more isolated and differentiated than those in glades where there were recent fires. … jeff smith came along and proved to be an excellent grasshopper hunter. It just looks like a patch in the forest, but the underlying soil is thinner, more rocky. We saw some other social insects, these lovely tent caterpillars. A very nice wasp, Polistes metricus, got caught in the web, unable to hunt these caterpillars. jeff found this praying mantis. Continue reading →