Category Archives: Natural areas

Women, don’t avoid field work for fear!

Posted on September 20, 2014 by Joan E. Strassmann

I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff lately on women who were sexually harassed while doing field work. There was a study published in PLoS ONE by Clancy et al. that went into some details on inappropriate comments and unwelcome … Continue reading →

Posted in Field work, Gender bias, Natural areas | Tagged biological stations, field work, outdoors, sexual harrassment | 4 Comments

Research creativity and the importance of vacations

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Joan E. Strassmann

Meetings, teaching, preparing for teaching, reading, lab meeting, journal club, a few minutes for paper writing, data analysis, even a quick peek through a microscope, and maybe a few seconds for lunch with your group take up all the time. … It can help you jettison a hard, time-consuming technique when a newer one comes along, even if the new one requires some activation energy and someone in the group has invested a lot in the old one. Continue reading →

Posted in Life in a biology department, Managing an academic career, Natural areas | Leave a comment

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 →