Have you ever thought about the future of developmental biology? Over the past decades, developmental biology has changed a lot. We have different tools, do different types of experiments, collaborate with different disciplines, and even fund and publish research in different ways. But which changes are still to come? What will the future bring?
If you’d like to share your thoughts about the future of the field, the Node and Development invite you to participate in our essay competition “Developments in development”. Your essay can describe the direction of a particular area of research, the emergence of new techniques or model organisms, career prospects, ethics, publishing, policies or other topics that will shape the future of developmental biology research.
A panel of judges will select the top entries, after which a public vote on the Node will determine the final winner. The winning essay will appear in Development later this year. All finalists posted on the Node will receive an Amazon gift certificate worth £50.
Judges:
Olivier Pourquié – Editor-in-Chief of Development
Claire Ainsworth – science writer
This competition is open to anyone who is involved in developmental biology research, or related fields (such as stem cell science or genetics), or has been within the past three years. PhD students, postdocs, and lab heads all qualify!
Please note that the final essays as selected by the judges will not be copy-edited before they appear on the Node. If you’re not confident about your English grammar and spelling, we recommend that you have a (near-)native speaker read over your essay before submitting it. The final winning entry will be copy-edited before publication in Development.
Deadline for submission is July 2nd, 2012 (noon GMT).
Maximum length: 2000 words
Please submit your essay, with a title and your name, as a Word attachment to thenode@biologists.com, and include a brief biography in your email (not in the essay).
The Chinese collector folks brought a big cage with a *ridiculous* number of 5-toed jerboas this morning. They are apparently far more plentiful and easier to catch. Unfortunately, they were more plentiful last night than in the area they went the night before when they brought me 3/5 that were pregnant with nice stages, but this time I wound up with only 6/55 with anything useful. Most were either just about to give birth or already had. So I think what makes the biggest difference is the local population size (the probability of them having met a mate early in the season). When they change to a new location to make more money, it affects my harvest rate. Bummer. But further validation of my base rate plus “perfect embryo bonus” pay structure, so I can now convince them to go back to the other place even though it’s a little more difficult.
Anyway, back to the hazards. There were a lot of males in this batch, because it is much harder to distinguish male from female in this species. Since I am only paying for the females, I had to check and sort each one. By much harder, I mean that in both species the junk is all internal. With the 3-toed jerboas, you can tell without too much difficulty by the anogenital distance (further apart in males than in females). That’s much smaller in the males of this species. So with these guys the best way to tell is to press down on either side to make the business bits pop out. I’ve done this also with the 3-toed guys and met with no great peril other than an attempted bite of my well-protected hands. So I was inspecting one of the animals who turned out to be male, out popped his penis…and a very thin but highly pressurized fountain of urine sprayed across my chin and thankfully (barely) missed my mouth. This happened a couple of times (second time across my shoulder since I quickly learned to aim away from my face). There was also the one that launched herself out of my hand and scurried under the fume hood. The guy who had delivered the animals though this was all the most hilarious show.
Up to this point I had thought it was bad enough that I have to swat away mosquitoes while dissecting if we’re working into the evening. And all along I’ve had to maintain my ninja-like skills of crushing the errant flea who tries to make an escape for a warmer body. Add to that the mental health burden of feeling like an executioner each day going through more and more animals. I keep telling myself that this will set up the next 2-3 years of my career, and if I were to spread this out over that amount of time, it would be no different from the number of mouse dissections I do. But it’s much more challenging when it’s compressed into two weeks of intense work.
Anyone who has known me for awhile probably knows that I really really despise carrots. Yes, I know. I am a freak. No one hates carrots. In my whole life I think I’ve met one other person with the palate I have…
Sarah and I decided to skip lunch at the field station and go for jiao zi (boiled dumplings, my favorite food in China) at a shop we walked past a few days before. While we were there, an older pair with their young grandson came in. I say “pair” rather than couple because it was the maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather of the little boy – very cute. He took a quick liking to me after I tickled and taunted his neck a bit. As part of our play, his grandfather started pointing to items on an illustrated poster on the wall of food laid out on a table. I think he was trying to teach the kid and me at the same time since I’d made a joke earlier about how my Chinese language skills are about equivalent to this 18 month old child. There are two carrots on the poster, so I pointed as if to ask “what is this?” They told me the word for carrot, so I pointed to myself and said “Mei yo hong luo bo ” thinking I was essentially just negating the carrot and getting my point across. I saw Sarah’s face go rigid since she knew what I was trying to say. The incredibly sweet and enthusiastic woman who owns the shop waited for a moment and then disappeared into the kitchen with Sarah in close pursuit. Apparently what I actually said was “don’t have carrot” so the woman was excited to introduce me to this new exotic food. Sarah tried to explain, but the woman insisted “No, she said she doesn’t *have* carrots”. So she cut a (thankfully) thin slice of an enormous carrot and brought it over to me to try. As I said, I’ll eat anything that’s not an insect, so I smiled graciously and hid my distaste. But I did learn that lesson. Maybe she really knew what I meant but figured this would be the best way to fix the phrase in my head.
Yesterday on return to the field station from our day of adventures in this small town, we ran into a group of five middle school girls who we have spoken with a couple of times now – including the one very enthusiastic hugger. They were really excited to see us and practice English again, and they asked if they could come to the field station to see where we work. Since there were only 5 of them this time rather than 50 as before, I said “sure, why not”. I love seeing the faces of young kids, girls especially, when they discover how cool science really is. So we took them to the lab and showed them some of the live animals we still had from earlier in the day. They were completely fascinated by the one white jerboa we had in a small cage. They’re usually sandy brown with white bellies, but the folks catching for us brought us one male that was all white with black eyes. The interesting thing is that he said he knew something was different as soon as they shined the light in his eyes, because the regular jerboa’s eyes shine yellow, but this one shined red even though his eyes are black. In the thousand or so jerboas that I’ve seen around here, this is only the second white one I’ve come across, and the last was of the 5-toed species while this was a 3-toed one. I took a little snip of an ear for DNA, and we wanted to set him free along with all of the females that were obviously pregnant with embryos too old for my needs. So we got the girls to each take a trap and help us carry them to the end of the road. The four older girls were brave and excited, but there was one little one probably about 7-8 years old who seemed a little bit terrified of the scurrying going on inside her trap. But she put on a brave face and followed along. We got to the end of the road, and I set each one loose. At first there was a lot of squealing – especially when one would hop up onto a girl’s shoe. But within about 5 minutes they were each doing the gentle one-finger head pet, and one girl even stole my glove away from me so she could try to catch them on her own. I love seeing that transition from fear to fascination.
And all is good with the couple who are collecting for us. It is interesting to see that the challenges we are going through together are solidifying this relationship. What started in the beginning as a big dramatic negotiation every day has morphed into an easy conversation as the trust builds. I think it helps that when we changed the pay structure we incorporated a “bonus” for each animal with embryos of a perfectly young stage for my work. This was to encourage them to keep collecting at locations with good embryos rather than moving on to places that might not be as useful. They bring the animals, we pay an initial fee, then the following day when they return we pay a little for each that was perfect the day before. They were skeptical at first, but after I have made good on my word for a couple of days they seem really happy and a lot warmer. They even brought their 26 year old daughter to meet us today so she could practice her English a little bit. And I have reached great success with the collections! 397 embryos of the 3-toed jerboas. Also, in past years the 5-toed ones haven’t had embryos until well into June, but this year since the 3-toed ones seemed to breed so early, I took a chance and had them bring a few of the 5-toed ones this morning. 3/5 had embryos, so I am going to continue to hire them for a few more days to build up a stock of those ones for comparison. It’s a bonus I wasn’t expecting and rounds off everything really nicely.
I don’t even know where the last 72 hours went. Well, in fact I do. And it wasn’t spent sleeping. Since I now have 2 groups of people collecting for me, that means twice the amount of work. The Kazakhs live about an hour away, so they prefer to bring the animals to me when they finish collecting which has routinely been somewhere around 2 or 2:30 am. Since I would like the embryos to be as young as possible, and I expect the Chinese collectors to arrive each morning with their bounty, that means the best approach is to just go ahead and power through all of the dissections in the middle of the night which has put me in bed somewhere between 4:30 and 5 am each day lately. Then by 8:30 or 9 am I have been woken up by *rap rap* two second pause *rap rap rap rap rap rap rap rap rap rap rap rap rap* until I go scowling and growling to the door to greet the woman of the couple in charge of the Chinese jerboa collective. Each morning I demonstrate that it takes no more than one polite knock to get my attention, but she cheerfully squawks on and on about how I need to be up because it’s light out and I’m missing breakfast. This is what’s understood from my limited understanding of Chinese and a lot of hand gestures. So then I crawl out of my jammies and into my clothes and out the door to settle the payment and dissect the next batch of animals. I’m functioning on very little sleep and showering only once in 2-3 days. And that’s my day sung in a round.
This particular morning was extremely tough. The Chinese folks brought me 45 females which is unbelievable. Except that I was feeling of their bellies as I sorted them, and I set aside 19 as too pregnant to be useful for me. I really want embryos from the first half of gestation and have a HUGE box back home of older embryos from previous collections that have hardly been touched. Plus, the whole reason I was excited about hiring this Chinese couple and had arranged a generous and motivating pay structure is because just 4 days ago they brought me animals that were either not pregnant or had very young embryos. Since then, they’ve been moving around to locations with more animals so they can make more money, but the problem is that animals in areas with a high local population also had a higher chance of encountering a mate soon after coming out of hibernation and therefore bred quickly. I was looking back on my notes from 3 years ago, and the pregnancy rate was closer to 60% with a majority of embryos at mid gestation as of about April 20th. The climate this year is very similar to that year, but this year I have a pregnancy rate near 95% and a much more advanced stages of development at this time on the calendar. So I think there’s been a recent population boom that’s affecting my numbers. In summary, field work in developmental biology is really hard.
So I wasn’t very happy about the fact that half of the animals I’m paying for are useless to me, so we discussed in more details what my research needs are and what I’m looking for in the animals. I explained how to tell when the females are really too pregnant and asked them to try to find areas with a lower population so they’d be more useful to me. I know it sounds like I’m asking them to make their work more difficult, but I explained that if they keep bringing me animals with old embryos, I won’t have a need to hire them anymore. The husband seemed to really understand and was patiently listening and wanting to learn more so they could bring me what I need. He seems to have a good business mind. His wife, on the other hand, went ballistic that I was changing the terms on her since all she seems to see are the finances. She’s always the one to take and count the money and has previously been the negotiator while her husband quietly stood by. Where it got really awkward was when the man got angry that she was interrupting, getting greedy, and didn’t seem to understand that they needed to be flexible to keep my business. After her persistent arguing, he lost patience and got really physical with her. He kept shoving her out the door, yelling at her, and seemed to really want to hit her. I was extremely uncomfortable and so far out of my cultural comfort zone. So I was grateful when the man and I came to a professional understanding we could agree upon and settled on a new pay structure that still fairly compensates them while adjusting for my needs. In truth, they’re making between 1000-2000 RMB per day split among 8 people in a place where the average day of wages is only about 100 RMB (equivalent to about $15), so I’m already paying better than the going labor rate.
The good thing is that as awkward and painful as negotiations in China can be, once a deal is made it’s amazing to see how quickly a person’s whole persona will change. I’ve seen this especially in the woman before when she’s been the one negotiating with me. They all have the most pained expression and loudly beg and plead and complain that it’s so hard and I’m so cheap, and surely I can afford to pay more. But then as soon as a deal is made, they are all cheerful and friendly. We ran into the woman again this afternoon in the market, and I was nervous about seeing her after the difficulty of the morning. She was talking to some friends when we walked up, and Sarah wanted to say hello and delicately express our concern for her. She didn’t come right out as say “I’m sorry your husband is an ahole” so as not to embarrass her in front of her friends, but she said “we were concerned for you”, and the woman stopped us from saying more. She seemed really touched and said don’t worry, that’s not our problem. She said she can tell we are good people, and she is happy doing business with us. She kept grasping my hands and even let Sarah give her a hug. So I think all is well in terms of our relationship. And given the spunk and vigor of this small but fiery woman, I have a feeling she holds her own with her husband as well and it was just a case of him needing to be in charge of the situation. I hope so at least.
We depend on our own comfort zones to keep us grounded, and stem cells are no different. A recent paper in Development describes how the adhesion that keeps a stem cell in its niche is regulated.
A stem cell’s niche is important in maintaining its long-term undifferentiated state. A great model of stem cell niche biology is the Drosophila testes, in which germline stem cells (GSCs) reside next to somatic hub cells within their niche. GSCs maintain proximity to the “hub” through the use of E-cadherin-based adherens junctions. A recent paper identifies a new player in adhesion of GSCs to the hub. Srinivasan and colleagues found that the receptor tyrosine phosphatase Lar (Leukocyte-antigen-related-like) promotes GSC-hub adhesion through E-cadherin. Lar, typically associated with axonal migration and synapse formation, is also required for proper localization of Apc2 and E-cadherin localization, in turn regulating centrosome positioning and asymmetric division. Without Lar, fewer GSCs were found at the hub. Images above show localization of Lar (red in merged, white in right image) at the GSC-hub interface (arrowheads) in Drosophila testes (early germ cells are green). Lar is also seen between sister cells of early spermatogonial cysts (arrows), which have the ability to later replace lost GSCs.
For a more general description of this image, see my imaging blog within EuroStemCell, the European stem cell portal.
Srinivasan, S., Mahowald, A., & Fuller, M. (2012). The receptor tyrosine phosphatase Lar regulates adhesion between Drosophila male germline stem cells and the niche Development, 139 (8), 1381-1390 DOI: 10.1242/dev.070052
It’s been a crazy few months of travel for me, with conferences so far in Slovenia, Barcelona and Colorado. But while Coventry may not match these destinations for exoticism or glamour, I’m really looking forward to the upcoming BSDB meeting, starting on Sunday at Warwick University. It’s got a fantastic line-up of speakers, and it’ll be great to get the chance to catch up with much of the local developmental biology community. The Company of Biologists will have a stand there, so if you’re coming too, please drop by and say hi. I’ll be there over lunchtime on Tuesday, as will the Editors in Chief of Journal of Cell Science and Biology Open: Michael Way and Jordan Raff. You’ll also see Eva (the face behind the Node) at the end of the Graduate Symposium session on Tuesday, and I’m sure we’ll both be hanging around the coffee urns during the breaks and the bar in the evening!
For those of you who won’t be there, the Node will – as in previous years – be bringing you reports from the meeting, so you can join us virtually (albeit retrospectively) for what promises to be an exciting and stimulating conference.
Last year you selected four covers for Development from images taken by students of the 2010 Woods Hole Embryology Course. These were the four winners:
The students of the 2011 course took some stunning images as well. (See also this report from the class). We’re asking you once again to help us select a cover image. This is the first round of four images. Which of these skeleton preparations would you like to see on the cover of Development? Please vote in the poll below the images. (Click any image to see a larger version.) You can vote until April 30, 12:00 (noon) GMT.
1. Veiled Chameleon (Chamaeleo calyptratus). This image was taken by Jake Hines (University of Colorado – Denver) and Nate Peters (University of Washington).
2. Skate (Raja). This image was taken by David Gold (University of California, Los Angeles), Lynn Kee (University of Michigan), and Meghan Morrissey (Duke University).
3. Mouse (Mus musculus). This image was taken by Samantha Jones (course assistant).
4. Corn Snake (Pantherophis guttatus). This image was taken by Jake Hines (University of Colorado – Denver) and Nate Peters (University of Washington).
A postdoctoral position studying skeletal development is available in the laboratory of Dr. Amy Merrill at the University of Southern California’s Center for Craniofacial Molecular Biology (CCMB). CCMB offers a highly supportive and interactive environment with a strong research profile in craniofacial development and repair. Work conducted in the Merrill laboratory integrates human genetics and developmental biology to study normal and abnormal craniofacial development. We are looking for an enthusiastic candidate who will carry out an independent research project aimed at understanding spatiotemporal signals that pattern bone and cartilage. Ideal applicants will be highly motivated and have recently completed doctoral training in Developmental Biology.
Please provide a cover letter, CV, and contact information for three references by email to: amerrill@usc.edu
The UK national Xenopus conference is an annual event held to discuss the exciting and extremely varied work carried out across the UK using the African clawed frog (Xenopus) as the model organism of choice. The event provides opportunity for PhD students and Postdocs from Xenopus labs round the UK to present their data to experts within the Xenopus community, a community which can easily be described as passionate and welcoming to all new members. This year’s meeting was held on the 19th of March at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (Cambridge, UK). This institute, opened in 1992, is famous for its substantial participation in the sequencing of the human genome. As a single institute it alone contributed the most sequencing data for what is now considered the gold standard human genome sequence. The meeting was held in a conference room lined with stands for some of the many sponsors of the event. These included companies such as sequencing giants Illumina, morpholino pioneers Gene Tools and many others including Techniplast, Sigma-Aldrich, Agilent Technologies, Biostatus and Cellectis Bioresearch.
A busy room full of keen Xenopus researchers
The talks kicked off with a welcome from Derek Stemple, a senior investigator at the Sanger Institute who is currently using Zebrafish and Xenopus tropicalis as human disease models as well as being involved in the Zebrafish genome sequencing project. His welcome outlined the history of the Sanger Institute and gave a strong message of the importance it has played in revolutionising genome sequencing over the last 20 years and its continuing research into genomics and human disease models. This posed as a great introduction for the first talk by Amanda Hall who is currently working on the Xenopus tropicalis mutation resource project at the Sanger Institute. This project aims to create Xenopus knockouts which can be used to study various disease models. Invitro sperm ENU mutagenesis has been used to generate 6000 F2 mutant individuals the progeny of which can be maintained as genomic DNA libraries and frozen sperm for verification once positive phenotypic analysis is carried out on an F3 carrier population. The genomic library will undergo a reverse genetic screen known as TILLING to indentify 175 preselected mutations. This project can greatly benefit the Xenopus community as all mutations will be made available to view on an online database on the Sanger Institute website. Also all mutant sperm and living animals can be made available for use in further research.
The second talk of the day was by Anita Abu-Daya who is currently working in Lyle Zimmerman’s lab at the National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) in London. Lyle’s lab has collected a variety of weird and wonderful Xenopus tropicalis mutations over the last few years by the means of gynogenetic screens. In her talk, Anita spoke of a mutant called Whitehart, which after phenotypic analysis was identified to have no circulating blood. Genetic analysis of Whitehart revealed it to have a mutation resulting in a premature stop codon in the Smad 4.1 gene, the mediator Smad of both TGFβ and BMP signalling. But if the embryos lack such an important Smad then why is the phenotype not more extreme? This was deduced to be down to redundancy by the similarly expressed Smad 4.2. This work in summation gave a potential role for BMP signalling for the maintenance of blood. The third talk was given by Nick Owens from Mike Gilchrists lab also at the NIMR. His talk outlined the importance of biological variability when using techniques such as RNAseq. To prove this importance he uses two inbred mothers whose eggs are fertilised with the same father. 8 pools of 20 embryos were collected from both parent combinations to undergo sequencing. His data generally shows the more replicates the better to avoid biological variability. Three replicates will always give more reliable results than two.
The next set of talks included one from Tom Bates of Esther Bell’s lab (Kings College London). His work showed a novel TGFβ inhibitor, Coco, to be expressed in the animal pole of gastrula stage embryos. Knock down of Coco by host transfer techniques and morpholino injection showed a loss of dorsal tissues. His work could be summarised by a model suggesting Coco to be regulating germ layer specification via its inhibition of TGFβ in the animal pole. Siwei Zhang of Enrique Amaya’s lab (University of Manchester) spoke about the role of Fezf2/TLE4 in diencephalon development. He showed Fefz2 to be expressed during Xenopus neurulation and in the forebrain of tailbud and tadpole stage embryos. mRNA injection of Fefz2 resulted in dorsal anteriorized embryos leading to a hypothesis of Fefz2 regulating Wnt signalling in the diencephalon area. Next up was Natalie Gibb from Stefan Hoppler’s lab (University of Aberdeen). She demonstrated a role for Sfrp1 in promoting myocardial differentiation. Her talk contained some stunning images and videos demonstrating the ability of Sfrp1 to modulate the size of the developing heart. Coinjection of Sfrp1 and Wnt6 rescued the dual axis phenotype usually associated with Wnt overexpression. This indicates a role for Sfrp1 in modulating Wnt signalling during myocardial development. The last talk of this set was from Neil Roberts (University of Manchester). His work used Xenopus as a disease model to characterise mutations which may result in the unusual disease, Urofacial syndrome a human disease with symptoms including bladder dysfunction and abnormal facial expressions. His work, funded by Kidney Research UK, indicates potential for mutations in the Heparanase-2 gene to be causative of the disease.
Between talks a delicious buffet lunch was supplied which allowed all conference attendees to sit outside and enjoy the outrageously beautiful day upon which the conference took place. With the sun shining everyone moved outside to continue their discussions and meet new people within the community. Also at this time a tour was provided of the Sanger Institutes very own Illumina HiSeq equipment allowing certain attendees to see these powerful machines in action. This also gave the opportunity for us to talk to some of the sponsors. One which I found particularly interesting was Biostatus whom have developed what they are calling CyGEL, a thermoreversible gel which can be used to immobilise living organisims such as the Xenopus allowing live cell imaging.
Xenopus researchers enjoying the beautiful weather
The next round of talks started with Jerome Jullien of John Gurdon’s lab. He demonstrated genome wide reprogramming of somatic nuclei by the Xenopus oocyte transcription machinery. Nuclear transfer was shown to increase Serine 2 phosphorylation found on RNA polymerase II, a phosphorylation state associated with transcription elongation. Clara Collart of Jim Smith’s lab (NIMR) gave the next talk on the role of YRNAs during midblastula transition (MBT). YRNAs are expressed maternally and their expression increases after MBT. Mopholino knockdown of specific YRNAs results in normal looking embryos until MBT which is known to be the onset of transcription. All previous transcription occurring in the embryo is maternal. Clara demonstrates that YRNAs are capable of interacting with chromatin after MBT to promote the onset of DNA replication in Xenopus. Hugh Woodland (University of Warwick) finished this set of talks with a rather puzzling and insightful presentation demonstrating the relationship between oocyte and follicle cell RNA localisation. RNAs are known to exchange via transport pathways between the oocyte and macrovilli/nanotubules extending into the surrounding follicle cells. Conversely, Hugh’s data provides evidence for particles in the oocyte nanotubules to represent an RNA transport pathway from follicle cells to the oocyte. This suggests that follicle cells may contribute to stored egg RNAs. To solve this conundrum he has transplanted primordial follicle mesoderm from Xenopus borealis into Xenopus laevis to see which species RNA will be present in the follicle cells and oocytes. The problem is he still has a long time to wait for these frogs to fully mature.
The last set of the day started off with Eric Theveneau from Roberto Mayor’s lab (UCL). He presented the importance of placodes, found in the gaps between branchial arches, in modulating neural crest migration. He uses Sdf1 as a marker for the placodes to demonstrate an intrinsic attraction of neural crest cells towards Sdf1 positive cells leading to efficient co-ordination of these cell types during cranial morphogenesis. Roberto Paredes (University of Manchester) next spoke of his research into the behaviour of myeloid cells after injury. He has developed an effective method to visualise myeloid cells in vivo demonstrating a fast response by neutrophils in response to injury and a comparatively slower response by macrophages. The last talk of the day was given by Matt Guille (University of Portsmouth) who when not conducting his own research is an indispensible member of the Xenopus community for his work in managing the European Xenopus Resource Centre in Portsmouth. Today however, he was not talking about the centre but his own research on histone function in early Xenopus development. The specific histones H2A.Z1 and H2A.Z2 were the primary focus of the talk. These are implicated to be involved in transcription activation and differ by only 3 amino acids. They give similar expression patterns found at several stages of Xenopus development. Knock down of H2A.Z1 shows a loss of Lmo2, Tbx, Hex and Brachyury shown by insitu hybridisation and animal cap experiments.
One of the most important parts of the UK national Xenopus conference is the community discussion at the end. This gives anyone the chance to voice concerns over all manner of topics including the Portsmouth resource centre, funding and even problems arising with scientific techniques. The key points made in this discussion included the announcement of the opening of the American Xenopus resource centre which can be found at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. A general update of the resources available at the Portsmouth centre. Finally, a suggestion to all Xenopus researchers to keep a careful log of antibodies they have previously used and found to be successful. This kind of information could save Xenopus researches a lot of valuable time and money by producing an accessible database of these antibodies. The day ended with the usual drinks and nibbles and for me a short drive home to Norwich. I had a fantastic day at the conference and would strongly recommend attending it next year if you are working in the Xenopus field. I personally will be eagerly anticipating what new and exciting research next year’s meeting will bring.
All is well. The Kazakh family is unbelievable. They have
been catching more than 20 females each night although almost every
one of them died the first two nights. We think it’s because they overheated during the day before they were able to bring them to me. So now they’re bringing the
animals each night after they finish the collection which was
about 1 am the first night and 2 am last night. I am becoming one with
my nocturnal animals. The unfortunate thing (besides my lack of sleep)
is that these guys are much more agressive than the animals in my
colony back home, and especially pissed off and active at night after
being trapped in a small cage. Thank goodness for my gloves with leather
fingertips. They try desperately to take their vengeance on my hand and
instead get a mouthful of leather. Perhaps it still makes them feel
good to think they’re punishing me.
Many of the embryos are too old for my analyses, but the pregnancy
rate is so high this year that I’m still getting a lot of embryos of
the stages I want. 25 litters so far, to be precise. Which is more
than 90 embryos for two night’s work. At this rate I’ll have a
bumper crop in no time and perhaps be finished a bit early. Definitely
in time to switch gears for phase 2 of the biomechanics work when the
grad student working with me arrives from Boston in a couple of weeks.
Not sure what happened this year though. The climate is no different
from when I’ve been here before.The temperatures are tracking the
same. There’s hardly any vegetation yet, and the trees haven’t budded.
But the jerboas have all clearly fed well and are breeding at least
1-2 weeks earlier than before. Maybe there are annual cycles I’m not
aware of. A professor at the Academy of Sciences told me that about
once in 5-7 years there are almost no jerboas. Maybe this is the
opposing peak of that valley.
In any case, I can’t complain. Given the difficulty of this work and
all of the many many factors that are out of my control, I have to say
I am pretty pleased. Fingers crossed this run of good luck continues.
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