During my first year as a graduate student, a week didn't go by where someone didn't ask me "So what's your research question?"  I hated that question more than anything.  I had combed the literature, searching for research ideas, only to discover everything I was interested in had already been done a hundred times over.  All of the mysteries of the environment had been answered and there wasn't anything left to be studied.  "Why am I even here and why are any of us doing science," I frequently asked myself.  "Ecology is stupid.  Ecology is hard.  I hate Ecology!" were also common chants I shouted in my office (and by office, I mean the spare lab next door that was used for storage and sleeping quarters for homeless grad students).  Then, one day, it suddenly all made sense.  I realized I was being punished by my adviser, because he was punished by his adviser, and his adviser's adviser punished him, etc. etc....

Then I stopped blaming the world, sucked it up, and read some more literature.  Every idea I had, I wrote down.  I carried around a notebook to every meeting, every class, and any time something came to me, I wrote it down.  Alot of them were bad, very bad.  But I wrote it down anyway.  It fostered more ideas which led to even better ideas which then led to terrible ideas, and so on and so forth.  I shared them with fellow labmates and post-docs who helped me refine them.  I had meeting after meeting and exchanged numerous emails with my adviser, who dismissed many of my ideas and forced me to use my brain more than I ever had.  Eventually, I figured it out.  Ecology didn't seem so stupid anymore.  It was still hard...very hard.  But it wasn't stupid and I didn't hate it, at least not as much as I once did.  

And so my lesson to you, boys and girls, is that it's o.k. to hate ecology.  Spit on it, kick it, throw it in the trash for a week and ignore it.  It doesn't mind.  It will still be there waiting for you to explore its insides.  Although often times it's hard to see this, there are still plenty of mysteries to be solved.  Heck, you may even find a new species of monkey or discover millions of microscopic marine life.  

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Greetings from St. Paul, Minnesota!  I have left the sweltering heat of south Florida for a few days to attend the American Fisheries Society Conference.  Attending conferences is a must-do for graduate students.  It's a chance to share your research with a large, scientific audience, get feedback from the top scientists in your field, and make connections (and new friends) along the way.  These meetings can be a bit overwhelming so I've generated some tips to help you get through them:

1)  If you're attending a national meeting, chances are there will be anywhere from 10 to 15 talks going on at once.  Running from room to room to see all of them isn't necessarily the best approach.  Stay in one session for a series of talks and sit near the front.  If there are discussions after the talks, don't run off.  Sit and listen and even participate if you have something worthwhile to add!  

2) Network network network.  This becomes more important as your graduation date nears but it's never too early to get your name (and your research) out there to the professionals.  To be honest, this is the HARDEST thing to do, at least in my opinion.  If you're lucky, you're adviser will introduce you to some colleagues, but you can't always count on that.  So your best bet is to stalk the agencies or professors that you'd want to work for and attend their talks.  Go up to them afterwards but be prepared to wait behind the 10 other people that also want to tell them how great their research is.  This is another reason why sitting in the front gives you an advantage!  Or, look for them at the social events and make your move then.  Ask them to come to your talk (see point 3 below) or give them a CONCISE overview of your research interest or thesis/dissertation work.  State where you're in school and who your adviser is as well, especially if you know s/he has a connection there.   It could be just a brief encounter and you may walk away feeling that got you nowhere, but don't be discouraged!  Email them a week or so after the conference (so it doesn't get buried under the 100s of emails s/he's likely not reading while s/he's traveling) and keep at it over the next several months.  They may not have funding at that moment, but things can change pretty quickly and you want to make sure you aren't forgotten.

3)  If you want people to attend your talk or poster, just ask.  I was desperate for some feedback and wasn't sure if my title was catchy enough to attract a large audience.  So, I went up to people whose research was similar to mine and simply asked them if they would attend my talk.  Show them EXACTLY in the program when and where your talk or poster is so they'll remember.  This worked surprisingly well for me this week.

4) Don't be afraid to go alone.  There are numerous student social events and I can assure you, you aren't the only person there that doesn't know anybody.  Yes, it can be a bit awkward arriving alone and then frantically searching the room for an empty chair so you aren't wandering aimlessly...but once you get over the initial uncomfortableness of it all, you end up meeting people along the way.  Don't be afraid to introduce yourself to other attendees.  If you saw their talk or sat in a session and noticed they were there as well, that can be an ice breaker.  

That's about all the advice I have for now.  I'll be posting at a later date tips and tricks for making successful PowerPoint presentations but if you questions in the meantime, leave a note below!

Greetings from the confines of my office!  I have not posted in over a month but lucky for you, the other bloggers have kept you entertained with Alligator vomit, post-quals stress disorder and the joys of working with carcinogens, flammable materials and high-voltage equipment.  If those don't make you want to be a graduate student and/or scientist, then I don't know what will!

So what have I been doing?  A whole lot of non-exciting blogging material like processing DIDSON videos, analyzing data, and preparing for conferences.  The good news is now I have some results to share!  

One of the most interesting and surprising things I've found in my DIDSON videos is schools of small prey fish (< 12 cm).  Not just one or two on occasion, but nearly every time I go out, in all three of the canals I work in, there are schools.   

It's been fascinating to see such a variety of schools.  As far as I know, Everglades' scientists were unaware prey fish were using these canals so prolifically and behaving this way.  Schooling is often times a behavior prey fish employ to avoid being preyed upon by larger fish.  They also school for other reasons (foraging, reproducing), so my next step is to describe, quantitatively, the shape and size of these schools to show this is an anti-predator defense.

For those of you who read Using "Sound" to See Underwater and Everglades at Night,  you've learned a bit about the DIDSON (an imaging sonar) and have gathered that some of my work occurs at night in the glades.  Below, I'll explain how I'm using the DIDSON to understand the role of predatory fish in canals of the Everglades.

Canals were dredged  in the early 20th century to drain the wetlands and have now become a permanent fixture in the Everglades landscape.  I could write a whole separate article on the harm canals have done, but for now I encourage you to read The Effects of Canals and Levees on Everglades Ecosystems for a review on their history and role in the landscape.  Their relevance to my study is that the canals harbor large, piscivorous fish (fish that eat other fish), which is great for recreational fishermen but bad news for the little fish who have to fight for survival in these canals.  Small fish play a very important role in the Everglades, serving as an critical food source for wading birds.  As you can see in the video below and infer from the word "wading", these birds hunt for fish in shallow bodies of water.  They may not be successful hunters in deep canals.