Hi Floggers!
Friday was a fun day in the lab! After the morning lab meeting, where Erin presented her study proposal on quantifying the correlation between Echinacea spatial isolation and flowering intervals, I continued weighing biomass samples. I was able to get through about half the Day 3 samples and I am hopeful I will be able to finish the rest by November 14th.
I brought a few friends along to the lab today from Goose Lake Prairie down in Morris, IL. A small spider I found nuzzled in a Grey Dogwood branch and a rather sizable praying mantis who was picking fights with cars in the parking lot. The mantis was a bit slow in the morning which made her easy to handle. The spider was also very cooperative even allowing itself to be put under a microscope. At this level of detail, one can see the spider’s heart beat in its abdomen. Fun fact spiders do not have a classical circulatory system but rather a heart that pumps haemolymph into sinus surrounding its internal organs. After thoroughly examining both specimen I released them back into the wild so each could go back to living their lives having learned a valuable lesson about hairless apes and glass jars.
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