March 2018 Field Work: Santa Cruz Island

We were very lucky to have a professional photographer, Eirini Pajak, join us on our trip to SCI. All the photos below were taken by her and I think the provide a perfect documentary of our typical field procedure. Thank you Eirini!

📷Step 1. Coffee and ohh and ahh over the adorable foxes. Then get to work!

📷Step 2. Use "Curly" to drive the field crew to the first site to look for animals.

📷Step 3. Use GPS to find the plywood boards and tin that have been strategically placed to attract snakes and lizards - or so we hope!

📷Step 4. Flip boards and grab all the snakes and lizards you can!

📷Step 5. Teach undergraduate students how to identify species and sex, and put them in a bag for temporary holding.

📷Step 6. Start processing (collecting data) on all the animals.

📷Step 7-9. Take temperature, a blood sample and make a blood smear to look at parasites and blood cells.

📷Step 10. Take a blood glucose reading using a typical glucometer. The rest of the blood sample will be used for hormone measurements and genetic analysis.

📷Step 11. Take size measurements including weight. This scale has a lizard in a bag hanging from it.

📷Finally, release the animals back to their home, and share our knowledge with the next generation.