Evopropinquitous

A compendium of knowledge gleaned from seemingly endless scholarly pursuits in the wild. http://www.evopropinquitous.net

[evopropinquitous]

Greetings, dear friends. My absence has been long, but I come bearing a gift: unfettered access to all my knowledge and experience! That’s right, I am doing an #AMA with @redditlgbt.  Alas for planning ahead: it is now! Come, join me if you like, and ask all you desire about monkey scrota, field poops, parasitic delirium, and whatever else strikes your fancy.

The link is here: join me!

[potatoviktory]

tag yourself

[acakewalkofcrocodiles]

Ass hole buddies

[thesmileoctopus-deactivated2019]

Midnight Plowboy, obvi

[evopropinquitous]

Buttrustle!

[sickboyy]

“The first Gay Pride flag was made in 1978 by a man named Gilbert Baker. He gave a meaning to each color.”

Beginners (2010) - Directed by Mike Mills

[evopropinquitous]

Things I Learned as a Field Biologist #789

When traveling to the field, ALWAYS take up an offer for a private tour of the local zoological collections.

They will never, ever, disappoint.

(Like this one, at the University of Zürich; thank you, Alessandra!)

[evopropinquitous]

Things I Learned as a Field Biologist #584

Going back to the field after a long hiatus can lead to moments of both visible excitement and stupefaction (with a slight register of anticipated grossness). Like my face, above. In South Africa. Where I will be once again in less than 48 hours! TO SEE ALL OF THE ANIMALS (but mostly the monkeys)!

Yes: after an absence of three long years, I leave for the field tomorrow!

This summer, I’m very excited to be returning to South Africa to work with vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus), using a number of methods to get at how they forage, what they eat, and ultimately how their bodies adapt to their nutritional environments in three places I’ve been before and loved working in: Soetdoring Nature Reserve, Gariep Dam, and Shamwari Game Reserve. Some of this work will involve live trapping and release, so to ensure to welfare and health of the monkeys I’ll be doing this work in collaboration with the wonderful Dr. Adrian Tordiffe of the University of Pretoria Faculty of Veterinary Sciences.

I’m also taking two of my BU undergrads with me for their very first field experience! Also making his South African and primatological fieldwork debut: my dad (in a supporting role: aka building monkey traps)! And, of course, my most wonderful postdoc, Maryjka Blaszczyk (this ain’t her first rodeo by a long shot).

AND THAT’S NOT ALL: I’ll also be teaching a group of students all about fieldwork and Primate Conservation Genetics in my field course with the prolific Dr. Trudy Turner of the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

As you can see, it will be a packed summer, so I’ll be checking in more regularly to share all the new excitement (and yes, most likely a fair share of humorous mishaps and parasites) that a new field season in South Africa will bring. I’ll also be posting on Twitter and Instagram (@fuzzyatelin, #BUvervets16, #BlueScrotumSummer).

But as I hope you already know: I always save the juicy stories for right here...

[stuffmomnevertoldyou]

Field researchers have jumped into a discussion about the challenges of having a period in remote areas after science educator Emily Graslie posted a YouTube video giving practical tips on how to handle it.   

Fighting the menstruation taboo in the field

[thebrainscoop]

Just for clarification the Twitter conversation mentioned in this article coincidentally happened a week or so before my video came out, not after – more evidence that (thankfully) this topic isn’t being treated as complete taboo in the world of research science, at least not in some online spaces.

[evopropinquitous]

On Being a Queer Primatologist

It’s time for some real talk, dear readers.

I was recently asked a question by a student that I’ll admit threw me. I was surprised that it threw me, because this is a question that I’ve been waiting to be asked. It’s something I like to think is essential to my career and my relatively new role as a mentor, and it’s one that I’ve occasionally addressed in some fairly public fora: 

How has it been to be queer in our field?

(Our field being biological anthropology in general; primatology in particular; field primatology in the very particular)

This question threw me because, at this point in my career, there are a lot of answers...

First off, I am very happy to say that our academic field - in my experience of it - is exceptionally open to and even celebratory of LGBTQIA folks. For which I’m constantly grateful. The American Association of Physical Anthropologists Committee on Diversity supported the formation of the gAyAPA a few years ago (come to lunch with us in Atlanta this year!), which has helped to make queer folks in biological anthropology wonderfully visible. Although there’s no LGBTQIA dedicated group for the American Society of Primatologists or the International Primatological Society, there are many prominent and vocal representatives and allies in those groups (which will be getting together to discuss diversity in ASP/IPS at a round-table discussion at this year’s conference in Chicago!).

I also served recently on a panel for the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program during which I was told, unequivocally, that being LGBTQIA in STEM and working to promote LGBTQIA inclusion in STEM fields counts as Broader Impacts to the NSF. This is huge. Queer undergrads planning on going to grad school in a STEM field: keep this in mind when applying for your NSF GRFP (and by Darwin’s hoary beard: work with your undergrad advisor and APPLY FOR ONE!).

On top of that, there are now numerous groups that support folks that are LGBTQIA and in STEM fields at all levels of academia, including OSTEM for undergrads and NOGLSTP at all levels, the capstone of which is the biennial Out to Innovate summit. There are even several LGBT scholarships available, some of which are specifically for STEM fields. Also, just this week there was a seminar for LGBT in STEM folks across the UK at the University of Sheffield (see #LGBTSTEMinar on Twitter, or, more generally, #QueerSTEM and #LGBTSTEM).

So progress: it’s been made!

Still, things have not been all roses and light. 

This is primarily because we don’t spend all our time nestled safely in the increasingly celebratory bosoms of our professional societies. There are times when being queer in our field can be difficult (yes, even in our own departments or universities) and, at times, even dangerous. Perhaps the best way to understand this, especially in the context of this blog, is to relay some stories from my own experience as a queer guy in the field. I’d like to note that I’m not relaying these experiences to complain, nor am I interested in specifically calling these folks/institutions out in this context. What I AM interested in is making folks aware that such things happen, and to think about the impact occurrences like these might have on your colleagues, assistants, employees, and students. I’d also like to note that many of these stories occurred because I’m a male-presenting cis queer guy, and may be unique to that presentation. There will be a lot of LGBTQIA folks in my field with different experiences, especially those that are female-presenting and trans, which I’m not in a position to address directly (although I hope others with those experiences might). On that note...

Here are some times when it’s less than stellar to be a queer guy in my field (and how I’ve dealt with them):

When you go to your national academic society’s Committee on Diversity meeting as a graduate student and are told that the COD has no interest in recruiting or retaining or promoting visibility for LGBTQIA students or scientists. 

(Thankfully, this was in 2006 and the stance of the COD membership has obviously changed. At the time, though, I was pretty humiliated. I’d outed myself at the meeting to highlight my interest and why it was important (namely that I didn’t know of any LGBTQIA colleagues or mentors at the time), and then felt pretty exposed when I was rebuffed. As a graduate student hoping to make a career for myself while also being out, that was not a great feeling.)

When you’re a field assistant and your PI discovers you’re gay and immediately tells you that you cannot tell anyone because it would damage the image of the long-term project you’re working on.

(At the time this happened, I was gutted. It both made me feel like I was a dirty secret - flashbacks of the middle/high school closet - and that I’d put the project at risk because I had already told someone local who had become a close friend of mine (fortunately, he’d actually been quite supportive). With time, though, I’ve become a lot more charitable concerning my then-PI’s logic (PI = Principal Investigator). That particular project, and many like it, has a number of rules for field assistants that were essential for keeping the project in good standing with the local community’s sense of morality. These rules were often at odds with the personal values of the field assistants, but they were in place to keep locals supportive of the work we were doing in their communities. This can be a hard line to toe, but it can be essential for long-term work. Although I think my PI could have presented the request a bit more sensitively, I struggle to think of a better way to make the request had I been in their position.)

When your local friends can’t understand why you’re single and grill you about how beautiful the local women are and what you’re looking for and/or set you up with a local woman.

(This has happened at every field site where I’ve worked. I suspect this is a situation unique to being a male-presenting individual in field sites where there’s any amount of machismo in the local culture. As I mentioned above, being female-presenting comes with very different issues I won’t address here, but see any of these as a stepping off point. As for this situation: it’s awkward, and typically requires lying to make it stop. I’ve tried the ‘I’m too busy to date’ excuse, which nobody buys. I’ve also tried the ‘I’ve got a girlfriend at home’ excuse, which either leads to a well-meaning ‘where’s her picture? tell us more about her’ (more lies needed) or ‘well, she’s at home, you need someone here because you’re a man’. In many ways, this scenario is a minefield, because there’s the outing element (which can be dangerous, see below) and also the fact that having your masculinity challenged as a male-presenting guy and failing that challenge can lead to long-term problems, including losing friends and losing respect and/or authority that may be necessary to your work.)

When you out yourself to your field manager at a remote biological station, after which he decides that he can’t house you with the women at the station (because you’re a man) and he can’t house you with the men at the station (because you’re gay) and so he houses you alone in a building that is both separate from the rest of the researchers and in the process of being torn down.

(This was a tough one. I usually keep a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy when working in the field, because I don’t like to directly lie but I also typically work closely with local folks who may not be familiar with or accepting of anything queer. This particular field manager, however, had expressed a lot of gay-friendly sentiments, so I thought it was ok. Not so much, in this case. Eventually, another male researcher insisted that I just move my stuff in with him, which was really wonderful. After that, the issue was never brought up by the field manager, and I was permitted to be housed with men again.)

When two local members of a five-member research team that lives/works/eats together and for which you’re responsible decide that the best way to express their disdain for their rival sport team is to repeatedly and loudly call them ‘faggots’ and make fun of all the stereotypical ways in which they perceive them to be ‘faggots’.

(This was a tough one, too. I’d already had some trouble maintaining authority with these guys, and I was afraid that asking them to stop would make an already tenuous group dynamic worse - in my experience with homophobia, speaking against it often brings it down squarely onto you. Thankfully, I had my most esteemed #2 Favorite Lesbian Field Assistant (#2 in chronology and not in awesomeness) on the same team (see what I did there?). We were able to commiserate about it (I cannot stress enough the importance of having someone you can be open with in the field), and she took it upon herself to tell them that the talk was making her uncomfortable. This allowed me to maintain my distance from the issue and also made it stop.)

When you are working for several months in a country where being discovered to be LGBTQ is punishable by 16 years in prison (and are also, essentially, being dumped by your boyfriend back home and can’t talk about it with anyone because maybe prison).

(This just sucked, and there was no solution but to stay closeted and keep to myself. This was the only time I went home from the field much earlier than I was meant to. I fully support folks who refuse to work in a country that poses a real risk because of their anti-LGBTQ laws, social mores, or policies. Especially considering that even writing about gay issues in media outlets, like this post, can be used as evidence against you and lead to deportation or worse. However, there are a lot of very interesting primates that can only be studied in such countries.)

When you’re an extraordinarily handsome man and so have to wear a wedding ring and make up a wife (which is the picture of a close female friend of yours) for several years because it would NOT be ok to be queer where you’re living/working and it’s the only way to keep folks from asking/suspecting why you’re not married because just look at you.

(Ok, this is admittedly a friend of mine. There are many contexts where a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy simply is not tenable, most notably when you’ll be living long-term in a place where the stakes are very high regarding discovery. I respect his choice, because safety comes before everything else. On a related note, I once was in a field situation where the local folks suspected that my female best friend was my girlfriend. This was primarily because I had pictures of her. When I told them that she was married to someone else, they were very confused regarding a) why I was single and b) why I should have her picture at all when she was married to another man. Working with and training local folks in the field is something we all should be doing; making friends with these folks is natural and good. When you’re queer, though, you often have to play the ‘pronoun game’ or overtly lie to keep yourself safe. What that means for those friendships, and about you as a person, is something I always ask myself. People who are otherwise very good friends may no longer see you the same way if they discover you’re queer, and you may feel deceitful keeping large aspects of your life a secret. In many contexts, though, gossip could quite literally cost you your safety in that field site. Some folks may think I’m catastrophizing, but taking a look at recent headlines, for example in Uganda and The Gambia, convince me that I’m not. In many ways, simply wearing a ring may be safer and cause less of a need to lie because folks will stop asking you why you’re not married yet.)

When you apply for a field job in a possibly not-safe-to-be-out context and ask your employers for an honest assessment of how safe it will be for you if you’re discovered, and they don’t know because they’ve never thought about it before.

(I suspect that this is probably the status quo for many field opportunities. To the credit of this research group, they absolutely took the time to think about this and got back to me with a very thoughtful response. I mainly include this anecdote because it highlights that even with all the strides our field has made, LGBTQIA issues are still not necessarily on everyone’s minds. With the increased visibility of folks in our field - and as small one-on-one situations like this become more common, I’m pretty hopeful this will change. Incidentally, I chose to withdraw my application for this job before finding out if I’d have gotten it... largely for reasons I won’t discuss here, but in part because being closeted for a few years in my 30′s did not sound like a nice way to live (in my 20s I definitely would have, and did, but I just can’t do that long-term anymore)... which was unfortunate because the folks were awesome and the work itself would have been AMAZING. But: priorities.)

SO, long story short...

When that student asked me what it was like, and if I had any advice, all of this came burbling out. Given the student’s fieldwork context, I recommended staying closeted in the field, while perhaps following my handsome friend’s example and getting a ring and a picture of a female friend (believe me, I’m very torn about this advice but if another student asked me I’d say it again: safety before everything else). I also recommended finding a good therapist for after the field season was over. I’m one of those folks who think that a good therapist is always good to have, but staying closeted for long periods of time WILL bring up a lot of feelings, and working through those feelings may go a lot better with the help of a steady professional guide.

I’ve been very fortunate to have made it this far in my own field (yes, I’ve worked hard too, but I’ve also been very lucky), and to have had so many extraordinary experiences as a field primatologist. As more queer folks come out in our field, I hope we can have more of these discussions, and come up with more solutions - and especially support - for the next generation of field researchers.

If you have some experiences of your own you’d like to share, or comments on what’s written that you think would be helpful, please let me know!  I’ll be happy to reblog/repost.

**UPDATE**

Since posting this, and after the huge discussion it’s generated (thanks to everyone for the reposts/reblogs/tweets/emails!), I’ve had a couple of thoughts that might go well with the above.

First off, a few folks have mentioned that acknowledging the intersectionality of these traits and those differences alter how they’re received in the field is critical. I totally agree. I hope I took a step towards that by including links to research and stories from female-presenting folks in the field, but I recognize that a lot more can be done here that I hope others with more personal knowledge would be willing to share, either here or elsewhere. One identity that I didn’t address above, and which is crucial to this discussion, is that I’m also white and from the US. The privilege these signifiers carry with them ensure that the consequences of my being out or outed in the field are buffered, to an extent; I have no doubt that I would face less harsh penalties as a foreigner from the US than if I were outed in the field as a citizen of a primate host country. Having said that, I should also acknowledge that the perceptions that go along with being from a socially privileged class (be it an ethnic/racial class or citizenship) can also bring with it some specific situational challenges for queer folks in the field who present those identities (many of which overlap with those faced by queer aid workers, who have started a very illuminating blog on the topic).

Second off, and I think this is implied above but I’d like to make it clear: I don’t want to present a homogenous image of my primate host country friends, coworkers, and colleagues being universally anti-LGBT. This is most definitely not the case. Even in countries whose governments actively punish queer folks, there will always be folks who are ok with or even overjoyed to have their queer friends and family in their lives. I’ve met these folks, and many who wrote to me also found understanding and friendship in places they fully expected to have to stay closeted. I think there’s a larger discussion to be had here regarding perceived risk and thresholds of danger that are deemed acceptable when entering a relatively unknown social sphere as a (perhaps) conspicuous outsider.

*Rainbow monkey image by xD-san at Deviant Art.

[evopropinquitous]

First semester on the tenure track: Accomplished. 

Second semester: Imminent.

Current status: Writing.

[epgntxeinstein]

Over-interpreted epigenetics study of the week (2)

UPDATE: take a look at the response of the lead author at his site, kudos to him for engaging in this constructive discussion.

Epigenetics studies of interesting questions sometimes get great traction, whether it has to do with transmitting your memory of surviving the Holocaust or your sexual orientation. 

At the current ASHG meeting an abstract was presented (see the end of this posting) in which it was claimed that testing epigenetic markers can allow you to predict sexual orientation. 

There are many reasons why this study is uninterpretable, some of which are described in general terms here. What is not described in the abstract is that the cells used were from saliva samples, which includes a variable mixture of buccal epithelium with a majority of leukocytes. The presence of microbial DNA also has the potential to cross-hybridise to human probes on a microarray, so the screening approach used could be criticised for several potential technical flaws. Also not described is the marginal, uncorrected significance for this underpowered study. These only came to light when the presentation happened.

However, there were some warning flags in the abstract. Why use a new algorithm to identify these predictive markers, did current approaches not yield any results? Where is the mention of performing some sort of locus-specific, orthogonal, more quantitative assay to verify and validate the DNA methylation changes predicted by the microarray studies? 

Then they fall into the rabbit hole. Up to the mention of “…9 regions” they had adhered to a description of biomarker discovery, but like everyone else in the history of epigenetics studies they could not resist trying to interpret the findings mechanistically. So they go there: they talk about the genes implicated. Now you need to invoke all of the issues to do with mechanism, including understanding why these loci are of relevance to the phenotype in the cells of saliva. Ewan Birney also made the point in a Tweet yesterday that cross-sectional studies like this are subject to the influence of reverse causation, so study design issues also need to be taken into account.

Some poor young lad gets up on stage at #ASHG15 having worked hard to generate this story and is now being eviscerated by people like me. It’s not personal about him or his colleagues, but we can no longer allow poor epigenetics studies to be given credibility if this field is to survive. By ‘poor,’ I mean uninterpretable. We should only present biomarker studies when they are shown to perform robustly as biomarkers. We should only present mechanistic studies when we have excluded the many biological and technical sources of variability that can mislead us. If we have an intriguing preliminary observation, we present it as such and do not claim that we have generated “…strong support to the hypothesis that epigenetics is involved in sexual orientation.”

Who is culpable in the current situation? The first news report publicising this study came from @NatureNews, but more concerning is the abstract review process that permitted this study to get accepted for presentation, compounded by the press release issued by the American Society for Human Genetics. Both organisations should know better – they need to be substantially more rigourous and not blindly accept that the numbers generated from DNA methylation studies are inherently meaningful. 

As a field, we need something like a consensus checklist to guide scientists and  reviewers in epigenetics studies. It would be unusually prescriptive an approach, but appears necessary to counterbalance the current over-interpretation of epigenomics studies of human phenotypes. The historical lessons of GWAS self-correcting to account for population effects and to move towards adequately powered studies is what we need to learn. The epigenome-wide association study is at a critical juncture, it is time for epigenetics researchers to be much more self-critical and rigourous.

A novel predictive model of sexual orientation using epigenetic markers.

Authors: T. C. Ngun [1]; W. Guo [2]; N. M. Ghahramani [3]; K. Purkayastha [1]; D. Conn [4]; F. J. Sanchez [5]; S. Bocklandt [1]; M. Zhang [2,6]; C. M. Ramirez [4]; M. Pellegrini [7]; E. Vilain [1]

1) Department of Human Genetics, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA, USA; 2) Bioinformatics Division and Center for Synthetic & Systems Biology, TNLIST, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; 3) Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA; 4) Fielding School of Public Health, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA; 5) Department of Counseling Psychology, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, USA; 6) Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Center for Systems Biology, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, USA; 7) Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Sexual orientation is one of the most pronounced sex differences in the animal kingdom. Although upwards of 95% of the general population is heterosexual, a small but significant proportion of individuals (3-5%) is homosexual. Male sexual orientation has been linked to several genomic loci, with Xq28 and 8p12 being the most replicated. As with other complex traits, environmental factors may also play an important role. Firstly, monozygotic twins show substantial levels of discordance for this trait. Secondly, each male pregnancy a woman has increases the chance that her next son will be homosexual by 33% (the fraternal birth order effect). Thirdly, early life androgen exposure in women is associated with increased rates of non-heterosexual identity. Taken together, the evidence suggests a role for non-genetic and, possibly, epigenetic influences on sexual orientation. Our aim in this study was to create a predictive model for sexual orientation using epigenetic markers. We created our model based on genome-wide DNA methylation patterns in 37 monozygotic male twin pairs that were discordant for sexual orientation. 10 monozygotic twin pairs concordant for homosexuality were included as a control population. Genomic sites where methylation occurred were consolidated into short regions based on proximity and correlation of their methylation patterns to increase the signal to noise ratio. We then applied the FuzzyForest algorithm to our dataset. Briefly, regions were clustered into modules using Weighted Gene Coexpression Network Analysis and recursive feature elimination was performed with the random forest algorithm (RF) to identify regions most relevant to sexual orientation. The highest prediction accuracy was achieved using information from just 9 regions. Some of these regions were associated with the regulatory domains of two genes, CIITA and KIF1A. The former is a transcriptional regulator that is sometimes referred to as the master control factor of class II major histocompatibility complex genes. The latter is a neuron-specific transport protein that is important for movement of synaptic vesicle precursors along axons. Our results demonstrate that studies of the epigenome can yield new insights into the biological underpinnings of sexual orientation and provide strong support to the hypothesis that epigenetics is involved in sexual orientation. To our knowledge, this is the first example of a biomarker-based predictive model for sexual orientation.

[evopropinquitous]

This is for everyone all abuzz about the 'epigenetics of male homosexuality' study presented at #ASHG15 last week (and for everyone abuzz about epigenetics in general, the source blog is a recommended follow). Trust me, I was abuzz about it too, because I've been thinking that this kind of finding would be possible, BUT don't let excitement temper your skepticism, folks. Also see @edyong's excellent coverage of this issue in @theatlantic (which is how I found this post to begin with).

[evopropinquitous]

My dear, neglected tumblr followers... 

The time has come for me to let you in on a little secret.

The reason I have been so neglectful is that I have been diverting my energies toward another great endeavor. A goal that has, at long last, come to fruition.

Yes.

Starting this fall I will be Assistant Professor of Biological Anthropology at Boston University.  

So get ready, Boston. 

I’m coming at you.

(And yes: this means I’ll be heading back to the field very soon...)

[evopropinquitous]

how hard is this final going to be???

Ah, final exam time.

My dear, sweet, student... although I appreciate that you took the time to find my tumblr, and that you are reaching out to me in this time of great intellectual fervor and foment we've come to know colloquially as Dead Week (RRR week, for the purposes of campus politesse), I cannot give you this information here as it would unfairly disadvantage my 280+ other dear, sweet students in your class.

I will, however, reiterate what I said in lecture: study hard but with an intelligent eye towards the types of details that were expected on the second exam, go to office hours tomorrow (the schedule is on the course site), study broadly as the exam is comprehensive but with some depth regarding the topics that were implied to be most important (e.g., know the biological systems we learned from gene to phenotype well enough to repeat them without prompt, and remember that there will be some emphasis on the topics covered since the second exam).

And as the fabulous ball-goer above asserts: don't be gaggin.

Let's recontextualize this to mean: don't stress too much (and take dance breaks).

Good luck on Tuesday!

[evopropinquitous]

Wait, so what did you actually do to get the pee? What are the pros and cons of each method? Don't leave us hanging!

You write, dear readers, and I listen. There’s been A LOT of interest in the methodology outlined in Things I Learned as a Field Biologist #635. Lamentably, this is not my story to tell: although I’ve collected many bodily excreta/secreta from from many primates, the Strepsirrhini ain’t my game.

However, to satiate the curiosity of the masses I wrote to my good friend Luca Pozzi - whose work is featured in that post and who is currently in Madagascar running some field experiments on the mouse lemurs in question - to ask him for more details!

(Just to visually establish his expertise with the nocturnal beasties, this is Luca. Chilling with a galago. Like a boss.)

I was originally planning on using screen shots of our conversation on WhatsApp for this post, but Luca and I go way back and the conversation can get delightfully salty, so please permit me to paraphrase.

First off: why collect this urine in the first place?

Two reasons: behavioral experiments and chemical analyses. The Strepsirrhini are much more olfactory oriented than our own infraorder within the primates (we belong to the Haplorhini). Especially in the nocturnal strepsirrhines - like the mouse lemurs and galagos that Luca specializes in - urine is used to chemically signal a number of things about the animal who lays down the track. Urine can mediate the sexual functioning of males and females, reproduction, and give sniffers of urine information on relatedness, group membership, and social and sexual status of the urinator. It’s also been proposed to have pheromonal properties! For example, the urine of dominant males has been shown to shut down the reproductive functioning of lower ranking males!

Luca is specifically collecting the urine to test the phylogenetic information it may carry. What that means is that he wants to a) figure out what chemicals are inside it, and b) see if differences in that chemical composition of the urine can be linked to differences in preference for conspecifics vs. heterospecifics (e.g., do they prefer sniffing the urine of another Microcebus murinus to, say, the urine of a closely related species like Microcebus berthae).

Second: Which method works best?

Ok, here’s the deal: Although Luca has tried all of these methods, it’s difficult to say which works best. Here are some thoughts:

1) The Belly Rub method: This one seems ok, but doesn’t work all the time.

2) The Alcohol Method (which is my favorite because it also involves blowing gently on the belly of the mouse lemur once the alcohol is applied, so that it cools while evaporating… and who WOULDN’T want to blow gently on the alcohol-soaked belly of a mouse lemur?!): doesn’t really work well at all, so Luca has scrapped it. Sad face.

3) The Squeeze Method: this one is the money maker. To quote Luca directly:

Most of the times either they pee immediately… (especially one species) or they need some squeezing.

Of course, it’s not all urine and roses:

Unfortunately, most of the times they just don’t pee at all. Or they pee too fast [once they’ve been removed from the trap].

Finally, how is the urine collected, exactly?

I’ll leave this to Luca’s words:

Ideally, directly in a glass tube. Of course, this is almost impossible so sometime I make them pee on a piece of glass and then I pipette the urine with a pasteur pipette in a glass tube. As you can easily imagine everything needs to be glass cause plastic releases lots of compounds that affect chemical properties [of the urine].

Then the samples need to be frozen. We use a -20 [degrees Centigrade freezer], although ideally it should be a -80.

Awesome, Luca.  Thank you so much for helping me explain the ‘BECAUSE SCIENCE’ behind that post.

Anything to add for the readers here about working with mouse lemurs in the field?

They are pretty adorable. Except for when they bite you.

Well said.

If you want to know more about Luca’s awesome work with mouse lemurs and galagos, you can find out more here at:

Luca’s Website

Or by following him on Twitter at @LPozzi81:

Luca’s Tweets

For now, next time you’re in the dark forests of Madagascar, have a mouse lemur in hand, and desperately want to sample their urine, you know exactly what to do:

Squeeze. But squeeze gently. And don’t get bit.

Nota bene: Naturally, all of this squeezing, rubbing, and blowing is approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (or similar bodies) of the universities affiliated with Luca’s work, and has been additionally approved by permitting officials in Madagascar and Germany (many permit-granting agencies also require said proof of IACUC approvals before sample collection is allowed).

[evopropinquitous]

Things I Learned as a Field Biologist #635

There may come a time when, late one night deep in the forests of Madagascar, you stumble upon something that is magnificent in its diminution. A creature so glorious in its eensiness that you must steel every nerve to keep the squee at bay. But this encounter was no accident... you spent months of planning, weeks of waiting for permits and equipment, and so many long nights setting traps to ensnare this single, miniscule beast...

And now it is time.

Time to make the decision that will either bring these months to their most glorious fruition, or leave you bitter and empty-handed.

Will you...

1) Gingerly rub the soft mound of its belly... gently! Ever so gently...

2) Daub its tiny ventrum with rubbing alcohol? Cooling sensations help!

Or

3) Delicately squeeze it? It is, after all, roughly the size of a travel-sized toothpaste tube.

Choose, but choose wisely:

There are only so many ways to convince a mouse lemur (Microcebus spp.) to urinate.

And you NEED that urine.

Because science.

Special thanks to my one of my favorite partners in gimlet-soaked-Jesus-hosted-glittery-burlesque crime for this post (and the International Primatological Society meetings in Hanoi for bringing us together again). Keep gingerly rubbing those fuzzy bellies, Luca. Keep gingerly rubbing.

[thejunglenook]

Look at the scientists on tumblr!! gradmom, evopropinquitous, and thejunglenook !

[evopropinquitous]

So awesome to meet thejunglenook and @gradmom at @ASPvoice (that's the twitter tag)! Primatology on Tumblr FTW!!!!

[brutereason]

We often talk about the “leaky pipeline of STEM” as a way to talk about how women and people of color drop out of STEM careers at alarmingly high rates, but it is time to abandon that language. We’re not talking about a passive system here, where people just happen to drip out of the pipeline. No, we’re talking about a system that actively creates pressure. If you take a large pipe, attach it to a smaller pipe and then a smaller one, while still pushing the same amount of water through, what’s going to happen? Either your pipe is going to spring pressure-driven leaks or you’re going to have to have holes drilled to relieve it. We’re not talking about a leaky pipeline of STEM, we’re talking about a gorram sprinkler system, actively pushing out people who were set up to fail from the beginning by the very system itself. There are very real problems in the sciences. But right now the field is caught in an auto-catalytic cycle, where people point out ways in which we’re failing at outreach, the people in positions of power dig in their heels with cries of “but *we* weren’t offended!”, the same people then wring their hands and wonder why there isn’t more diversity in science… and continue to ignore us when answers to that question are given. And if we keep making excuses for the smaller things that hurt various groups, it’s never goin to change.

Skepchick | Science has an Image Problem (via brutereason)

[sciencesoup]

How does one find internships? Unfortunately, many of my peers are having trouble finding science-related internships, mainly ones relating to lab work, and I myself don't know where to start.

Google is your friend. Get intimate with it. There are a lot of databases/lists of internships floating around, but you usually have to dig a bit to find them.

Here’s an incomplete list of ones I’ve personally taken note of. Most are in the US or the UK, and they’re mostly available to international students. There are MANY more programs open to US and EU citizens; you guys have a lot more options.

LISTS of STEM internships/programs in all fields:

Berkeley (geared towards Medical/Health Sciences but with lots of general links too)

DAAD RISE (in Germany)

Database at Pathways to Science (HEAPS of stuff to search through)

NASA

National Science Foundation’s list of REUs (Research Experience for Undergraduates)

Nature (science writing AND general STEM)

New Scientist

Smithsonian (SO MANY)

Stanford

Specific STEM fields:

Astronomy and Physics

ASTRON/JIVE Summer Student Programme 2013

Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science and Technology (CRESST)

Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) Summer Intern in Planetary Science

Space Telescope Science Institute: Research Space Astronomy Summer Program

University of Colorado, Boulder - 2014 REU Program in Solar and Space Physics

University of Arkansas: Summer Research Internships for Undergraduates with the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences

LIST at APS Physics

LIST at AstroBetter

LIST at University of Iowa

REALLY LONG LIST at Carleton University 

Environmental Science

Alaska Sealife Center

Natural History Research Experiences

SERC INTERNSHIP PROGRAM IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

LIST at UC Davis

LIST at U Iillinois

ARCHIVES at Ecolog

Australian Programs

AAO Student Fellowship Program

Australian Gemini Undergraduate Summer Studentships

CASS Undergraduate Vacation Scholarship Program 2013

CSIRO vacation scholarships

International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research

Macquarie University - Summer Vacation Research Scholarships

University of New South Wales

UNSW Exoplanetary Science Vacation Scholarships

UQ Summer Research Scholarship Program

Vacation Scholarships in Astronomy at CAS

LISTS of Science Writing Internships:

American Association for the Advancement of Science (including an internship for minorities)

Nature

Nature (science writing AND general STEM)

Washington & Jefferson College

Specific Science Writing Internships

AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellowship

Australian Geographic

Brookhaven National Laboratory

European Southern Observatory

Fermilab

New Scientist (2013 link, but keep an eye on it for 2014 openings)

Wellcome Trust

Wired Magazine

Basically, do your research, because this is a hugely incomplete list, but hopefully this gets you started.

Spread this around! My extensive Googling skills have to be good for something.

[ucresearch]

This is a great list of resources and we wanted to add the list of research opportunities available across the University of California system (although there are a few listed above.)

*Research opportunities cover both STEM fields as well as the social sciences and humanities:

UC Berkeley undergraduate research 

UC Davis undergraduate research & summer research

UC Irvine undergraduate research

UCLA summer research programs

UC Merced grad-prep programs

UC Riverside undergraduate research & mentoring summer research program

UCSD undergraduate research & summer research

UCSF summer research program

UCSB undergraduate research

UC Santa Cruz undergraduate research

Another way to go about it would be to identify research topics that interest you and then find faculty members at a university who are conducting research in those areas. After familiarizing yourself a bit with their work, send them an email or schedule a meeting to learn more about what they do.  They may be able to offer you more specific guidance in your field of interest or have research projects that you could potentially work on.

Or there may be more informal ways to gain research experience. You may be able to work under the guidance of a faculty member, even if the professor is not an official research program mentor. Some professors may be willing to supervise an independent research project.

[evopropinquitous]

As is typical and apparently my wont, I have gone on a brief hiatus... but always with good reason: I've started a new postdoctoral research position in the Bay Area!

Huzzah to the Bay Area!

As is also my wont, somewhere between all the packing and moving and wrapping up of summer courses, I somehow managed to join three scientifically curious comedians to do an episode of the podcast Probably Science (linked above). As is often the case, the field stories came out and dominated the conversation. If you'd like to hear some of the stories shared in earlier posts on this blog first hand from yours truly - with the added bonus of commentary from comedians Jesse Case, Matt Kirshen, and Andy Wood - this is your chance!

Also prominently featured in the podcast is the route I took to becoming a field primatologist. I've mentioned this in a number of earlier posts on this blog, but if it strikes your fancy to hear such advice, it's another reason to tune in, along with those the podcast description highlights: 

[...] primate infanticide, collecting howler monkey urine, capuchin monkeys sticking their fingers in each others' eyes to chill out, the risks of taking selfies with dead hippos when there are lions nearby, floating vegetation islands that transport animals, old world/new world [monkey and] ape divergence, why certain primates are getting obese, Koko the gorilla's nipple obsession, competing brands of chimp-taggin RFID chips and how to get involved in field work right where you live.

NOTE: it has now officially been recorded that when speaking casually over a beer I am capable of giving the absolutely wrong date for the last common ancestor of hominoids and cercopithecoids DESPITE HAVING TAUGHT IT TO MY STUDENTS THE DAY IMMEDIATELY PRIOR TO SPEAKING CASUALLY OVER SAID BEER. It is NOT, gentle reader, ~16 Ma (million years ago), but rather between 25 and 30 Ma. I shall self-flagellate with an articulated cast of Proconsul heseloni's tailless vertebral column in my most abject contrition until these dates are burned into my brain... BAD biological anthropologist... forgive me, Terry Harrison...