So I have definitely dropped the ball on updating this for a year now and I apologize to anyone who reads this to keep up with the project! Anyways, I am here to update you now on how much has happened over the last year! First off, we completed field season #3 with a total of 718 individual pygmy rabbits captured throughout the project! It was a pretty rough year in the sense that we didn't catch as many rabbits as previous years despite our increased effort and at West Gulch, we actually went an entire month without catching a single rabbit. However, it was also a great year at one of our sites in Austin, where we caught a whopping 96 individuals and our smallest baby to date! In some more personal, but still PhD related news, I started off the year by getting new 'PYGMY' license plates if anyone was still unconvinced about my love of my study species. After the field season I took a trip to Utah to visit Hannah. We took a trip to Zion, got to catch up, and I also got to tag along to trap some prairie dogs! At the end of August, I got my first 2 tattoos - 1 of an outline of a pygmy rabbit on my wrist, and the other of my dog's paw print on my foot (we lost her in January after a wonderful 12 and a half years). In December, I took and passed my written comprehensive exam and then in March 2019, I finished my dissertation proposal and took my oral comprehensive exam and I am now officially a PhD candidate!!! Even though 2018 was a bit of a let down overall, it gives me a lot of hope going into the 2019 season. I have hired 3 amazing ladies to join me April 15th (my 29th birthday!) to start trapping for our 4th season and survey and resurvey pygmy rabbit sites around Elko and Austin. We are also going to have 2 additional people surveying and resurveying Hart-Sheldon sites throughout the season. We are really hitting the survey aspect of the project hard this year!
Hopefully, I will have more time to update this year, but probably not since I need to be analyzing data in my free time ;) Until next time!!
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Field work updatesA place to update on happenings in the field throughout the year. Sites visited. Status of the sagebrush-steppe. Samples collected. Milestones in lab work. Rabbits trapped. Pictures! Archives
April 2019
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