As I write this, it is the Friday before Finals Week and I couldn't be happier that this semester is finally coming to an end. This semester has been a pretty difficult one for me, as is evidenced by the fact that I am waiting until now to complete my last two blogs.
So, for my on-campus event I chose to attend my friend Colin's biology honors thesis presentation. Colin and I studied abroad in Mexico together during last summer. I knew that he was very busy this year because most of the time when we ran into each other, he was either coming from or going to the laboratory. For a double humanities major, it is sometimes hard to realize there is this whole other area on campus where they do experiments and write lab reports...ick.
Colin's honors thesis was over the reproduction habits of pomacea insularum, or the apple snail. From what I could gather during the presentation, he was studying their reproductive habits in order to evaluate their potential as an invasive species. Not only was his presentation informational and enjoyable, but he also took his project a bit farther by using the shape of the snails' shells (logarithmic spiral) as a metaphor for their reproductivity, which delighted me because metaphors are something that humanities majors DO understand. He used the shape to show how rapidly the snails could expand in number, even though many of the snails never make it to adulthood. Then he showed the potential implications this has for the snails to be an extremely invasive species.
His experiments were mainly focused on what type of surface the snails prefer to lay their eggs. He tested many surfaces, including the two different kinds of natural plant surfaces where their eggs have been seen, wooden rods of varying shape (i.e. cylindrical, rectangular) and some metal rods, also of various shape. All of his surfaces were of different length in order to examine the issue from all different angles. If I remember correctly, the snails didn't lay any of their eggs on the metal surface and their was a wide distribution on the plant and wooden surfaces. Also, I don't think there was a height preference displayed by the placement of the egg shoots. He told us a story about one of his excursions to collect a plant species on which the snails could lay their eggs. On this particular occasion, he had to travel to Houston to collect the plant and upon seeing a pond with the species growing around it, they stopped and asked a homeowner if they could go through her backyard to access the pond. Once they were collecting their specimens, Colin saw the plants near him rustle as if something was moving through them. Once he let his eyes scan to the area, he saw an alligator moving towards him in the water. He was standing in muck wearing golashes and while trying to get out of the muck and to safety, he had to leave one of his boots behind in the muck. From then on, one person was collecting specimens and the other was on alligator watch.
It's been a fun (and busy) semester. Ready for summer!
Catch ya on the flipside,
Brady
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