Valerie Law won the “In A Nutshell” competition at TRU, where senior undergraduates are each allowed 3 minutes to present on a research project.  Val worked on the field crew last summer, steering a ‘refugia’ project for rattlesnakes within  a  a vineyard.  She is using the work for her senior Graduating Essay in the Bachelor of Natural Resource Science program.  Congrats, Val!   Check out the story:  http://inside.tru.ca/2018/03/22/rattlesnakes-crack-the-first-nutshell/

Already?!?!? We  held our 2017 ‘lab’ holiday social on December 11th, and an amazing collaborative feast took place.   Stephanie organized a great rotating gift exchange with everyone walking away with ‘interesting’ little presents.  Thanks to everyone for helping with the preparation and cooking.   Back row: Karl, Cole, Jared and Anna.  Front row: Steph, Cheryl, JoAnne, Sydney, Dana, and Edyta. 

More good news from the lab as Sasindu Gunawardana successfully defended her thesis on November 30, 2017.   Sasindu created microcosm ‘worlds’ to test how combinations of factors affected the decisions of isopods (‘roly polys’ and sowbugs) to leave and travel away from familiar habitat.      Special thanks to Dr. Jim Hare from the University of Manitoba who traveled all the way from Winnipeg to serve as external examiner on the thesis.   Congratulations, Sasindu.

We’re pleased to report that Shorf  Chowdhury successfully defended his thesis on “The human dimension of Asian elephant conservation in Bangladesh” on July 24th.  Thanks to Dr. Cormack Gates for acting as external examiner.   Shorf is now back home in Bangladesh resuming his work with the national Forest Service, and trying to keep up momentum with elephant conservation.  Congrats, Shorf.

Congrats to Jill and Jared for getting their undergraduate capstone project on snake diets published in The Northwest Naturalist  (2016, 97(3): 181-189).     Jill and Val also saw an undergraduate summer project appear in print, this one focusing on the diet of the highly-invasive eastern grey squirrel (Canadian Field-Naturalist 2016, 130(3):202-206).   Jill is currently working on her MSc in Pat Gregory’s lab at the University of Victoria, while Jared is here in our lab at TRU.  Val is completing her undergraduate degree in natural resources at TRU.  Congratulations to these three for the large amount of effort they put into getting their work into press – a great learning process.

The snake crew puts on a show earlier this summer for World Snake Day.

VIDEO: Rattlesnakes — misunderstood and maligned, says snake biologist

What are the things that journal editors look for? Here’s one take on the process:  click HERE

This summer (2016), our lab travelled to the shores of the mighty Mississippi:  Shorf presented a poster on his elephant conservation work at the 96th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  About a week later, Stephanie and Jared both gave oral papers on their work at the Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists in New Orleans, Louisiana.  I also chipped in presentations at both conferences, including a co-authored paper with Jessica.

The 3M competition at our university was won this year by Jared.  Everyone loves snakes.

Click here for the full story.

I am delinquent in posting congratulations to Amy Duncan and Dexter Hodder, who both successfully defended their theses this past academic year.