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An interminable experiment August 1, 2016

I’m working harder than ever right now and have actually extended my stay here (I was supposed to leave a week from today) because of one apparently never-ending experiment. The short version: I have two caterpillar species that get attacked by parasites at very different rates. The species build different shelters. To test whether the shelters are affecting parasitism, I’m switching caterpillars into the other species’ shelters. There have been several problems with this experiment:

2014: It was really dry here and I couldn’t find enough caterpillars to work with.

2015: It was even drier and ditto.

2016: Almost every single one of the caterpillars I switched in June got eaten, mostly by spiders. Then I had to wait for the adults to appear and lay the next generation of eggs. To try and avoid the spiders, I collected lots and lots of just-hatched caterpillars and took care of them in the lab until they were bigger. For the last week or so, I’ve been putting the caterpillars back on plants and switching them. They are still being eaten by spiders, although at least I’m having better luck finding the bodies. (If I can collect the dead body, I can still use it in my analysis.)

The way things are going, this may wind up being retrofitted as an experiment in how long it takes caterpillars to be eaten by spiders.

In order to end on a lighter note, here’s today’s Frazz comic strip, which I found quite appropriate:

The person who shares the best alliterative sentence about insects will receive brownie points, which are redeemable for an actual brownie.