Monday, July 4, 2016

Food Web Short Course

This year we taught our first short course on food webs and stable isotope ecology in the Mara River. The course was taught by myself, David Post, Emma Rosi-Marshall and Frank Masese, with funding from the National Science Foundation. We had 12 participants from Yale University, the National Museums of Kenya, Egerton University and Eldoret University. Some of the course participants were senior scientists or professors interested in learning more about these topics, and others were undergraduate or graduate students still planning their research. The course began with a day of lectures, followed by three days of a field sampling campaign, and then a final day of data analysis.

It was a really wonderful group of scientists and colleagues, all of whom work on different areas of freshwater ecology, and we had a wonderful time together in the field! The best part about the course was that everyone had different areas of specialization, so we all learned from one another.



Our outdoor laboratory

Searching for macroinvertebrates

Sorting bugs

Electroshocking for fish

Setting gillnets for fish

Streamside lecture


The requisite breakdown

Outdoor laboratory #2

Electroshocking for fish

Picking bugs out of hippo poop

Sampling with an armed ranger

Collecting wildebeest bones to sample biofilm


Lecture on aquatic macroinvertebrates

The team



No comments: