Frogs, Spiders, & Snakes, Oh My!

Friday we had two lectures. One was over experimental design and the other was given by Dr. Tom on his research at Cornell University. I learned that in order to have a successful project you must first formulate a hypothesis with testable predictions. You must also make sure that the data you collect is interesting and useful so that other individuals will take the time to read it. Our lecturer informed us that we would have limited time and resources to complete our research project in Sitou Experimental Forest and advised us to choose a topic that was specific and would appeal to our audience.

Dr. Tom is a field biologist and until recently, he was a professor at Cornell University. In his lecture, he introduced four of his more memorable research projects. His first project was done on the Columbian white-tailed deer populations near the Washington-Oregon border. Dr. Tom wanted to see if the sex ratio between hunted populations and non-hunted populations of the deer were different. He found that the sex ratio was the same for both populations, 1 male to 3 or 4 females. This can be explained by the fact that male deer cycle through the population at a higher rate even if they are not hunted. Another project he did was on Bobolinks in New York. Bobolinks are migratory birds that live in grasslands, meadows, and hay fields. Dr. Tom discovered that bobolinks exhibit multiple paternity and sight fidelity. Sight fidelity just means that when the males and females leave South America to go back to the U.S. in the spring for breeding season, they return to the same territory as last year. Males mark out their territory and the females will build their nests within these territories. It was thought that all of the eggs in one territory genetically belonged to the male of that territory. Dr. Tom found that not all of the eggs came from the male of that territory, this is multiple paternity. He also did research in Costa Rica on habitat fragmentation and in Idaho on the Idaho ground squirrel.

After lecture we went to Yingge Ceramics Museum where we saw how ceramics are crafted, decorated, glazed, and fired. We go to walk through a mock kiln and felt the difference between a glazed ceramic and a non-glazed ceramic. I appreciated being able to see the history of how ceramics were used in Taiwan and some of the pieces were very beautiful. We were able to go to the kids section to paint our own ceramic star candle holder, it was fun!

Firing kiln

My painted ceramic

After the Ceramics museum we returned to NTU, had dinner, and made our way to the park for our night time frog observation. We were able to see many frogs, spiders, snails, and we even saw a snake! At one point our guide told us to turn off our lights so that we could hear the different species of frogs surrounding us, we could distinctly hear up to four species, it was so cool. Another cool part was that our guide caught a tree frog and I was able to let its sticky feet get stuck to my fingers.