That fungi just totally ate that twig

So I've been processing my ectomycorrhizal samples (the soil fungi) and am starting to come across some neat individuals. The black spindley fellow is Cenococcum Geophilum which is a pretty omnipresent mycorrhiza that occurs in both early stage and late stage forests. This implies that not only is it good at colonizing new substrates relative to other fungi, but that it is a efficient competitor for root tip space. This is an easily recognizable mycorrhiza...the others are not so easy. The highest image is of some fungi that is actually surrounding and eating a decaying twig. We can thank fungi for not being neck deep in dead tree leaves, grass, amongst other dead things because they are the primary decomposers of dead matter.
Kristin helped me clean some soil off of the roots we collected for a while the other and has been busy also preparing for her lab that she will be TAing. Sounds like she has quite a bit of stuff to learn but I think she will do well and will care whether her students do well. It takes a while to find your voice from my experience but it eventually comes. I'm not feeling very well...I had a temperature earlier today and have felt quite weak all day long, but unfortunately I need to get homework and lab work done. Tired and going to sleep. G'night all.

Everything in its right place

No photos again today. I'll try to take some tomorrow, but in the meantime; Wow! So Kristin totally shot and hit the moon with a job here in Oxford. I would have thought that it would take at least "some" time to find a job for her, but no. We arrived yesterday and I spoke with my advising professor who said that another Dr. had been looking for me to discuss my teaching this semester. Well, it seems signals got crossed and although I have a Research Assistant appointment this semester, they also had expected me to TA. Well! That left room for someone else to sidle into that position. Enter Kristin. So, Kristin got a position as a TA within the first 24 hours of getting to Oxford. Not too bad for a girl from Minnesota. Had my first class today in Biometry, otherwise regarded as statistics and experimental design geared toward ecological research. It shall be very useful throughout the semester and as I continue through the sciences. I think the professor will be pretty informative and I'm really looking forward to reading ahead in the book. It's rainy in Oxford right now and thunder storming with some pretty intense lightning cracks. Pretty fun to listen to. Tomorrow night Kristin and I are going to try our hand at making our own pasta with eggs, wheat flower, herbs, and salt.

On another food note,l We went to the grocery store Krogers today with a spaghetti sauce glass jar that we were hoping to fill with bulk items. Well, besides the olive bar there really is no bulk food. BUT! Krogers has the best sun dried tomatoes that they make and so I was hoping to get some of these put our jar. So I asked the women at the deli if she could weigh our jar prior to tomato input and she said she would have to ask the manager about that...initially she said we should just put the sun drieds in the jar and she would weigh it, but at 7.99 a pound and by her logic, using the glass jar would have cost us nearly 6 dollars in addition to the sun drieds we would purchase. So the manager comes over and I explain that we would prefer not to generate any waste if possible and he says that he, not super enthusiastically, says that that would work. He said that this was the first time anyone had ever wanted a container weighed for this purpose which was I suppose not super surprising, but interesting to hear. So he calls over the huge loud speaker and we run to the front and has this gentlemen weigh it and then tells the guy to remember the number and my face for the checkout lane. So...after a long debacle, they let us fill up sun drieds in our jar. I hope they let this fly in the future also because they have some wicked kalamatas and dolmas..and of course the sundrieds. Anyways, that was our day. It was a good day, a very good day. I think this semester will be a blast. G'night.

Oxford town, Oxford town

And I am back...with one more in tow. Kristin and I arrived in Oxford today and I think she is pretty excited to be here. Along our travels from Cambria to Oxford via auto, we traveled approximately 1800 miles with to evening stops to kick it in a motel. Driving has been exhausting and it is soooo great to be back. Kristin met Jella her new roommate and I think the two will get along smashingly. Have yet to ask him why he called the place the "Murderhouse" but perhaps there is a good reason for that like; someone got murdered there. We stopped in Albuquerque New Mexico and picked up some new wares to seal up bulk food item purchases. This is because Kristin and I are making a pact to cut as much of the waste out of our eating habits as possible. Ultimately, we will have to use some things that will ultimately be thrown but this will be kept to an extreme minimum. I like Kristin's new place...very homey already and her room, she says, is totally sufficient despite its small stature. She met my friends Jeff and Maryanne(sp?) and I think they and she hit it off well. I can't wait to show her around the town over the next day or two and get her well acclimated to the area. School starts tomorrow for the both of us. Kristin has microbiology at 8 am and I have biometry starting at 12:30 pm. Lookin forward to school as always. G'night all.

That wave just totally ate that rock!

And so it did. The waves have been spectacular here for the past three or four days. Rained about an inch and a half last night and we were expecting rain today, but no, it was sunny and beautiful. Kristin and I did the transplant experiment today to see if late stage Ectomycorrhizal fungi on the roots of seedlings from the interior of the forest will stay on or get kicked off by disturbance tolerating ectomycorrhizal fungi when we plant them into the grasslands. Probably my favorite day of field work considering we just walked around the woods and got our hands muddy. Not to mention the gorgeous view of the sun going down framed nicely by the two palms on either side of the Kristin as you can see in the photo. We found some great 'shrooms due to the tremendous storm last night and I had a hard time not photographing every.single.one. The couple that caretakes the rancho had us over tonight for dinner and we had a fantastic time. Grilled chicken, hummus and homemade bread, pinto beans w/ rice cooked in coconut milk and a couple bottles of wine. Yum yum. And great company to boot. Don and Miranda are quite the hosts and super great people. Their two girls are quite shy...at least around my scary bearded mug, but it was a great night. So much so that they invited us back for another meal/get together on Friday night before we leave on Saturday. Finishing the night off with some tea and Kristin working...eh hem...on her application so it was a grrreat day. Good night all and good morning dad. Love you all.

kris

So many soil samples

Kristin and I are pounding "dirt" through a screen. Real cool. To save money, we're pre-grinding the samples before they are sent off to the labs for analysis. She is very tired but I got out the electric prod and am forcing her to soldier on. Above are the cow Bessie at the rancho that I like to pet and awe at her excessively wet and runny nose. An excellent wall art of Amanita muscaria. Very nicely done. We did get a photo of the fairy ring but an aerial photo would do it much better justice, here is a photo of a fairy elipse. It has been rainy here all day, but we've been working on inside stuff. ALL of the abiotic data collection is finished. Soil, Moisture, and Light. Woohoo! Now soil samples to do which are fairly time consuming. The land manager invited Kristin and I to dinner tomorrow night with his family so that should be a pretty good time. I'm curious what kind of food he will make us. His first suggestion was some kind of cream sauce with anchovies that is apparently a Canestro speciality. I'm down, but Kristin isn't such the anchovy fan. Either way, I need to keep poundin the dirt.

Fairy Rings

No new photos today. Kristin and I finished up the remaining soil collection. Now all that remains is a very tiny bit of canopy photo collection for the last plot, processing the soil cores to send off to the analysis labs, ECM collection for my project, and the transplantation of pine seedlings for Jasons work. We walked out to the field site since time was not of the essence and came across a huge fairy ring. Fairy Rings are rings of mushrooms caused by outward growing soil mycelium that, by scientific concensus so far, are reproducing because of ideal environmental factors or a lack of soil nutrients to continue growth. They're certainly amazing and can see why a mystical nomenclature was attributed to them without knowledge of their cause. Biked into town today, got some coffee, and I got smoked by Kristin in cribbage. 3 games, one being a skunk, out of 3 that i lost. Pathetic! It's pretty windy out right now and the waves have been massive for the past 2-3 days. Apparently this is as large as they will get in this area, barring a Tsunami I suppose. Cooked a good pasta dinner and am well sated. Very sleepy at 10 o'clock again, how absurd. G'night.

Moron Bay.

So...we have a slight setback here. I've weighed the soil samples and realized that we may need to go out to the field sites and collect double samples. The labs that will analyze them needs a minimum amount and we have maybe half of that or so...so theres more than half a days work added on to our schedule. I don't think either of us are to happy about it. On a brighter note, we went down to Morro Bay (perhaps more appropriately deemed Moron Bay). Super awesome natural setting with this huge son of a rock out in the ocean that give quite the scenic view. Unfortunately, beauty along the coast spawns disgusting junk shops and crabby ass Thai restaurant owners. Actually, the Thai food was good but the owner was an SOB and made us feel pretty unwelcome.

Another bight note was wine tasting in Harmony, CA which is just about 5 miles outside of Cambria. The wine was great and the people were friendly plus it was just $3 for 8 tastes. They had many tasty reds and of course our favorite on the list was the most expensive one as well, the Aria meant to showcase the vintners talents. We did come home with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. I think we'll make a reappearance before we weigh the soil samples. It seems to lift Kristins smile a wee bit.

I've been getting crazy amounts of ticks so far, at least relative to Kristin. She has had 1 to my 15 or so. Not to mention I've had 3 or 4 of those pretty well imbedded. Red blotchy patches and it burns to no end. Never had a tick bite do that. We went on a Mushroom hike the other day that was pretty great. Something like 25-30 folks attended and the mushrooms were aplenty...lots of russula, amanita, boletes, and one I'm hoping to find again...Boletus edulis. Supposedly this thing is delicious, not to mention it is large and in charge. King of the Castle as some would say. Off to work. Till the 'morrow.

Does my proboscis look big to you? 1/9/10

It was an eventful day, yesterday that is, as we kicked off of work earlier due to the lightning data taking speed Kristin and I have achieved. I tried to post last evening but the internet was down. We went and saw some Elephant seals which are currently giving birth and shored up along the coast of California. We saw one get born and the mother having to fend off other "cows" from attacking the newborn. The women on average weigh about 1500 lbs while the males hit about 6000. The largest one ever recorded was 5 and one half tons. I bet he didn't do anything around the house. We also saw this cool little Sand Piper that kept running away from me; I just wanted to be his friend. We went to the farmers market in town today and I think we ended up spending like 40 dollars or so and tons of farm fresh eggs, strawberries, oranges, tangerines, beets, and squash. I love the farmers market because everyone lets you sample their wares. One tent had this delicious dolmas with taziki sauce and still others had lots of olive types foods, sauces, tepanades that was so good. It was a great day for relaxing, but we still got the first of two ectomycorrhizal plots done, though we haven't taken the fungi samples yet, but we're saving that for the remaining 3 days or so. I think it's turning out really well. Kristin and I were revisiting the radio lab episode about choice and it made me realize that choosing these sites is pretty subjective. Don't try and find the big, colorful, odoriferous apple because it might be just as good (or worse) when than the one with the funny name. Just find one that will work and go for it. Sure you want everything to be perfect, but (disregard this next statement) nature isn't perfect. Well, that could be argued right...it's pretty great from my perspective, but designing an ecological study around a dynamic system requires that you and your study be flexible. Insight number one. There is a mushroom hike in Cambria tomorrow that I may attend, sounds interesting and if we get enough done...perhaps we'll check it out. tipton street, i think? Well, it'll be interesting if we find it. Anywho, again, I'm tired and it's 10 o'clock. having a hard time posting photos so I might have to get back to you on that tomorrow. Take care all.

It ain't easy being green.

Great day today, though tired is an understatement. Nothing like going up and down hills again and again, jumping up and down off of log and pounding rebar into the ground for 10 hours to make a boy feel spry. I guess I have to really explain what my research is aiming to answer for those of you who don't know. My goal is to use population data from a Monterey pine forest in Cambria, along with soil fungi data that I collect to see if seedling survivorship is influenced by the species of fungi. The soil fungi (Ectomycorrhizal fungi) create these networks between different plants roots that can potentially move nutrients and water from plant to plant...so, it would be really cool if I can show that seedlings survive more often in areas where certain soil fungi are present. Meanwhile, I'll be using the forest data on the trees to model (using these things called leslie matrices or population matrix models) the eventual "age"(but really stage) structure of the forest. This would also have the added bonus of telling me how fast the population of Monterey pine is growing (or not). Those are the basic of my experiment, but if you're interested, let me know and I'll tell you more...obviously, I love fungi and love to talk about them and how super neat they are.
Ate a good meal for dinner, though blood sausage would be appealing after a long day in the field (not quite), potatoes, onions, garlic, turkey dogs and eggs fried and mixed together. No, really...it was very tasty. Came across an interesting specimen of frog today, Pristimantis sesamestreetus. Such a charismatic and noble creature. I'm tired, Kristin is asleep. To bed I go. Have a good day all and be well, to those you love and the world you live in.

Pine cones for supper.

Tiring day. Up at 5:40am, got all my light data from the Monterey Pine Expanding front site 1 today, and got a great start on the second site, although I was held up by a pernicious and evil setting sun that knew the degree of my willpower to continue working in the face of "wow". Kickin some ass on the sites and started setting up my ECM site number 1. You get into the field to set this up and it sure is easier in theory. No problem with the physical setup, but it's all pretty subjective in terms of deciding the best site. One site has this attribute that would be great, another has this. In an ideal world, right? Getting as many seedlings and saplings in each site as possible has now nearly doubled the size of my site...and so double the workload. I think I've got it figured out and will just hope for the best results...which sorely will not be completely known for probably 3-6 months and only with a good deal of work and time. Kristin spotted some dolphins...we're pretty sure, we just saw the fins...and we watched them swim around for some time. I started burning on my side during midday and just kept working, finally took a look and "how do you do mr. tick". Nasty rash, but I removed the sucker and the burn soon subsided. Kristin cooked a killer pasta meal and we finished it off with some fresh pineapple. Delish. I don't eat fresh pineapple nearly enough. Time for bed. Kristin is crashed out and I'm up early again. G'night all.

Giant Laughing Mushroom

Great day! Kristin and I got tons of work done and found some really good seedling candidates for the transplant experiment. Not to mention, we found some incredible non-edible mushroom specimens. Note the huge Giant Laughing Mushroom pictured above, (Gymnopilus spectabilis), it was about a foot or so tall and was named as such because in Asia the species has a degree of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, yet in the U.S. or at least in the west it is deactivated in the species. We finished up all the abiotic data in plot 1 today besides the canopy photos. It's damn hard to get a good stretch of time on the coast where the sun doesn't wash out the photo so I'm left with an hour or so in the morning and maybe a little more than that in the afternoon. I also learned to keep my stupid head down and out of the photo. Usually I'm trying to get it into the picture. Not so much this time. It's going pretty smoothly though, so I hope to get the first plot done by at least tomorrow evening. Kristin has been a super awesome companion to have on the trip. A best friend with a great work ethic and really good ideas on utilizing time in the best way possible. I'm lucky to have her. That's all for today, need to wake up around 5:45 or so tomorrow. Out to the plot by 7.

Wiped

My calves, feet, and face are all equally wiped out. Got up by 6:30a, got to the sites by 8:15, and finished laying plots, taking soil cores, and measuring litter depth for both of the demo plots. Kristin is a super hard worker and has helped out a ton. I wouldn't be anywhere near as far without her assistance. Still have to do canopy photos and soil water potential. Kind of sad that I'm hoping for an overcast day to get these canopy photos out, but I don't see one on the horizon at all. It's sunny and mid 60's from about 10:00 till 4 if not a little warmer. You start moving around on these slopes and you'd think it was lower 80's. Finished the day off by searching the ocean for whales through a cool olde timey tripod and binocular setup that Kristin finagled from Don. Drank a couple glasses of wine with my honey, and played a wee bit o' mandolin as the sun set over the ocean. Doesn't get much better. No whales yet, but their migrating so I'm hoping to see some in the coming days. We've got some neighbors here till Friday it looks. Some older folks, Donna and Floyd, who we invited to share a fire this evening, but I think they crashed out early. Kristin and I roasted turkey franks over the fire and ate a mishmash of onion, shrooms, and potatoes that she ever so dilectably seasoned. Finished some data entry just in case my papers go amiss. I heard it snowed in Oxford today. Between there, Eau Claire, and Cambria, I think I made the right choice.

Where's the moon

As Jeffs friend Dr. McDaniel would say, "Disaster". Well, not exactly, but I was expecting quite a few more seedlings in the plots that I looked at today. This will make sampling extra difficult and who knows, maybe it won't work out, not fretting about it, yet. Cambria is beautiful. I'm not up on my avian species, but we've got Pelicans and snow white "egrets"...I think. Tons of deer everywhere and they are so habituated to non-threatening humans that they let you get feet away. The scenery is magical as you can see from the photos. Don, the manager of the "Ken Norris Rancho Marino Reserve" is a super nice guy who quite obviously loves what he does. He has two cute little girls with his wife Miranda. Kristin and i biked out to the demographic plots that I'm hoping to sample and found hardly any seedlings in these plots, which is an important aspect to my research. I'm on the case though, and with nearly 2 weeks left here, I'm still positive. Enjoy the photos. Oh, by the way, we lost the moon here. Last night, nearly a fully, and now it's pitch as dark. Anybody seen the moon?

Denny's for Coffee?

SAC at 5:45am and I could go for is a horizontal plank and a heavy duty sedative. Long day ahead and already I'm dragging tail. 4 hours here and we'll be off to Auburn to pick up the car. Here's for hoping the farmers market is open when we get there. Mandarins! Kiwis! Semi-glazed pecan, oh my. Once we get Kristins bike out, pack up the car, and get groceries it'll be 6-7 hours before Cambria. I'm hoping for some interesting fungi when we get there, but have no idea what to expect. Burnt out...sleep...sleep...

Till the Empire Builder brings us back

I'm sitting at Peets in Portland, OR awaiting the Coast Starlight train that'll take my pretty lady and I down to Sacramento and then to Auburn to pick up her car. Consider my excitement this morning, Jan 1. 2010, that the Empire Builder actually sped from Mountain to Pacific timezones at the crucial period that I slept not only through one New Years Eve but two. The wonders of technology never cease to amaze. So, we'll be heading on to Cambria, CA, Kristin and I, where I'll begin conducting my research on the Ectomycorrhizal succession of a Monterey pine forest from the 3rd of Jan to Jan 17th. Will this be the beginning of the fruitful (sporocarpful) career in mycology I hope for; we'll see. Lots of travel in the next 2 weeks and I'll be settling back in Oxford, MS with Kristin by my side, at least for awhile. She's applying for some agroecology fellowships that might take her to the University of Minnesota for her PhD or...study at Penn State under arbuscular mycorrhizologist Roger Koide which would be equally great.