Excitement!

I met with my Faculty Mentor today regarding my research.... It looks like things are finally almost ready to get started! I met the graduate student who is going to teach me to run the development assay that I'll be doing this semester, and it looks like my field component is being arranged. My first task in that respect is to do a search and find out which types of anurans live in the Bosque watershed. I already know that Woodhouse's Toads (Bufo woodhousei) are native, as I had a colony of them living under my house last spring when we got over 30" of rain in a month. Other than that, I'll have to go and look them up.

These are the guys I'll be working with, African Clawed Frogs (Xenopus spp.). I've always thought they were super neat -- especially the albino ones. I'm hoping to be able to get a couple to keep at home, just so i can watch them and learn more about them besides how toxicants affect their development.

I also found out that I'll be presenting my research at a huge national conference in november. I'm especially excited about this, because my mentor says that there are always people there who work with invasive species, so it will be a great place for me to make contacts for my graduate work.

I'm really excited about all of this. My mentor also said that he figures I can get at least two papers out of this research, which is wonderful. I'm hoping everything goes as planned so that I am able to get as much out of my research as possible.