Today we helped another lab member pick up some ethanol for a field trip. 100% ethanol is used for storing insect specimens, as it stops the DNA in the cells of the insect from breaking down. We need to keep the DNA in good condition so that we can extract it and sequence it, to eventually use it to determine how the different insect specimens are related to each other... but more on that later in the project! 

By using 100% ethanol and storing the insect specimens in the fridge, we can keep the DNA usable for years. Because older collections are often all pinned, or their specimens are in formalin (which makes the DNA unusable) or 70% ethanol (which contains water that breaks down the DNA), our project will need some fresh specimens stored in 100% ethanol to be able to do any work on the DNA. 

Today we learnt where to pick up ethanol from in the University, which will be handy when we go on our own field trip in Summer! 

One of the reasons being a scientist is so exciting is that you get to do a whole bunch of different things throughout the timespan of a research project. With that being said, however, sometimes you do the same things for days. Or weeks. Or months. 
You haven't heard from Mustard and me that often during the last couple of weeks because we've haven't really been doing anything new! We're still finishing off our project proposal and literature review, spending time at the microscope identifying wasps and planing the rest of our PhD. 

One new thing we have started doing is planning the evaluation of our citizen science project. You'll hear much more about this project later down the track, including how to be involved! We're going to be asking people to help us rear caterpillars to find out what sorts of parasitoid wasps infect them. We're also going to try and find out if being involved in a project like this helps people learn about science, enjoy science more, or changes their attitude towards science. To do this we'll be conducting surveys, and because that involves research about humans, we have to apply for ethics clearance. 

Whenever scientists do work on animals (other than invertebrates) or on people, they have to submit an application to their institution to explain why the work is important and how they will keep people safe. In the case of animals, the scientists need to argue why it is necessary to work on the animal and how they will keep the research as humane and cruelty free as possible. The need to have ethics clearance means that scientists can't just do whatever they want - they need to adhere to the morals and ethics of society (which is normally a good thing!). 

We are submitting an ethics clearance to allow us to research the people involved in our citizen science project, to find out whether they enjoyed it or learnt anything from the experience. 

Anyway, better get back to the microscope!

On Tuesday night, I headed along to The Discovery Circle's Native Bee Workshop. Along with about 50 other people, I learnt all about native bees, and the difference between a native bee and the introduced European honey bee. There are over a thousand species of native bees in Australia - I had no idea! Most of them don't live in hives like the honey bee. Instead, the live in burrows in the ground, or in holes in tree twigs or branches. At the end of the workshop we all got to make a bee hotel to take home attract native bees to our gardens. It was super easy! We took ten pieces of bamboo with holes in one end, made sure the other end was blocked off, grouped them all together and tied them with cable ties! 

The other type of bee hotel was made from pieces of paper straws (make sure you use paper, not plastic) packed into a small PVC pipe. Then we taped it at one end with some sand put through the straws to stick to the tape and remove the stickiness, so we don't turn our bee hotels into sticky bee traps! 

Mustard and I are super excited to see if we get some native bees coming to our garden... stay tuned for pictures!

Read all about native bees and how to make a bee hotel here. 

Check out upcoming workshops by the Discover Circle here! 

On Sunday, Mustard and I helped out at our University's Open Day. This is the day when the university puts on displays and has presentations about the different degrees on offer. It attracts a lot of year 11 and 12 students who are trying to work out what they want to do after school, but also families and general public who are curious about what the uni has been doing. 

I ran a display about insects (of course) and we even had some live stick insects hanging around for people to hold. Stick insects make awesome pets - they can be easy to look after and friendly to handle. The stick insect Mustard is holding in the picture above is Extatosoma tiaratum, commonly known as a 'spiny leaf insect'. It has been suggested that they rear their abdomen up in the air to make them look like a scorpion, perhaps as defence against predators. They also have great camouflage, disguising themselves as a dried up gum leaf. Can you think of other animals that use camouflage to hide from predators? 

I really enjoyed studying a science degree, and it was fun to talk to lots of high school students about what they were interested in and how they might pursue that! It's now Monday again so we're back to work learning to identify wasps and finishing off our project proposal. 
 

Mustard and I had a great day at Science Alive yesterday. We had lots of insects and some microscopes and magnifying glasses so that people could get up close and personal. There was a huge crowd and so many interested kids and parents wanting to chat about insects! Being a scientist is not just about doing research - it's also about getting out there and sharing what you know! We're back in the office today, writing our research proposal and identifying wasps.

Today we're getting everything ready for the weekend, when we'll be part of a massive science festival in Adelaide, South Australia. I'm bringing along some specimens and microscopes for people to be able to have a closer look at insects. 

Science Alive is on this weekend (8-9 of August 2015, 9am-4pm at the Adelaide Showground). The event brings almost all of the science-based organisations in Adelaide together for two days of fun for the whole family. Check it out here! What's even more exciting is this year the Shell Questacon Science Circus are visiting Adelaide and will be at Science Alive! 

Myself, Mustard and the insects will be there on Sunday at the University of Adelaide stand - so come say hi!

Eventually, Mustard and I want to be able to run a citizen science project as part of our PhD. We will ask volunteers to find caterpillars and rear them into butterflies, or hopefully, find some parasitoid wasps living inside the caterpillar instead! We are a long way off that yet, but we are researching citizen science projects for our literature review. 

A citizen science project is real scientific research that involves people who are not trained scientists. There are HEAPS of citizen science projects you can be a part of, with different requirements and time commitments. Here's a few of our favourites: 

The Pieris Project asks volunteers from all over the world to look for cabbage white butterflies (Pieris rapae) around their home, collect a butterfly and send it to the researchers. They are studying the adaptation of the cabbage white butterfly in habitats across the world - how have the genes, colours, shapes and sizes of the butterfly changed as it spread to new places? To do this, they need specimens from all over the world. 

School of Ants operates in both Australia and America. The Australian team of researchers are attempting to build a distribution map of ant species covering all of Australia. They are also interested in what sort of food ants prefer in different habitats. To be a volunteer, you can register on the website, run your own experiment using biscuits, sugar and cocktail sausages (counting how many ants are attracted to each food type), collect the ants and send them to School of Ants HQ!

The Discovery Circle, based in South Australia, organises lots of different citizen science projects that focus on our relationship with the natural world in the urban environment. Their latest project is called Cat Tracker, and although it isn't about insects, it sounds like lots of fun! The researchers will loan you a GPS tracker to attach to your cat's collar. The map of where your cat travels in his or her adventures is then uploaded to the website to build a better picture of what our domestic cats get up to when they are out of the house. 

Don't feel like leaving the house, but still want to contribute to a citizen science project? Notes from Nature is a project where you can help researchers by transcribing museum specimen labels. You will be given picture of the museum specimen and the label on your computer screen, and you type out what is written on it! Easy! It might sound trivial, but having a digital database of these specimens will make a huge difference to the organisation of museum collections, and the usefulness of the specimens for scientists. Notes from Nature is part of Zooniverse, a huge online portal for citizen science projects. If none of the ones we've talked about take your fancy, check out Zooniverse, or if you are in Australia, have a look on the Atlas of Living Australia's citizen science portal. 

Being part of a real scientific research project helps our scientists make discoveries faster, and often learn things they couldn't if they were doing it all by themselves. It can also be a lot of fun to be a citizen scientist! Let us know in the comments if you have a favourite citizen science project, or share your stories of contributing to one!

Checking out more wasps today! We haven't collected any wasps ourselves yet, but there are plenty in the collection of the University that we're using to learn how to identify different species.

Insect specimens can last a really long time when they are looked after. The oldest wasp specimens we looked at today were only from the 1980s, but the oldest pinned specimen in the world is a butterfly (Pontia daplidice) in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History from 1702! That means it is 313 years old!

To allow insect specimens to last this long, they have to be cared for and kept in a special way. First of all, our wasps are sorted according to their species in these little white boxes. This makes it easy to find what you are looking for! 

These little boxes are then placed in a collection drawer. The collection drawers protect the specimens from having anything dropped on them. The drawers also contain naphthalene, a chemical which protects the specimens from living insects that would want to eat them! If you've ever used moth balls to protect your linen from being nibbled on by moths, they were traditionally made of the same chemical. 

The labelled drawers then go into a labelled cabinet, which keeps the drawers organised and out of direct sunlight, which can fade or damage specimens. The cabinets are kept in a cool room to help preserve the specimens. 

For a great summary on the reasons entomologists need to kill some insects and have dead specimens for study, check out this post on the Ask and Entomologist blog. 

Maybe the wasps that Mustard and I collect will last for 313 years too!