Today Mustard and I helped out Adelaide Compass to run an insect workshop at Murray Bridge South Primary School. It was a lot of fun! We talked to the year two students about insects and what being a scientist is like, and then we did the School of Ants Citizen Science Experiment together.

The School of Ants experiment is very cool - we put out three different types of food (Frankfurt sausages, scotch finger biscuits and cotton balls dipped in sugar solution) and waited to see what ants would be attracted to the food. After an hour, we counted the ants on each bit of food and then collected the ants to send to the School of Ants headquarters. 

We found that the ants seemed to equally like sugared cotton balls and sausage, but there were always less ants on the biscuits. You can try the experiment at home and find out what food the ants in your backyard like the best!

We finished off the workshop by looking at some preserved and pinned insects with magnifying glasses - it was great to be out of the office and helping students learn about insects!

Also this week we were re-inducted into the molecular lab. The molecular lab is where we will extract and process the DNA from the wasps we collect. There were lots of safety and policy rules to be reminded of - we learnt when we needed to wear a lab coat, where the chemicals were, where the fire extinguishers are kept and what can and can't be taken into different labs. One room is a very clean room, in which no DNA is allowed so that you don't contaminate other researchers' work. A second room is used mainly just for DNA extractions (getting the DNA out of the insects) and the third room is for PCR (we'll talk more about this later, but it's when you take a certain section of the DNA that you're interested in, for example a gene that determines eye colour, and multiply that section many many times). 

So now we're all ready to start doing some lab work!

Sorry we've been so quiet for so long! It's been busy and hectic in the PhD world the last few weeks - but Mustard's here to fill you in on what we've been up to!

We went to some bioinformatic workshops, including learning how to talk to the computer in scripting language. Bioinformatics is a combination of computer science and statistics focussed on understanding and analysing huge amounts of biological data, like genetic sequences. It's a booming field because lab scientists (like me!) are generating huge amounts of genetic data that they don't know how to deal with. Bioinformaticians work out how to process the data and turn it into something usable. 

We also gave a talk at our weekly lab group meeting on our project, as a practice for the presentation we need to give at the University as part of our PhD program, and also for a conference in December. 

We also took a week off to deliver science holiday workshops at the South Australian Museum as part of their Opals exhibition. The opals exhibition is pretty awesome, so you should definitely check it out if you're in Adelaide!

Meanwhile, we've been doing lots of work at the microscope, and are getting pretty good at identifying the wasps!