I'm going to Borneo!!!

Next month I am going to be jetting off to the wonderful island of Borneo!

This is for my Tropical Field Ecology module. This is one of the modules that I was most looking forward to this year. I'm only there for 2 weeks and the trips split into 2 halves. The first half will be by the coast, looking at coral reefs and the second half will be based inland in the jungle/rain forests.

This trip has crept up on me a little bit, I have had a crazy workload recently and I've realised just how soon I actually leave! Luckily I have most of what I need for the trip, including a new Go pro to play around with!

So now I just have four weeks, four pieces of coursework, one lab book, two tests and two presentations to get out of the way before I leave! And then I'm allowed to get excited ;) !

Oh and so many fish to learn! 

EXAMS DONE and only 9 days to go!

Finished my exams and with only 9 days to go I can I'm extremely excited now for South Africa! I picked up my polo shirt and  field journal and filled in the last few forms and now I'm pretty much ready to go! I cant believe how quickly its come. It crazy to think that I'm finally going after applying for University two years ago and thinking what an amazing experience this would be and I'm finally about to go! 

I don't think ill be able to post much whilst I'm away, at least when away from Cape Town. So be prepared for a bombardment of posts when I return! 

One month to go!!!

 In just 33 days I'll be heading to South Africa and excited doesn't even begin to describe it! Although I'm not going to say that I'm not a little bit nervous; this is the longest I'm going to have been away from the UK. The last time I went away for longer than a few days was when I went to Kenya when I was still college. Kenya was a trip that I'll never forget and I can only imagine how many memories I'll have of this adventure. Remembering Kenya is really getting me pumped for this trip.

I've now only got my exams to go. So as much as I'm stressing about studying and squishing all the vast amounts of information into my brain, I know it will be worth it as I get to leave just over a week after my last exam.

I've got pretty much everything I need, I've just got to sort out a few last things at the doctors, get a map and pick up my International Wildlife Biology polo shirt and some equipment and I'm ready to go!



As I said before I'm very excited about going, although as it gets closer to the time I'm getting a little nervous, not only am I going to be away for a while, but I'm also going to be doing skydiving and a shark cage dive! I'm absolutely ecstatic about the shark diving, and as much as I am about skydiving, I'm a teeny , tiny bit scared! Diving with sharks doesn't phase me at all, however I'm a little nervous about getting to the point when I'm about to jump and being scared, so I'm essentially nervous that I'm going to be nervous? Which makes no sense whatsoever I know, but try telling that to my brain!
As I said before, I'm doing the skydive for charity, I'm almost half way to my target! You can go see what its all about HERE!  

Skydiving in Cape Town

I'm going to South Africa for five weeks at the end of May.  Before I start my field trip and studies I am in Cape Town for a week. To start off our trip with something very memorable, a group of us are doing a tandem skydive as well as shark cage diving. To really push myself and I thought it was a perfect time to try and raise some money for this wonderful charity; Southampton Hospital Charity.

My littlest, 2 year old brother has been an outpatient at the Southampton's children hospital for about a year now and they have been fantastic.

It's easy to donate just head over to www.justgiving.com/SophieRogers09 . You can also donate by text; simply text RQPF73 With the amount of either: £1, £2, £3 , £5 or £10 to 70070. You'll also be able to add Gift Aid at no extra cost.

Donations allow the hospital to buy equipment, fund research and provide better facilities that would otherwise be unaffordable under the NHS. With your help, the charity funds projects large and small across all wards and departments to improve patient care

UHS provides services to some 1.3 million people living in Southampton and South Hampshire plus specialist services including neurosciences, cardiac services and children’s intensive care to more than three million people in central southern England and the Channel Islands.Providing these services costs £1.16 million per day (UHS Charity Website).

(Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for the charity).

Microbiology practicals

This was my first Microbiology practical. As it was the first practical, all we did was just practising the different techniques.

Demonstrating the need for aseptic techniques.

Everything must be sterile; the medium and the instruments used.  Important things to make sure to do is to flame the neck before and after using glass bottles and to never put the lid down. 

• I made four agar plates, one plate was open for 10 minutes (to see what was in the air), the second I placed my fingers on the agar surface (to see whats naturally on my hands), the third a small sprinkle of soil was placed on the agar (to see whats in soil) and the final one was left closed as the control. 

• Then I made 3 tubes of sterile nutrient broth, one with E.coli in, the second with soil and the third was left sterile and was the control.

(Incubation: 37 degrees Celsius for 48 hours).

Streak Plates

I prepared two malt extract agar plates which I left in the fridge to cool so that I had a really solid surface.  The inoculum is spread and diluted over the medium so that single isolated colonies can be seen. This is good if you have a mixed culture as you can then get  a pure culture from it.

Inoculation: A loop is used to spread the culture. The loop is flamed until red hot before and left to cool.  This is so that it is then sterile before used. A loop of culture is removed and then spread over a segment of the dish. The loop i flamed again and left to cool and a little of the previous segment is used for the next segment. this is repeated for another two times. this dilutes the culture so that single colonies can be seen.

(Incubation: 37 degrees Celsius for 48 hours).

Agar Slopes and Agar Butts

These are used as it provides a large surface area for microbial growth. it also means that they are easy to handle and store.

• Slopes: To prepare them I got two molten nutrient agar tubes and left them to cool in an inclined position. After they were cooled I put a loopful of culture on each slope, one with E.coli and the other with M. leutus. The loop is drawn gently from the bottom to the top of a slope in a serpentine pattern.

• Butts: A small amount of inoculum on the tip of an inoculating needle is thrust through the centre to the bass of the agar butt.  One was E.coli and the other was M. leutus. this is used to see if bacteria is able to grow in anaerobic conditions

(Incubation: 37 degrees Celsius for 48 hours).

(Above: the top two are the E.coli, the one to the left is best as there are single colonies near the bottom of the petri dish which is what you want. the one in the bottom left is soil and there are things growing on it even though its hard to see. the last one on the bottom right is my fingers... You can see my four finger spots. There is bacteria on almost everyones hand and skin all of the time. The most common is Staphlococcus (a genus of bacteria of which most are harmless and live on the human skin). This is a good thing to have as this protects against pathogens from getting through the skin.) 

UPDATE: South Africa

We booked our hostel  for the first week of our trip to South Africa, so now everything is booked! Our hostel looks amazing, especially for the price. We were told about this hostel from a couple of people who went to South Africa last year.  I also ordered The Safari Companion - Richard D, Estes. I wanted a book about animal behaviour of African mammals and this was recommended by my course leader. As well as The Safari Companion, I bought a pocket guide to South African mammals for reference. (Mammals of Southern Africa - Chris & Mathilde Stuart). 

Only 108 days to go!

Dissecting Squid

Its always nice to start of your almost non-stop ten hour day with a squid dissection at 9am on a Monday morning.

 The same as previous dissections, I drew the external anatomy before i started the dissection. I drew it laterally as it gave a better view of the head and tentacles.There was only enough time for one diagram I thought this was the best.

(above: diagram of the external anatomy of the squid. I took it before id finished my sentence at the bottom, whoops!)

Then we dissected the squid (this dissection was done in pairs). First we had to work out if we had a male or female. There are not ovary's which is the obvious sign. Ours had a penis and a spermatophore sac which has a different texture to what's around it for example the digestive caecum. 

(above: the dissection of the squid.)

After we had decided which gender it was, we then got to locating where certain things were: ink sac, heart, vena cava, rectum etc. We filled it with water so that we could see things better and found the heart (with a little help as its small and hard to spot). With all things located I then drew the internal anatomy of the squid.

(above: Internal anatomy of the squid. I did correct the spelling on this after I took it.)

We then had to do the rest of the write up, explaining functions of some of its anatomy (eg. fins/ink sac). 

This was one of the smellier ones,  even though I was wearing gloves, I still had to wash my hands a good few times to get the squid smell out.

Dissecting Lug Worms

This ones a bit late, a fortnight ago my dissection for Diversity of Life 2 was lug worms. lug worms feed on Plankton and Detritus from water that is washed into their burrows. They live in the sand in coastal areas.

I drew its external anatomy before the dissection. I got marked on the actual presentation of my dissection of which I did well. 

Once I finished the dissection I drew the internal anatomy. After the dissection I looked at the differences between earthworms and lug worm (this was mainly based on the external anatomy). I then had a live earthworm and had to describe the way in which the worm moves. 

the latter part of this was harder than imagined.

Plants under a Microscope

My portfolio for my practicals in Diversity of life 1 I have to draw prepared angiosperm sections. I have to draw and fully annotate the following: root, shoot, stem, leaf, inflorescence and epidermis. the rest of the portfolio will be doing the same for some gymnosperm tissue sections and then for some algae and lower plant live cultures. the second part will be writing about the plant life cycle using rapid cycling brassicas.

Meanwhile doing the drawings of the Angiosperm sections I took some pictures down the microscope. 

(Above; l.s Inflorescence, 4x/0.10)

 (Above; t.s leaf, 10x/0.22)

(Above; l.s root tip, 4x/0.10)

(Above; l.s tangenial stem, 4x/0.10)

(Above; l.s radial stem, 4x/0.10)

(another stem that I looked at but didn't use for my portfolio.)

...and now to get on with all this drawing...

Sully Shore Field Trip

We got a coach to Sully shore to do a species diversity survey along the shoreline of the different algae, seaweed, molluscs and barnacles etc.

Getting to our starting point was an adventure in itself, the seaweed was very slippery and the rocks with out seaweed were wet from rain and slippery all the same.

We had to measure the decline (/incline) of the slope down from the cliff to the sea. We did this by using a 30m tape measure as a transect and then measured every 2m with two striped poles and measuring the height difference between each. At every 2m a quadrat is placed and all the species present recorded as well as the percentage of each of the species within it.

Being Wales and winter it was raining on and off the entire time we were there with only one brief interval of sun. When it got just after four the sun went down and it got so bitterly cold that I could barely feel nor move my hands much. And I was pretty sure my wellies had started to leak...

Crayfish Dissection

One of my first practical’s for my module 'Diversity of Life 2' was to dissect crayfish. This module covers the diversity of the invertebrates. Half of the module is arthropods and the other half is on everything else...

In college I had dissected a fair few of the basic things like pigs hearts, lungs, frogs, rats and even an octopus but nothing to the skill in which I would need for my degree. It was fairly straight forward, and it was very interesting. I learnt that putting it underwater after the initial dissection enabled me to see things more clearly for example its gills. 

I also had to do a two detailed scientific diagrams; one of the external dorsal view of the crayfish and another of the ventral internal anatomy.

A very interesting start to my degree.