“Okay, now we’re going to do a little role playing,” the moderator announced to the room. “We need a customer and a shopkeeper, would anyone like to read a script?” After a little coercion, two reluctant thespians assumed their roles and launched into an exchange, trading lines like “How much for that brass dish, sir?” …
Limnologists aren’t always out in boats on calm, sunny days. (But sometimes we are!) While fieldwork is an essential part of collecting data, it’s often not the only step needed to turn that information into something we can use to start answering research questions. Luke Loken is a Center for Limnology grad student in Emily …
Happy Fish Fry Day, Folks! It’s the day when we (sometimes!) feature fish on the blog and any restaurant worth its salt features fish on the menu here in Wisconsin. Today we’re just going to pass along a cool site called “Primitive Fishes.” It’s a blog kept by UW-Madison Center for Limnology postdoc, Solomon David …
by Corinna Gries For hundreds of years people have collected data on lakes. Ice on and ice off dates are probably the oldest data, but water temperature, water clarity, animal and plant species and abundance have also been recorded for a long time. Scientists usually collect data to answer a specific question for which they …
UW undergrad, Emily Hilts, spent her summer getting to know Lake Mendota. While she didn’t fall head over heels for Madison’s lakes, she’s leaving on good terms. by Emily Hilts This morning, I moved my books and papers out of the desk I used at the Center for Limnology all summer, and took some time …
Louis Agassiz was an early prominent ichthyologist (someone who studies fish) at Harvard in the mid-1800s. When one of his graduate students, Samuel Scudder, showed up for his first day, Agassiz told him to take a preserved fish specimen and look at it – then left for several hours. Scudder ended up sitting and looking …
A recent study authored by our former postdoc and PhD student, Gretchen Hansen, reports that an intensive invasive-species trapping experiment had paid off for Sparkling Lake in northern Wisconsin. Not only did our researchers put a big dent in the rusty crayfish population but, four years later, they’re still being kept in check naturally. Click …
Last fall, as I moved in to a new house, I asked my parents (who are regular patrons of rummage sales) to look for a taxidermied fish. When they scrounged up a musky, with its mouth wide open to reveal pointy teeth, I was ecstatic. My roommates were less enthusiastic – one even claimed to …
The CFL’s Ellen Hamann, lab manager for Pete McIntyre’s lab, has been back in Africa this summer, helping continue research on Lake Tanganyika. She sent in this note from the field before returning to Madison for fall semester. By Ellen Hamann For the past 48 hours, Benja (Ben Kraemer from Pete McIntyre’s lab) and I …
Last week, like every week this summer, I was out on the water looking for stories about Madison’s lakes. But, this time, I had company. One of the cooler summer jobs at the Center for Limnology, is to be a member of “fish crew,” the team of students that spend the summer netting, IDing and …