I'm finally published...

Woo hoo!

After being in grad school for like, ever, one of my papers has finally been published in a professional journal.

JG Douglass, JE Duffy, AC Spivak, JP Richardson (2007) Nutrient versus consumer control of community structure in a Chesapeake Bay eelgrass habitat. Marine Ecology Progress Series 348: 71-83.

Here are some "behind the scenes" pictures of the experiment described in the paper:

This is me at Goodwin Islands in 2004, testing out our method of applying insecticide to caged plots of eelgrass.


Here's a shot of the cages from the actual experiment in 2005. There were 40 cages, which were a real pain in the rear to keep up with. It would have been impossible without the help of everyone in our lab. Sometimes on weekends during the experiment I would kayak or windsurf out to the cages to scrub the algae off of them. That's probably the closest I'll ever come to doing something practical with windsurfing.


There were a lot of unforseen difficulties involved with doing an experiment in cages that were out in nature. One that we definitely didn't forsee was that large needlefish swimming through the eelgrass bed would accidentally spear themselves into the mesh cages, get stuck inside, and die. This picture is also funny because the wind is blowing into my swimsuit pockets and pooching my drawers out in a weird way.


Good times. Hopefully I'll get some more papers out soon.