Briggs Lab UCSB

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/2016/03/17/in-another-life2.html

In Another Life

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/2015/11/30/mexico.html

A mid-quarter trip to Mexico In mid-November I (Andrea) traveled to Ensenada, Mexico to teach an Amphibian Disease workshop at Universidad Autonoma de Baja California (UABC). The workshop was part of a UC MEXUS grant that is supporting our lab’s collaboration with a lab at UABC to study Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) in Ba…

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/2015/10/05/summer-to-fall2.html

Highlighting the joys of Summer! By all measures, I had a fantastic summer. I got out for some leisurely backpacking with my husband and our dog in the Dinkey Lakes Wilderness in July, and then got to do some fieldwork with Roland, Tom, and Andrea J. in Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park in August. Mary, Cherie, and I published our…

Big orange moon rise, behind triangle mountain. Find frogs tomorrow?

Finally good wx for svys in SEKI, Mary joined Tom, & survived challenge! Us + 60 hikers think its a nice place if you can stand the smoke

Testing

dlor.me Two-way text messaging anywhere in the world with the inReach satellite communicator.

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/2015/05/15/mistakes.html

Mistakes Happen Inspired by this post on Dynamic Ecology, the Briggs Lab decided to discuss some of the mistakes that we have made or are at high risk of making in our science and the various techniques we have developed to try and remedy/avoid these mistakes. To significantly less eloquently paraphrase the above b…

Rana muscosa and Rana sierrae get some exposure on bing.com:

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/2015/02/25/zoo_and_fun.html

Oh, the places we go (and are) Andy's been in and out of Big Creek Reserve for tick collecting, Andrea's off to DC, Tom's is in Oregon playing with f***s, and Mary will soon be inoculating frogs at the SF Zoo.

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/2015/02/02/universal.html

A Universal Likelihood Additive modeling, maximizing likelihood, universal amphibian primers, stand-up desks, and smashing your head on a surf board. Intrigued? Well read on!

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/2014/12/08/fruits-of-solitude.html

The Fruits of Solitude Qualify exams, exit seminars, dissertation crafting and grant writing may have slightly affected our social skills, but the result is that Tom and Andrea J are days to weeks away from tying the bow on their dissertations and Mary is 250 citations closer to solving the mystery of why some amphibian p…

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/2014/11/06/what-scares-the-most.html

What scares the most... However, there are inevitably a lot of things in ecology and academia that scare the field vests right off us: orals, meetings with advisors, presentations, and moldy fruit in the lab fridge to name a few.

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/2014/10/14/week-back.html

Return of the Quarter The Briggs Lab was back at it again as the UCSB's Fall quarter began last week. You know the quarter has started again at UCSB when you thoughtlessly leave your house at 8:30 to bike commute to work and end up stuck in bike traffic. Though the ocean was over 70 degrees and beckoning, we were (for th…

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/2014/09/21/briggslab-summer.html

A Summer in the Briggs Lab Fieldwork, research meetings, paper writing/submitting, oral/written exams, studying disease, and in a few unfortunate situations, contracting disease made for a busy summer in the Briggs Lab. Here is what the lab members were up to this summer (and yes, we did take advantage of the ridiculously war…

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/2014/09/12/sixty-lake-two.html

Sampling in Sixty Lake: Trip 2 Our second trip to Sixty Lake Basin was perhaps even better than the first! The weather was perfect, the hiking seemed easier (I wasn’t jet lagged this time), and we got some excellent data, which we can spend the next year processing and analyzing.

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/weekly/2014/07/14/2014-the-ideal-assistant.html

Help Wanted! As mentioned in some of our previous blogs (see here) we graduate students in the Briggs Lab rely heavily on the outstanding work of our undergraduate assistants. After having worked with many, many students (Tom was simultaneously working with 12 undergraduates at one point!), we have a pretty good…

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/2014/06/30/the-right-tools-for-the-job.html

The right tools for the job 30 Jun 2014 Everyone in our lab spends loads of time in the field, whether in the Sierra Nevada backcountry or the coastal forests and mountains of southern California.

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/2014/06/24/2013-field-work.html

The Romance of Field Work Field work -- it is why most of us in the Briggs Lab decided to become ecologists. Who didn't watch The Crocodile Hunter (or Wild Kingdom in an attempt to avoid blatant ageism) tromping through the Australian Outback and think, "How can I do that for a living!?"

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/2014/06/07/2013-undergrads.html

The Undergraduate Army None of the work we do as graduate students would be possible without the amazing and sometimes morale-testing work provided by undergraduate researchers. Whether they are chasing down lizards (fun!), swabbing frogs (fun!), measuring insects (some say fun, most say necessary), winning prestigious aw…

http://briggslab.github.io/blog/2014/05/30/reflection-and-celebration.html

Remembrance and Celebration It has been a trying week from the UCSB and Santa Barbara community with the terrible events that took place over Memorial Day weekend. The response of the UCSB community to last week's shootings has been incredibly moving and the beautiful vigils and memorials in honor of the victims has greatly he…