Azores

Return to the Açores – Days 4 & 5

Posted on 20 June 2012 by Pete

  After the two days of worm collecting and preparation, the time was upon us to begin the processing of the samples. Individuals from the first day at Furnas had been depurated for 36 hours and were ready to be preserved. Given the nigh-on full survival rate all plans were on track. Freezing individuals for
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Return to the Azores – Day 3

Posted on 19 June 2012 by Pete

The third day was the inverse of the previous, with us venturing to the Marcela site which is a cooler, less CO2 and an all together more earthworm-y site. After breaking the cloud level the temperature and drizzle was significantly more British but spirits could not be dampened! We were joined today by Armindo and
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Return to the Azores – Days one and two

Posted on 16 June 2012 by Pete

The grand plan of the return journey is to harvest the earthworms which have been transplanted from the cooler and less volcanic Macela into the ever so volcanic Furnas site, with an abundance of CO2 and soil temperatures of 30 centigrade plus. Our first day was concerned with logistics and organisation. buy levitra american pharmacy
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Return to the Azores

Posted on 14 June 2012 by Pete

Marta and Dan are heading out to the Azores today to meet up with Luis for the harvesting of the furnas transplanted earthworms which were set up by the team on the last trip, and with any luck, they’ll still be alive! I (Dan) will be taking up blogging duties for the week so stay
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Day 7: Closing event and packing for home

Posted on 18 May 2012 by Pete

After Luis’s defence we had two more tasks before we headed for home, we had to pack all our samples with appropriate documentation and import licences….all I’ve to say is thank goodness for the EU or the paperwork would have been much worse. John’s cloths were displaced from his suitcase and replaced with fixed earthworms
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Day 6: Final Flurry

Posted on 18 May 2012 by Pete

So last day after breakfast the well oiled machine goes into action…..the cataloguing complete the fixation of the phylogeographic samples whilst Luis checks the health of the earthworms for transplantation. We process four sites in under 2 hours…..this means we have doubled our speed !! Practice makes perfect. Then we get on the road leaving
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Day 7: The Extremophile PhD defense

Posted on 18 May 2012 by Pete

For those who have been following the blog….sorry for the delayed update. Last day’s sampling was amazing…more later. But we have catalogued the worms and our attention has change to support Luis in his PhD defense and preparing for the public seminars we are giving this afternoon (Friday). But I am so impressed, Luis has
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The fruits of our labours

Posted on 18 May 2012 by Pete

So we have finished cataloguing our sites and uploaded the data onto the ‘doforms’ web site. From there it was a few clicks to download the data and transfer it to google spreadsheets where there is a great widget which displays the GPS coordinates in google maps…..look at our weeks phylogeographic sampling sites….and you guys
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Day 5: Independent worm saloon

Posted on 17 May 2012 by Pete

We arrived back to Furnas tired but happy….to find that the transplantation team were still in action. They had mapped the transplantation site, the end of a garden owned by a relative of a team, and found that the temperature and carbon dioxide levels ranged from 30oC to 50oC and 10% to 50%….think about having
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