So, lectures started on Thursday. Those and the ones next week will be an overview of the tree of life, getting us all up to speed on what things are before we start looking at more complicated things. There were some excellent speakers - you can really tell when a lecturer is enjoying themselves.
After whizzing through early vertebrates and fungi on Friday morning, we spent the afternoon learning how to catch terrestrial arthropods. This involved swinging nets and beating trees and digging holes around the NHM wildlife garden, to the amusement of passing visitors. The soil samples were taken back by one of the entomologists to be processed over the weekend: you can separate critters from crud by pouring the samples into a funnel and shining a lamp over the top. The animals normally move away from light (they show negative phototaxis), so they gradually crawl downwards and fall into a collecting pot.
We could see the things beaten out of trees straight away - indeed, a few flew off as soon as they hit the collecting sheet. It was great to have experts on hand to identify them, though by the end of the session one was suffering after pootering up lots of hemipterans (true bugs) that released unpleasant fumes. One of the most interesting creatures was another hemipteran, probably a thread-legged bug (Emesinae) according to a quick Internet search. It looked like a tiny tiny stick insect, about 1.5 centimetres long, but had front legs just like a mantis.
However, the highlight of the afternoon was near the beginning, when we were standing in the meadow for a long while watching a trap being set up. All of a sudden, someone noticed an inch-long common frog on their shoe. Soon we'd seen half a dozen of them hopping around in the grass, and everyone became very conscious of where they were putting their feet. The shoe frog stayed safe on high ground until we'd gone.
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