A walk with the Scientists

On Saturday, Brian and I went to the annual Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department getaway. We drove out to somewhere in the woods for a day of hiking, games, food and meeting other students and their families from the department.

The un-funny part of the story is that we met several students who were a lot of fun and are looking forward to becoming friends with.

The more interesting part of the day was the activities. We started the day with a nature walk to a local bog and fen. I was excited to go for a nice hike in nature with people who were so knowledgeable about the surroundings. I thought it might be like when I was a kid and we’d go for walks with our dad who would point out animal tracks and the different kinds of trees as we hiked. “There’s a maple. There’s a really big maple. I think that’s a walnut.”

We started out walking through the woods. Five minutes into the walk our guide pointed out “most of the ground cover we are walking through is toxicodendron radicans, poison ivy.” The members of our group with sandals and shorts looked uncomfortable and I was happy that I had decided to leave on my jeans for the walk.

We stopped a bit further in to learn about a certain type of bush. Both its Latin and colloquial names, as well as which butterflies (both their Latin and colloquial names) are most likely to be found on the bushes.

We continued walking, only to stop again to learn more Latin.

This set the pace for the hike. Three or four minutes of hiking punctuated by five minutes of learning. Our group also had a fungi expert, so we got to learn all about that as well as plants and the general ecosystem of bogs and wetlands.

So the morning was nerdy, but the afternoon was even more so.

We had a photo scavenger hunt, which I usually get very competitive about. I imagined being given a list of things like: funny looking pant formations, a robin, a deer track, a seed, a leaf. I should have known better.

The list included: decomposition, mutualism, neutral theory, microhabitat, two species of the same genus, carbon cycle, interspecific competition, phenotypic plasticity, niche theory, and polyploidy, among others. The ecologists all thought this was the best game ever.

Apparently having an old guy hold a card that says “senescence” is hilarious to ecologists.

I’m sure over time I’ll pick up the concepts and jokes. For now, I’m happy to be the photographer.