Bad News For Me and The Mice
Here is a map of the percent of average precipitation from January to the end of July... >20% of usual rainfall in the vast majority of Southern CA... exactly where my field site is...
The mice have not bred this year, and populations are very low.. I'm not sure that even A wet fall/winter will revive them.. The relationship between rainfall and reproduction is an interesting phenomenon yes, but not when the prospective title of your dissertation includes the words "mating" and "Peromyscus", and they aren't mating at all...
I wonder how Texas, and the Midwest in general got so lucky with the rain..
2 comments:
Matt, I live in that really dark green area southeast of Dallas. I'd definitely send you some if I could, but out here in the county just north of Fundietonfieldvilleview, we haven't gotten any rain since the end of July. At least the fields dried out enough that we could get the hay baled.
Watch out for that vzuveau - it's got a nasty temper.
Matt,
As far as I learnt (the hard way through too), real world ecological studies are always messed up by frustrating details. The most important lesson in Ecology is that you generally end up not doing exactly what you planned to. There might still be some interesting things to work out while waiting for better field season...
Post a Comment