Lynna Ye - Week 4: Catching Dragonflies with the Ware Lab

Last week was one of my most exciting weeks so far, because I finally got to experience one of the more fun parts of working at the Ware Lab - going out to collect samples in the field!

The first three days of the week consisted of the usual extractions and PCRs. Happily, my PCRs finally began to reveal some bands, though not as much as I would like.

This PCR succeeded on three of my samples, as you can see in this gel. The band second from the left is the brightest, so more of the gene was amplified. The other two with bands appear to have a second, fainter band, signifying that some "pseudogene" may have been amplified also.

However, on Thursday, I got the chance to go outside for a little bit and see another part of Newark. Some members of the lab are organizing activities for high school students attending a special program at Rutgers, and before the start of the program, they needed to try out their planned activity to see if it works. Since I had previously expressed my interest in going out into the field, they invited me to tag along and observe.

The activity they planned was to capture turtles from a river in a nearby park, and record which species were captured as well as their size and other features. Some traps had been set out a few hours in advance, so when we arrived on location, there were several turtles waiting for us to observe, and then release back into the water.

Taking the trap out of the water

An eastern painted turtle

While holding turtles was fun, I was even more delighted to be invited to spend the day catching dragonflies with Dr. Ware, grad students Dominic and Manpreet, and undergrad Kim on Friday. When we arrived in the park after a long drive to Tom's River, I was given a large net to capture my fast-flying targets, and a pouch in which to place my specimens. Then, we went out wading in streams and walking through forested trails and fields of cacti , catching specimens along the way. It was a very cool experience, and equally exciting to realize that the many legs in tubes from which I had been extracting DNA had all been acquired in this manner.

Here I am in a river, looking for dragonflies or damselflies to catch. [photo taken by Kim]

 

Two Calopteryx aequabilis mating on Dominic's hand. [photo taken by Kim]

Last week was certainly very fun, and I'm certain the rest of my time here at the Ware Lab will continue to be as lovely as it has been so far. Today, I sent out the few successful PCR products I acquired to be sequenced, and I anticipate that I'll address the results in the next post!