Hamsters are domestic lemmings

Of all of the delightful things that I have been learning about hamsters in the last 5 hours, this is my favorite nugget of knowledge, "hamster are hindgut fermenters and must eat their own feces in order to digest their food a second time." Hamsters eat poop.













Craig adopted a hamster from our friend and co-worker, Ruby. It was not a fully-conscious decision and for the last week we have had a slightly-unwanted furry little companion. Hamsters are crepuscular (active at dawn and dusk), but Nibbles seems to be firmly nocturnal, running on his squeaky little wheel at the lonely hour of 3 am. I have used the proverbial "hamster running on a wheel" to describe how frustrating it can be to do something over and over again and accomplish nothing. Nibbles, however, seems to be perfectly content to run endlessly on his wheel. When we let him out of his cage, he circles it and waits for us to let him back in. He has a little plastic ball that he rolls around in on the floor, but he is so fat that he can only trot a few steps before resting, and the momentum of the ball hoists his bum into the air every time he stops. The ball also acts as a turd-distributor, carpeting the floor in little pellets.

Nibbles was adopted after about two weeks in our care by a loving new owner (turns out, the friend of the girlfriend of a roommate of a friend really loves hamster. And he is not in second grade...).

Buds, Walking, and the South

I am back in North Carolina. This is more of a working vacation, because I am only down here for 6 weeks. I just learned a disturbing fact: The average American walks 1.3 miles a week. Yesterday, Craig and I walked from our hotel home to Wafflehouse and back. That was 1.4 miles. No wonder Americans are so fat and over-medicated.















Craig and I are research technicians for a Carolina jessamine project (ie. Carolina jasmine or Gelsemium sempervirens). Jessamine is a woody vine (liana) that grows in the southeastern US. We are working for three New England professors, who are studying the effect of suburbanization on the yellow, trumpet-shaped, fragrant flowers of jessamine vines. The plant has two conflicting drives: to attract pollinators with its flowers, driving them to be big, showy and full of sweet nectar, and at the same time to defend itself from caterpillars that eat its leaves and flowers and carpenter bees that steal nectar without pollinating the plant. In suburban areas, flower biodiversity is sometimes higher than in the forest. This is because people tend to plants gardens or landscaping with non-native plants, thereby increasing the local biodiversity. Because of the higher abundance of flowers in neighborhoods, there tend to be more insects - both the pollinators and the predators.

The hypothesis that we are testing is that suburban sites will have jessamine with smaller flowers, because there are enough pollinators to ensure that even small, less desirable flowers will get some. In addition, the increased numbers of predators and free-riders will drive the jessamine plants to produce less-conspicuous flowers and more poisonous leaves. Forested sites will have jessamine plants that put more of their resources toward making attractive flowers and less energy into chemical defenses.

So far, this means that we are roaming through the woods in people's backyards looking for jessamine plants with flower buds. We roam neighborhoods in mini-vans with tinted windows, with the person in the front seat looking into the woods with binoculars, scanning for vines. Back in the South. Only one guy has come outside with a shotgun to ask, "Can I help you with something?" I don't blame people for being suspicious. If you would like to follow the progress of the jessamine study, and read more articulate information about the plant's fascinating life, check out this blog maintained by the PIs (principal investigators) of the project.

The stank of Bradford pear trees is fading as the summer approaches. The new green leaves of trees are beginning to unfurl. I like North Carolina, especially in the spring.