After defending the week before last and adding about ten pages of content in the last week to appease my committee, I have turned my thesis in to the university. 
It feels great to be nearly done. I should be graduating in August, and any job search help would be appreciated. 
I have been on several interviews and have a few more coming up.
Plenty of pics and info from my project can be found on these previous threads.
If anyone wants to see my thesis, just shoot me a pm with your email address and I'll get it to you. Below is a very quick, short summary of the project. Please PM me if you would like some details.
Red imported fire ants will kill quail chicks, as most of us know. They also prey on native insects, which quail chicks need to eat for protein/growth. Our project aimed to find out if chemical ant treatment could improve insect abundance and, thus, quail abundance. We collected ant, insect, and bobwhite abundance data on areas both treated and not treated for fire ants over the last year and a half. We did the work on the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge southwest of Sealy, Texas on I-10 west of Houston. Overall, we found significantly fewer fire ants in treated areas than non-treated; however, insect abundance and quail abundance estimates were similar between treated and non-treated areas (actually, we found a few more bobwhites in the non-treated areas). Based on this particular study, we concluded that treatment was not successful at improving bobwhite abundance.
This isn't the result we expected, but keep in mind that the last two springs have been very wet. This may have influenced our results (ie vegetation and food was abundant). Future studies on other sites/areas of Texas might yield different results. This was an interesting project and I had a lot of fun conducting the research. Hopefully my prof will get funding for another master's/doctoral student to continue this research.
Thanks to those of you who have followed my update posts! Please let me know if you have any questions or thoughts.
"Bob... white?"
It feels great to be nearly done. I should be graduating in August, and any job search help would be appreciated. I have been on several interviews and have a few more coming up. Plenty of pics and info from my project can be found on these previous threads.
If anyone wants to see my thesis, just shoot me a pm with your email address and I'll get it to you. Below is a very quick, short summary of the project. Please PM me if you would like some details.
Red imported fire ants will kill quail chicks, as most of us know. They also prey on native insects, which quail chicks need to eat for protein/growth. Our project aimed to find out if chemical ant treatment could improve insect abundance and, thus, quail abundance. We collected ant, insect, and bobwhite abundance data on areas both treated and not treated for fire ants over the last year and a half. We did the work on the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge southwest of Sealy, Texas on I-10 west of Houston. Overall, we found significantly fewer fire ants in treated areas than non-treated; however, insect abundance and quail abundance estimates were similar between treated and non-treated areas (actually, we found a few more bobwhites in the non-treated areas). Based on this particular study, we concluded that treatment was not successful at improving bobwhite abundance.
This isn't the result we expected, but keep in mind that the last two springs have been very wet. This may have influenced our results (ie vegetation and food was abundant). Future studies on other sites/areas of Texas might yield different results. This was an interesting project and I had a lot of fun conducting the research. Hopefully my prof will get funding for another master's/doctoral student to continue this research.
Thanks to those of you who have followed my update posts! Please let me know if you have any questions or thoughts.
"Bob... white?"
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