Since I didn’t have the time to post any fieldwork news this summer I will instead pack it all into a single post. Efficiency!
As always summer is moth collection time, and this year I was in two countries: Estonia and Scotland.
Estonia was first. We went as a team of four, planning to stay a week and catch around 30 moths. In the end, thanks to some very warm weather, we got that number in the first 3 days and were able to return early.
I went to Scotland on my own as most of the lab were off catching in Georgia (the country, not the state). I had a bit of a worrying start, catching a grand total of one moth in the first two days. Scotland is always a bit tricky, unlike in Finland and Estonia, where the moths can generally be found on the edge of woods, in Scotland we generally find them on coastal meadows. This makes for some very scenic fieldwork, but also greatly increases the amount of climbing involved, and the risk of running off the edge of a cliff while chasing them. In the end, despite some less-than-ideal weather, I manged to get 15 moths to inject some much-needed genetic diversity into our lab population.
So once again I missed out on the beauty and excitement of Georgia (where the moths live at the top of mountains!) Still I was able to stock up on Scotch whisky in duty free, and there is always next year…
Insect Chemical and Evolutionary Ecology 