{"id":91,"date":"2014-05-11T16:26:04","date_gmt":"2014-05-11T16:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wildlifeconservation\/?p=91"},"modified":"2014-05-11T16:26:04","modified_gmt":"2014-05-11T16:26:04","slug":"putting-the-res-in-mres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wildlifeconservation\/2014\/05\/11\/putting-the-res-in-mres\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting the ‘Res’ in ‘MRes’!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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With the taught component of Semester 1 well and truly behind us, we\u2019re all getting our teeth\u00a0into our research projects now and beginning to discover the big, wide world of research\u2026! The last few weeks have been a real change from the rest of our academic careers so far as we\u2019ve begun to get started with our research projects.\u00a0 During Semester 1, we all had an idea what our projects would be on, but the time came for us to dive in at the deep end and get a project proposal submitted.\u00a0 The projects are all based on areas that Marwell have identified as requiring research.\u00a0 Our supervisory team includes a member of Marwell\u2019s Conservation Team who specialises in our project area and leads the corresponding area of conservation work at Marwell, giving us the best starting point we could ask for!\u00a0 With the help of our supervisors and many, many hours of reading, projects were planned out, budgets were created and risk assessments were completed; all were typed up into proposals and handed in by some very content MRes students!\u00a0 Since our next deadline is not until the end of August (!!!), we thought we could spare an evening to head to Dani\u2019s and watch Disney films all night, with talk of work banned!<\/p>\n

To keep us all grounded in the real world, there\u2019s been mini projects to be getting on with alongside our research projects.\u00a0 It\u2019s been hard to find the time to slot them in, but they make a great break from our projects and a nice chance to all get together again!\u00a0 In February, before people disappeared off to sunnier climates, we had our first public engagement workshop.\u00a0 This was led by Hilary, Marwell\u2019s Public Engagement Coordinator.\u00a0 We talked through the basics of presentation skills and how to engage your audience and talk in an interesting and interested voice.\u00a0 Going through the basics was useful considering some of us haven\u2019t done much presentation work before.\u00a0 We also tried \u2018Just A Minute\u2019 on various topics and got in a tangle with some tongue twisters\u2026!\u00a0 Public engagement features a fair amount in conservation and this workshop was the first in a series designed to teach us valuable skills in communicating our work to a wider, non-scientific audience.\u00a0 We\u2019ll also get the chance to be hands-on with public engagement towards the end of the course and present some of Marwell\u2019s species talks to the public!<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve also rennovated the sand lizard enclosure at Marwell where they house a breeding population of around 10 Dorset sand lizards. Over the past year, their enclosure had become rather overgrown so we researched what their ideal habitat comprises and presented our findings to Dr Martin Wilkie (who leads the sand lizard project at Marwell) and the other members of the Marwell Conservation Team.\u00a0 They liked our ideas and we arranged a date to head up to the enclosure with Martin for a day to do some weeding on an ENORMOUS scale!\u00a0 The weather was kind to us, the thorns were not, and after a few hours of battling with unwanted gorse bushes and artfully arranging slates and rocks, we\u2019d created a sand lizard paradise! \u00a0Well, I perhaps wouldn\u2019t go that far, but the lizards seem impressed with the new d\u00e9cor!\u00a0 We finished the day in the traditional style for Pancake Day at Rachel\u2019s house; many pancakes were consumed!\u00a0 Now the lizards are waking from hibernation, we’ve taken on some of the day-to-day responsibilities with them, such as feeding and monitoring and it\u2019s proving to be a very nice break from sitting at a desk!<\/p>\n

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Mmm, crickets for lunch!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Ta da! Our work is done!<\/p><\/div>\n

That pretty much gets you up to date with our news for now; the rest of our time is being spent working on our individual projects!\u00a0 Just to quickly update you with how they\u2019re going: Rob is now back from his data collection out in Tunisia and has probably seen enough small mammals to last a lifetime! Laura has gone back to Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya for her data collection and we\u2019re all envious of the pictures she keeps sending us!\u00a0 Rachel and Dani\u2019s desks at Marwell are becoming their second home as they get their questionnaires ready to send out to zoos across Europe.\u00a0 Nat is getting final preparations underway for her data collection in Kenya and I\u2019ve started work up at Eelmoor, where the weather is not quite as fine as Kenya!<\/p>\n

\"Laura<\/a>

Laura helping to collar a Grevy’s!<\/p><\/div>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Przewalski’s Horses on Eelmoor!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Check back over the coming weeks for more detailed individual updates on how people\u2019s projects are going!<\/p>\n

Written by Eleanor Rendells<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the taught component of Semester 1 well and truly behind us, we\u2019re all getting our teeth\u00a0into our research projects now and beginning to discover the big, wide world of research\u2026! The last few weeks have been a real change from the rest of our academic careers so far as we\u2019ve begun to get started […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60758,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[134649,690756,76051,690395,65478,69],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-conservation","tag-marwell","tag-masters","tag-mres","tag-postgraduate","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wildlifeconservation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wildlifeconservation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wildlifeconservation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wildlifeconservation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wildlifeconservation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wildlifeconservation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wildlifeconservation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions\/122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wildlifeconservation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wildlifeconservation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/wildlifeconservation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}