Week Twelve: November 10 - 16

Monday was a holiday, but we did end up making a little progress on the mesocosms anyway.

Tuesday was the start of our reproductive biology unit. Dr Molly Corder talked to us about some of the basics of assisted reproductive techonology, including some of the fundamentals of endocrine and reproductive systems for mammals. Dr Budhan Pukazhenthi came in the afternoon to talk more about cryopreservation specifically, which was really cool!

We got to put all of that information to work on Wednesday, when we dissected some dog testes to extract the sperm for cryopreservation with Dr Jen Nagashima and Kathryn Storey. I had so much fun! I haven't gotten to do a proper dissection in ages, and I really enjoyed it. Aiden was kind enough to let me do the bulk of the dissection, which I appreciated. The class was split into two treatment groups, A and B, one of which had actual cryopreservants in their mixture and the other which only had the egg yolk (which is apparently very effective at helping maintain motility and quality in cryopreserved sperm. Who knew!). Before we did anything to it, though, we took samples to look at motility in the fresh sperm to compare with later. We got to put our sperm in the little plastic straws that they use for all the real specimens they store, and even though we weren't allowed to put them in the liquid nitrogen ourselves - which is fair, since it's a pretty delicate process - we got to watch as Dr Nagashima did it. After we wrapped that up, she gave us another lecture on reproductive biology and the important role it plays in managing captive populations effectively.

On Thursday, we got to thaw out our sperm and see how it held up. We compared it to the pre-treatment sperm in terms of motility, and then we also looked at acrosomal integrity (how well the 'head' of the sperm and its membranes held up). Unfortunately, my group was one of the ones that just got egg yolk, so our sperm wasn't doing too well. We also had some issues with our staining for acrosomal integrity assessment, so our numbers were a bit anomalous... But it was still a very interesting lab! I might try to look into some more repro bio-focused internships for the summer if I can, because I loved getting to do all of this! Something about the lab work was very satisfying to me, and I kind of fell in love with the story of how black-footed ferrets were brought back from the brink of extinction through these techniques. It seems like a fascinating field.

We also settled on our species for the acquisition planning, and my African Painted Dogs made it!

On Friday we got to hear from Erica Royer about the conservation and re-location of the sihek (formerly the Guam Kingfisher). She showed us a lot of the outreach materials she made - mostly videos - about the whole process, from raising the chicks they intended to release, all the way up to their first flights into the wilds of Palmyra Atoll. As neat as the story itself was, I was mostly focused on how she told it! She did a great job of showing both the work that went into the project and the importance of the end results, and I admired the way that she made each of the birds really feel like individuals. Even when they were working out of a storage container, she captured the scale and excitement of the project. I really hope they're able to release another batch of juveniles to supplement the current population, and I definitely plan to keep an eye on the progress of this initiative!