Just because you're a scientist doesn't mean you have to be cooped up in a lab all day! A lot of research, especially in biology, requires going out into the wilderness to collect specimens, observe behavior, and measure the health of the ecosystem. Click on each of these field biologists to find out more about their jobs. Use the space bar to advance through text. They are, left to right, a malacologist, an entomologist, and an ornithologist.
Made for Mix and Match Camp with the Scratch Vector Editor. I've actually been involved in all three branches of field research depicted here through hobbies, summer jobs, volunteer work, and classes. Relocating Riffleshell mussels into tributaries to the Ohio is a real project I worked on two summers ago, though my job was surveying populations of other mussel species in some local streams to try and find suitable reintroduction spots. It involved a lot of wading into shallow water and feeling around the bottom of the stream for mussels. The trick was to learn how to tell by touch alone whether something was a rock or a mussel shell! I've taken an entomology class that involved collecting specimens through various means (sweep nets don't work for everything!) and lately I've gotten into doing macrophotography. I might post a project soon showcasing some of the pictures I've taken of insects and spiders. My favorite insects are probably the wide array of wasps with endoparasitoid larvae. I haven't done much "official" ornithology work (like recording bird songs, as shown here--though I know some researchers who do that), but I do a lot of birdwatching on my own and with the Audubon Society where I live. It's a really easy way to get involved in field research, since all you have to do is keep an eye out and make a precise tally of all the birds you see and where and when you see them. You can then go to a site like ebird.org and submit your sightings to contribute to the huge amount of data researchers can use to map out migration routes and population changes. This fall, I'm taking a herpetology class, so I'll be able to add lizards to my list of animals I've studied! Since I don't know as much about that field yet, I decided not to draw a herpetologist.
