Goin' Parasite Hunting, Back in Two Weeks

On Monday, I will board a plane to Santo Domingo and hook up with Rich and crew who are down there hunting all kinds of anoles. My new graduate student, Bryan Falk, is there with them now and our goal on this trip (besides convincing Rich that field work can indeed involve fun things, too), is to sample three main types of parasites from the anoles. We'll be taking blood samples, like I always do, to extend our work on malaria parasites. Last time we were down there, I found 4 species in the Dominican anoles - one (shown in photo in a lizard erythrocyte) was originally described as a subspecies of P. fairchildi, a species originally described from Costa Rica, but our genetic data show that this relationship is not valid. We'll also be collecting a pinworm, Parapharyngodon cubensis and mites, to see if these parasites mirror the differentiation, be it at the population or the species level, of their hosts. If all goes well, we'll be back on the 24th of this month. Have a good couple of weeks, everyone!