7/15/24-7/19/24

This is my last official week as a REU intern since my REU is only 8 weeks. For this week, me and my PI were just planning what day was best to go to the site to do fieldwork. We also planned out what to bring. I mostly worked on my abstract and my poster. We were able to go on Friday as it was not raining that day either. It was a long drive but it was so fun and a learning adventure. We went to Huntsville and it was a private land specifically for research. It was a type of forest that you would see on the side of the freeways and at first, I never paid attention to those trees. Learning about how there is a lot of forest in Texas that is used for research was very interesting. My PI also told me the process of getting a permit and everything. When we got to the site, the first thing I saw were three deer running. I also saw a lot of trees marked with either a rope or a flag. This helps researchers identify which tree they are studying and what the species and gender of the tree/plant is. For our lab, we use flags to identify the plants we were studying which was the Ilex vomitoria. It was a pink flag for the male species and a yellow flag for the female. My PI also mentioned that we have tags on the tree specifically to help with double checking the plants. It was difficult to see the tags due to the plants that fell down because of the rain. After a while of checking, we got to find the plants that we were going to sample. At the end of the day, we got the soil samples that we needed. We headed back to the lab to put them under the Berlese Funnel. This was an overall great experience that has helped me gain skills as a researcher as well as helped me with deciding about my future career goals.