Beyond the lab coat

When you tell someone you are a scientist, the image that pops into their mind, is often that of someone working in the laboratory, wearing a white coat and retro safety glasses. And that is not far from the truth for many in the STEM fields.

But for those of us in the natural sciences, there often exists another glamorous component... Fieldwork. In our lab, this often involves travelling to different countries and exploring different kinds of habitats to sample insects. From swampy mangroves and dense forests to urban neighbourhoods, insects can occupy a whole range of niches. We collect insects from different environments and whenever possible, we try to observe what they do in the 'wild'.

Brian Gress (grad student from previous lab) observing mating flies on a farm in New York, US.

Dita Vitosa (colleague) collecting mating pairs of flies on a farm in Derbyshire, UK.

Tiffany Lum (undergrad) capturing mantids along Kent Ridge.

Driving across the US to collect flies along a east-west transect.

Sean Yap (grad student) surveying insects along the rail corridor with a vital accessory: an insect sweep net.

Sean collecting insects from traps in Acadia National Park, US.

One of the main insect models we use in our lab are sepsid flies: a family of flies that are closely associated with dung. Yep... they are poop flies. These flies play a vital role in breaking down organic waste and in nutrient cycling. Plus, they have really cool morphology and mating behavior (https://www.youtube.com/user/sepsidbehavior2009). Dr. P started working on them as an undergraduate and has now spent more than a decade chasing cows and their patties across the world.

Collecting flies off monkey poop on Barro Colorado Island, Panama.

Dr. P hanging with a particularly chill cow in New York.

Collecting flies in middle of Nebraska, US.

Now, you might be wondering, where can you find cow dung in the urban jungle that is Singapore. Well, it turns out, the Zoo. Since 2006, the kind folk working at the Singapore Night Safari have been collaborating with the Evolution Lab at NUS in providing different kinds of animal dung to be used for research purposes. Now, we at the ReproLab, have joined the band wagon.

Providers of the substrate we need.

The dung we collect needs to be frozen at -80C prior to experimental use. So here's 'packaging' the dung with members of the EvoLab.