From February 1, 2008
Hello! And welcome to my internet peacock log (= klog?). In a couple of days I am heading out to California, where I will study the mating behaviour of large population of peafowl at the Los Angeles Arboretum. On the way there I will stop in sunny Arizona for a conference on iridescent animal colours called (entertainingly enough), “Iridescence: More than meets the eye”. Much to my surprise, I will not be the one traveling furthest to attend this conference. Apparently biologists and physicists from as far away as Japan and Australia will be there to discuss all sorts of iridescent bugs, birds and even cuttlefish.
In the kind of biology I’m interested in, understanding the raison d’etre or adaptive function of a trait is often the end goal. The raison d’etre for this site is that it will let me keep friends, lab-mates and fellow students up-to-date on my travels and [mis]adventures, scientific and otherwise. I also hope that posting regularly will help me defeat any lingering tendency for procrastination when it comes to writing, especially since the dreaded thesis-writing looms.
More to come!