Year: 2011 Page 11 of 42

Incubating A. sagrei eggs.

Anyone who has incubated reptile eggs knows that moisture is important. Without sufficient moisture, eggs quickly desiccate and shrivel beyond any chance of returning to a healthy, turgid state. Because of this, eggs must experience positive water balance during most of the incubation period for successful embryonic development, and the relative moisture content of the incubation medium can greatly impact how much water is taken up by eggs. In turn, this will affect embryonic metabolism and will have important effects on hatchling size.

Those of us who have incubated thousands of reptile eggs have probably come across the occasional ‘odd ball’ that swells up at a healthy rate, but never hatches, and upon dissection nothing but water and yolk oozes out with no sign of an embryo.

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With the the deadline quickly approaching, the National Science Foundation‘s Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (NSF DDIG) program is on the mind on many graduate student anologists (myself included).  These grants provide significant funding (up to $15,000 this year) to graduate students allowing them to expand upon their existing dissertation research. A large part of my preparation has been reading the successful proposals of other students.  That got me to wondering how many other anole-centric proposals have been funded recently.  Luckily, the NSF has a handy search function for just such a question.

I found 16 funded projects since 1987 coming from the labs of 9 PIs (8 of whom have a single funded student each – the 9th PI and most of his 8 funded students post here often).  In total, students of anole science have been awarded $167,306 with a substantial uptick in the last few years. Here’s hoping this trend continues.  Good luck to all applying this year.