Spring Accomplishments

Hey all,

It has been a crazy spring semester, so I wanted to share some of my accomplishments from this semester.

I had several presentations at the Annual Meeting of the Louisiana Academy of Science hosted by Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, LA. I gave an oral presentation titled "Is there enough swamp for the both of us? Habitat selection by cottonmouth snakes". I also competed in the LAS poster competition, which is structured a bit differently than other meeting that I have been to: competitors have the traditional poster session, but additionally, we gave a two-minute lightning talk on our poster.

I won first place in the Zoology Section for my poster titled "Going out on a limb; Scaling of arboreal and terrestrial defensive strikes by ratsnakes".

I also participated in several events of the University of Louisiana Graduate Student Appreciation Week. Out of 32 participants, I advanced to the finals and won third place in the 3MT (three-minute thesis competition). My talk about terrestrial and arboreal defensive strikes by ratsnakes was titled "Best in Both Worlds". I won first place for my poster titled "Going out on a limb; Scaling of arboreal and terrestrial defensive strikes by ratsnakes".

It was great to win a few awards this semester on some of my snake research, but now my focus has shifted towards collecting data to present at the 15th Annual Symposiums of Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises in Charleston, SC this August.

Unrelated to research, but super fun; I hand caught a large female Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana)! Opossums are awesome, so I have included a pic!

Thanks for reading,

-Michael Fulbright