It's been a couple of months since I last updated, and I'll be sending in some entries on the field trips that we did in Toronto for the first part of school, in our summer course (Ecology in Human Dominated Environments). Those of you from the tropics reading these posts, think about what kind of differences the systems you see in temperate regions have that set them apart from the tropical rainforests as you know it. What are the conditions that temperate species deal with that tropical ones don't? Are the systems that different after all? What kind of underlying concepts apply to both tropical and temperate? On a side note, there's a new interest I have in a project. Operation Wallacea, a collection of scientific expeditions (as modern as you can expect expeditions in this day and age to be), conducts training courses as well as opens itself for research assistance in various countries with Indonesia being it's first and flagship site, and Madagascar being its newest. Other countries include: Egypt, Peru, Cuba, Mozambique, etc. Think you've got what it takes to be trekking through the jungle, carrying out surveys for rare amphibians and reptiles? Imagine yourself sitting in the boat, looking through the river for caimans and river dolphins for a project. What about identifying birds through calls, or stumbling upon a pride of lions in the savannah, and knowing exactly what to do not to piss them off? Check the site out. It's expensive, but it certainly sounds worth it.