you study what??

For all my friends and family who still can't quite visualize this deadly frog-killing fungus I study, here's a lovely video of those pesky swimming chytrid zoospores. Cheers, amphibian avenger!

Chytrid fungus under the microscope from Amphibian Avenger on Vimeo.

a black fantail

A few weeks back I was walking up Khyber Pass (yes, it is actually named that), or the ridiculously steep staircase that is part of my daily commute home and one of five continuous hills I have to climb to get to my flat, when I saw a black fantail.  Fantails are tiny, inquisitive birds native to New Zealand, and they usually look like this:

I found this little guy up in Northland. He was flitting about our feet, acting as if we were the most interesting thing he'd seen all day.

But this fantail was completely black. And I knew it was a fantail, because he was flying about with one of his striped friends. After doing some research (aka wikipedia) I found out that about 25% of all South Island fantails demonstrate this black morph... but only 1% do on the North Island. So I suppose my find would have been much more exciting if I had been in Wellington. According to Maori legend, a fantail, or Pīwakawaka, can be considered a sign of death. I wonder then what a black fantail might represent? Hopefully something a bit better than death...

To shift the focus from death, here are some of my favorite Dunedin graffiti. Ahhh, college towns.

Only the cat in this picture is painted... the rest is shadow.

Can you figure out what this used to say?