Successful Sampling!

The last three weeks here in Madagascar have flown by! The week after I returned from Mangevo I was unable to join my team in the field as I was recovering from an infection that prohibited me from wearing boots, which made it impossible for me to hike out with them. Fortunately I found things at CVB to occupy my time, particularly researching ideas for future research and working on my thesis. That week was also pretty crazy at the station as we were preparing for the US Ambassador to visit along with representatives from USAID and the Ministry of Environment in Madagascar. The other researchers, students, and I had a wonderful dinner with them that Friday night and I was able to share with the Ambassador and representatives details of the work that I am doing.

We returned from the field Monday morning and I decided to give my team the rest of the week off (especially because my student Ndimby will be traveling to Antananarivo to get married this Saturday! Congrats to him!), although I went out with another guide, George, to do botanical plots in Masomanga which was the first location we sampled. George is great and I am so happy to have his expertise joining my team to get all our botanical data to go with the genetic data we are gathering.