The ridge of mountains that runs parallel to Madagascar’s east coast descend in short order into rolling hills, followed by sand dunes, and ultimately meet the Indian Ocean. These rolling hills and sand dunes were once cloaked in low-elevation humid forest and littoral forest. Today those habitats are some of […]
My team and I have been on Montagne d’Ambre in northern Madagascar since the eleventh of November. At this point we are roughly three fifths through the fieldwork, and two members of the team and I have come out of the field to Antsiranana, the largest city in northern Madagascar, […]
Marojejy is a rainforest-clad mountain massif in northeastern Madagascar. The park was established in 1952 as a strict nature reserve, but was changed to a national park in 1998[1]. Several notable biological research expeditions have been led to this mountain, the most significant of which was the Goodman expedition in […]
From December 2015 to January 2016, I travelled with a team of researchers from the UK and Madagascar to a remote forest in Northern Madagascar. Our goal was to characterise the reptile and amphibian fauna of this forest, and to study a phenomenon called the ‘edge effect’ and how it influences […]
Madagascar has a very high rate of new species descriptions. In the last ten years, more than sixty new species of frogs have been described, and many more are still set to come; an estimated three fifths of Madagascar’s frog species have been described so far (Perl et al. 2014), […]
This is a post in a series. To see the previous posts, click the following links: The Great American Outdoors Emily (external link) Montanoramas – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – So I went to Montana to visit […]
It has been some time since last I posted any content on this website. I warned that this would happen, but it does not make me fell any less bad about it. This is by the by, however. What matters is that I am, for at least a brief while, […]
I have finally gotten around to it! I bring you now my final installment from Madagascar 2012; Rainforest. After my work for Operation Wallacea had come to a close, and I had recovered from some mystery illness that befell me the day all the volunteers left, Brandon Semel (my lemur-loving […]
I promised a bit of D800 content. Now, although I have a hell of a lot of work to do, I thought I might share a few early photos. I have to warn you: I have not yet spent a great deal of time working with this camera, but it […]
I have gone on at some length about the necessity of knowing your subject, and being able to get close when you are working with reptiles. However, it has been brought to my attention that saying it and teaching it are two entirely different matters. This post should give you […]
So it’s been a few days since my last update; I won’t be able to do them on an every-other-day basis for the rest of the year unfortunately, as university life, coupled with my report writeup, is going to be absorbing all of my time. I will try to at […]
So my research was focusing primarily on reptiles. I have a lot of experience working with reptiles of all kinds in Madagascar. I have worked in the dry spiny forest once before in 2005, but never for such a long period, and never quite so exhaustively (back then I was […]
It’s about time I got round to posting some science stuff on here, so that I can finally get to the fun stuff – the animals! But before I can get to that, I have to go through the part that made the trip happen, and that was the science. […]
Welcome, and to everyone who has been here before, welcome back! I have to say, it has been an irrationally long time since I last put a blog up here. There has been a lot of crazy stuff going on. So what’s new? Well, I’m going back to Madagascar in […]
