This month’s Scientiae is going to be hosted by Karina at Ruminations of an Aspiring Ecologist and she’s picked an awesome theme: “school” supplies!  That is,

What things do you love in the lab? What are you lost without in the field? What computer programs make your life easier every day? What tools are indispensable? What is tried and true?

Ecologists routinely measure things that have never been measured before or measure things in harsh field environments that quickly destroy typical lab devices.  That means we get to design the methods – and often even the tools to get these measurements.  Even if a tool exists to do the thing you need to do, ecologists are very poor and can’t always afford such fancy things.

One of the recent creations from my lab has been dubbed “The Cone Guillotine.”

I think it’s awesome.

We use it to chop open pinyon pine cones to determine how many of the seeds at a certain developmental stage haven’t been aborted or killed.