Marlee Mitchell - California Academy of Sciences
Week 4-5

From Itty Bitty to Itsy Bitsy

         The current California Academy of Science (where I am spending my 8 week summer internship thanks to the Pinhead Institute) building is a drafty six story block of cement. My room or the Entomology Wet Lab is a colder room without windows, while the main Entomology floor  on the 5th floor, has floor to ceiling windows that look over the city, but none-the-less is quiet cold and drafty.  No floor or room, including the parking garage and basement, compare to the arctic wind that blows from the Scanning Electron Microscope (S.E.M) room.

         Due to the highly powered machine and the price that is cost to purchase it, the air conditioning must be kept on high. Even walking past the room a cold wind grabs at your ankles. Despite this cold, I was thrown in and began my training on the touchy machine.

         After a brief overview of the parts, gun (where the beam comes from), stage (where the specimen is placed) and vast array of wires, I was on my crash cores in SEM use. After carefully placing the specimen on the stage sealing the chamber and venting the air, an image appeared.  It was grainy and hard to make out, but sure enough there were my spiders spinnerets and we began to zoom in.

         Working the controls of the SEM is a lot like playing Pong, or some other out of date video game that really isn’t that fun, but you play anywise because you’re addicted.  Going left isn’t left and right isn’t right, you have to be very careful with things because they get turned around very quickly and the spiders right is really up and to the left.  Once orientated, the fun begins. I took a few photos of highly specialized spinning organs. It is truly amazing how far the machine has come and where it is heading.

         After driving the S.E.M and sitting in the arctic wind we were off into the burning heat of Shasta. Setting off on a 3 day collecting adventure stated smoothly and even began with pie!  The trip took a turn when the cave we sought to collect in turned out to be as elusive as the spiders themselves.  After driving 3 hours and then another 2 of “Hmm, I dont remember this...” we found the cave and began our collecting.

         To collect spiders several methods are employed, but I began with the classic 'Turn over rock and scoop'. Joel Ledford and Jeremy Miller (my two mentors for this internship) descended into the cave while I was stationed above ground, searching for specimens. They quickly found what they were looking for: a Leptonetidae, rare and only found in a few caves in the area. After that, they offered to take us into the cave. I'm fine with small spaces, but this cave happened to include a 80ft pit.  If you took a wrong step it could be disastrous. I wasn’t exactly feeling my cave legs, so I opted out, but enjoyed the area quite a bit. That night, we camped in a nearby area. The next day we drove to Shasta City and set up a new camp and began looking for the next elusive spiders, the Hypocylus. This spider is unique for it has four book lungs instead of two, making it the link to families like scorpions and others to spiders. We searched along wet areas near a stream and once again found this spider.

         After a long day of collecting, we settled in our camp till dark when once again we embarked to see what nature had in store for us.  Spider activity is at its peek at night. The spiders remake they're webs and we even stood in awe of an orb weaver constructing its web.

         The next day was back home and after a small incident on the freeway with a flat tire, we made it. And my Mom flew into town that very same day.

         I spent the weekend with my mum going around the city seeing the city checking out the MOMA (Museum of Moder Arts) and enjoying culinary delights along the way. We had a great time and it was really great to see her we had a lot of fun.   I went and stayed with her at her hotel, it was a bit nicer then mine. But she flew out on Tuesday and work continued for me. I finished last week with more Geo Refrancing on Google Earth and will soon have some pretty incredible results.

         This week I was shown how to perform dissections. This was one of those things were you watch someone do it and you say,  “Oh, this will be easy!” Ha! I had no idea how unsteady my hands were until I was trying to remove the outer skin from a spider without stabbing into the internal organs, or remove the epigynum (female sexual organ) without damaging the abdomen. It was so hard and my whole body felt tense the rest of the day over the stress of trying to perform these very delicate tasks. In the end, I was able to successfully remove one epigynum without completely destroying the specimen.

         Yesterday, I began a PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction). This is something I haven't done since the first or second week that I arrived at the California Academy of Sciences and it felt good to be back in the lab. Our samples were in the PCR machine and almost done.  I had a gel ready to go. Gels are used after the first step in PCR to determine if the reaction worked. If bands appear in your gel when you place it under ultraviolet light, you have DNA and the PCR was successful. If there are no bands then something went wrong. To make a gel you have to use a very awful chemical called Athinum Bromide and if it gets on your skin it binds to you DNA.  This is not good. So special gloves are used in that room. I happen to be extremely paranoid with this and have to go outside and spin in the sun, as the sun deactivates the chemical. But disaster struck, it started with one brown out then another till there were six blackouts in a row, power on.. power off.. power on.  Security shut down the building right in the middle of my PCR!  So we'll find out in the next few days if those reactions worked or not. It was nice to have half a day off.

         I went to the park and sat enjoying a man-made pool that looked odd with its seagulls and pigeons. All is going well and today I will be working with the SEM and am very excited, even if the room happens to have frost on the windows.