After the class ended, I headed back to the lab to do some cleanup from yesterday. I washed out all the cups, strainers, and pipettes that we used. I then had the opportunity to look at some Strongyle larvae through a microscope that one of the grad students had hatched (pictures later!). It was very...wormy looking and had a long tail coming off the end of it. There's another research skill: being able to recognize a certain type of parasite larvae from another (there were lots of nematode larvae in there, too).
After that, I had the chance to put some graphs and data together to further compare and analyze wild versus domestic animals. As you can see, there is a huge amount of variability.
The left column is the domestic horse data, and the right is the Corolla herd.
We had a little time before the lab in the afternoon, so I got some of my research done for next week, and then we headed out for the lab, which was at the equine unit about 15 minutes from campus. This was the first lab of the semester, so it was pretty low key, and we worked on making rope halters...it's much harder than it looks!
Unfortunately the mare did not foal when we were there, but it looks like she is going to tonight. I was able to do a milk test for the first time, and all four of the strips turned from green to purple right away! That's a pretty good sign that she's about to give birth. I kept the strip as a souvenir.
There's a small chance that there will be a "snow" day tomorrow due to freezing rain, but if not we'll still go to NCSU and get some more work done. My mom is driving part way tonight and will get here tomorrow so she can see what I've been doing, then we'll head home together!
Why isn't there a minimum value for the domestic horses in your data? What does your data analysis tell you? Conclusions? Hypotheses? I hope you got to see the foal born last night.
ReplyDeleteThe minimum value for the domestic horses is zero because we didn't find any eggs in two out of five of the horses.
DeleteI included some of this in my blog, but this data tells many things. The most obvious one is that these wild ponies definitely have parasites, which was the biggest question coming into this project. However, like I said, there is a LOT of variability, and none of these wild ponies have been dewormed, so one reason for this is genetics and the horse's ability to fight off parasites, another is what they eat. I just did an experiment today that was very interesting (I will include more about it in my blog tonight), which was that I looked through each of the fecal samples and created a ten-point scale in which I rated the amount of acorns in each sample (ten being high, one being low). It turns out that the ones with the least amount of acorns had the lowest EPG, and the ones with the highest amount of acorns had the highest EPG! I will include some hypotheses on why that is later. So my conclusions would include that most wild horses (most-likely all) have parasites to some degree, genetics have an effect on a horse's immune system and therefore the number of parasites they have, the conditions in which a horse lives in strongly influences whether they have parasites or not, and diet impacts the number of parasites a horse will have.
My hypothesis before I had any data was that the domestic horses would not have any parasites, and the wild ponies would have lots. This, to some degree was true, although some of the domestic horses had a lot of parasites, and there was a huge amount of variability in each of the groups.
I did not get to see the foal last night, and actually I don't think the mare has given birth yet!