Welcome to Adriana Barsotti and Carla Madelaire to the MeaseyLab!
You may remember that in May last year I visited Brazil, and spent a few days at the University of São Paulo (or USP as it's known there - see my blog entry here if you need a reminder). One of the labs that I visited there was the Laboratorio Comportamento e Fisiologia Evolutiva of Prof. Dr. Fernando Ribeiro Gomes in the Departamento de Fisiologia (Instituto de Biociências, USP). Fernando was particularly interested in the recent publication by Giovanni, where he found that invasive Guttural toads were dehydrated (see here). Adriana and Carla had been working on the consequences of dehydration in Brazilian toads, in particular to stress levels and immunosuppresence. Thus the opportunity of studying some naturally dehydrated animals sounded too good to pass up.
In October 2018, Adriana wrote asking whether she could spend some time in the MeaseyLab studying the invasive and native Guttural toads. Some 80+ emails later, and lots of work on getting everything in place, Adriana was awarded a FAPESP grant and has managed to arrive in sunny Stellenbosch.
We're really looking forward to learning much more about stress over the coming months as Adriana and Carla work on their project here.
