A talk on Cane Toads - by Georgia Ward-Fear

At the end of 2019, Georgia and I began writing a chapter together on ethics in amphibian invasions. This turned out to be quite an undertaking, and it was a great privaledge to work with Georgia on this now accepted manuscript (see here for link to come...). I mentioned to Georgia that I was giving a class on Invasion Biology to our 3rd year undergraduates at Stellenbosch University, and she immediately volunteered to give them a talk all about Cane Toads. She recorded this ahead of time, and so I share it with you below:

Cane Toads have become a specially important group to the MeaseyLab since we started studying Guttural Toads some five years ago. The two species both belong to the family Bufonidae, but are not otherwise closely related. However, both being large bufonids we became interested in whether the same adaptations that have been extensively researched in Cane Toads could also be found in Guttural Toads. Indeed, so much work has now been done on Cane Toads, that we can use this as inspiration for questions for a long time to come.

Thanks so much to Georgia for stepping forward and volunteering to present for the BDE345 students - I'm sure that they really appreciated it. You're a star!

Time to speak out...

Late in 2019 I was doing some field work and found myself sitting in a car chatting with someone from another SA lab about their experience at the latest herp meetings in September (see here) and October (see here). I was shocked by what I heard as the experiences of this person had been so different than my own. They felt that they were not welcome and that other attendees has actually made them feel unwelcome by making comments about the way they dressed. I talked to more people about the meetings and was again surprised to hear that this wasn't an isolated incident but that several more people felt that the atmosphere was not welcoming. I asked whether they felt that something should be done, and they said that they felt it should be raised but that it would be better raised by someone more senior as they didn't feel  that their opinions would be taken seriously. So over the summer I wrote a piece for the African Herp News that tried to set out the experience of these folk and how this fitted into a general backdrop in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects that have been dominated by white men. 

Early in 2020 a number of other things happened. A commentary published in the South African Journal of Science (SAJS) by Nicoli Nattrass entitled: "Why are black South African students less likely to consider studying biological sciences?" inflamed the South African biological sciences community as it purported to explain the continued biased racial uptake of biological sciences in South Africa from a poorly devised and sparsely sampled survey. My opinion is that in view of the contents, this piece should never have been submitted, and that it was particularly poor editorial judgement to publish it in SAJS. The backlash resulted in a great many popular articles written, as well as a special issue of SAJS with responses (seehere for some great responses). Unsurprisingly, this very public outpouring was only the tip of a much larger undercurrent of discussions that began in South African departments of Biological Sciences up and down the country. 

Meanwhile, the police killing of George Floyd in the US city of Minneapolis (seehere) saw a resurgence in the international movement #blacklivesmatter that resulted in many groups and organisations thinking again about their history. For example, the Board of Governors of ASIHvoted to change the name of their society journal fromCopeiatoIchthyology & Herpetology. 

But the old voices in STEM still persist and to some extent there has been a push back against the tide of inclusivity that has swept the world. It is important that we don’t let these voices advocating the persistence of power to a predominantly white male elite continue. Instead, I encourage you to lend your support (https://inclusiveherpetology.wordpress.com/) to open up the wonderful world of STEM to be completely inclusive of the diversity of human thinking and ingenuity available. After all, we need everyone we can get to solve the increasingly complex problems of our modern world.

Here is the text of my piece recently published in the HAA newsletter:

Measey, J. (2020) Make everyone welcome in our HAA. African Herp News 74: 40-43. pdf

Formatting your thesis

Let’s face it, after spending so much time writing your thesis, having it formatted so that it looks very smart for submission is gratifying. Try to make it a fun event by listening to your favourite music very loudly or having some of your banned tipple (do both if you dare!). It doesn’t require the same level of creative concentration required when writing your thesis, but it does need great attention to detail. 

Your university will have their own stipulation for exactly how they want the thesis formatted. In this very short blog post, I’ll point you to the relevant links for Stellenbosch University and provide a check-list for last things to do before you submit.

Here are the Stellenbosch University library guidelines on thesis submission. Ultimately, your thesis will be deposited to the library, so their guidance is golden:

https://library.sun.ac.za/en-za/Help/Pages/online-thesis-submission.aspx

This link has really useful guidance for formatting in your word processor:

https://www.sun.ac.za/english/research-innovation/Research-Development/Documents/Generic%20guidelines%20for%20thesis%20and%20dissertation%20layout%20PG%20Skills%20Updated%20Jan%202019.pdf 

This is the link for the SU writing lab;  https://apex.sun.ac.za/ apex/f?p=105:1:8087869729856:: NO::: . You can ask them to go over your MS drafts or chapters for spelling/grammar etc.

Your faculty will have their own requirements. Make sure that you consult the student handbook for your department of faculty:

Many of these final formatting requirements are also useful for journal submissions. Note that these all require time. If you don’t have the time, then please make your advisor aware what has and what has not been done so that you can prioritise what must be done before submission.

The following points are based on what may irritate or annoy your examiner (and you really don’t want to do that!):

• Spell check - yes, it sounds obvious but doing a final spell check is a good idea. Not only this, but take the time to have your word processor ignore or add all of the special words (e.g. species or site names) that it doesn’t otherwise recognise. This will ensure their consistency throughout (within and between chapters).
• • Make sure that your language settings are set to ‘South Africa’. 
  • Look out especially for words that have different accepted spellings like those ending in -ise or -ize. Decide which you want and be consistent
  • Capitalisation of common names, place names and not adjectives. For example, ‘South Africa’ has two capitals, but ‘southern Africa’ only has one.
• Grammar check - always good to take a final look, especially for chapters that you wrote some time back. 
• • Use the word processor automated options to help you. 
  • Have your computer or another device read the text so that you can hear anything obviously wrong.
  • Pay attention if you have used “we” or “I” and make sure they are consistent in your thesis. As a rule I encourage “I” in a thesis, unless the chapter is also a manuscript, in which case “we” is usually correct.
• Page layout. Really important to get this right in your template. Make sure that your template has:
• • Correct paper size (A4 and not US letter)
  • Margins
  • Line spacing
  • Page numbers
  • Line numbers (really helps your examiners)
  • Headers & Footers. If you can manage a chapter specific header, it’s useful to show your name and a short chapter title.
• Sections and subheadings. I’ve encouraged you to use subheadings throughout your thesis. Here you have a chance to number them sequentially. This is very useful for your examiners and may be a requirement for the university. Using the word processor’s built in functions will make this task consistent and easy.
• • I dislike writing within a formatted document (as word processors can start getting weird), so my preference is to cut and paste written text into a template at the end. 
  • Remember to give them a check through before handing it in. If you’ve done the sections correctly, then the contents page will come out right.
• Title page - prescribed very strictly by the university. The librarians place the SU watermark after final submission to the library.
• Content page - word processors can do this automatically if your thesis is formatted correctly throughout (see sections & subheadings above). 
• • You can check this to make sure that you’ve done all of your sections and subheadings correctly.
• Acknowledgements - this is your time to say thank you to all the special people that have helped during your study. There are probably more than you realise, but in addition to your friends and family (who most people don’t forget), think about the people who administered the work, lab mates (past and present) who were always there to help, and people who gave permission at study sites. 
• References - probably one of the most dreaded sections of any thesis preparation, but they do have to be done. If you’re one of these people that has everything in a database, then you’ll be laughing or cursing your database throughout. While it might be tempting to only look through the data within the database, spend some time to see how it’s displayed in the thesis. A mistake in the reference database will be multiplied many times in the thesis. Remember that examiners love to take a random look through the reference section to make sure that it’s all good. After years of painfully entering references themselves, they know just what to look for. 

Mistakes people make:

Other than the obvious things all mentioned above, here are some of the mistakes I’ve seen.

• Submitting the wrong version (yes this does happen!). Probably worse if having a mixture of right and wrong versions for different chapters (worse because it takes longer to sort out)
• Last minute additions to text with incorrect spelling and or grammar
• Two correctly spelled synonyms sitting next to each other when only one is desired (probably came about when editing)
• Leaving the ‘mystery sentence’ added by your advisor to make sure that you read your thesis one last time. When I’ve given the final nod to my students that their thesis is ready for submission, I always ask them to read it just one more time. I’m well aware that given how many times they’ve read it, they are unlikely to do it again. So, to give some incentive, I add an unflattering remark to the thesis in a random position aimed at the examiners. I reason that students are unlikely to want to insult their examiners, and so this extra push will be enough to have them read it one more time. 
• Comments and or edited text (especially when it’s marked as being by someone other than the student).
• Page numbers that start again and again at different sections
• Lots of blank pages or spaces (avoid blank pages if you can, and try to limit the amount of blank space (never >half a page).
• Leaving important people out of the acknowledgements (e.g. advisor, administrators, funders, etc.)

Fear of submitting written work

These are all really common thoughts, and they go along with ‘imposter syndrome’ for a lot of early career (and even older) academics. There are some important points to think about here:

1. Everybody has these ideas and you aren’t alone
2. Handing in work and getting feedback is part of the learning experience
3. The fact that you care so much about your work and how it is perceived is a good thing. If you didn’t care, then this would be a problem. 
4. If you never hand anything in, you won’t get your post-graduate degree

Think of it this way

The process of writing is part of your learning process, and you aren’t learning alone. That’s why you have an advisor. While you think that there may be a great intellectual gap between you and your advisor, I can promise you that there isn’t. But your advisor is an experienced reader. Hopefully, there have been many students who have benefited from learning with your advisor (talk to them about their experience). They already work with a lot of students and help those people to bring their writing to a level where it can be accepted by an academic community. There's no reason why your work would be any different. 

Like other members of the academic community, your advisor also has experience of receiving critical feedback about their written work. Sometimes it is painful and sometimes it feels personal. But getting feedback (or peer review) is a fundamental part of the publishing process. Talk to your advisor and other lab members about this process. Ask people how they overcame their fear of submitting written work.

What can you do to help yourself overcome the fear of submitting written work?

1. Give it to a friend or colleague to read

Remember that most of what you write should be understandable to the majority of people who can read (think of The Conversation as a reasonable reading/understanding level). This means that you can give your written work to fellow postgraduates and postdocs and ask for feedback.

2.  Annotate your text with places where you are particularly unsure.

If there’s a certain part that you are struggling with, annotate it (add comment in word) and point out that you are struggling with this particular section

3. Ask for a meeting with your advisor

You can sit down together with your advisor and discuss the points where you are uncertain before handing in the work. Or, after you’ve written it you can ask for a session when you are given verbal feedback

4.  Produce a checklist

If you specifically worry that there may be errors in what you write (grammatical, spelling, plagiarism), then make a checklist that you can tick off prior to submitting. Once your check list is done, don’t mess with the written work again (or you could add more errors), just hand it in!

5.  Set a deadline for yourself

If you don’t already have one, having a set of deadlines that you give yourself to give your writing to work to colleagues and hand in to your advisor. If you know that you aren’t good with deadlines, share them with as many people as you can!

6.  Tell your advisor about your fears

There’s nothing like honesty. Your advisor may be able to cut you some slack, or might sit down with you and look at how the two of you can overcome this difficulty.

7.  If you have more than one advisor, there may be one who you are more confident to read your work, and you can suggest that reading is done in series (instead of in parallel - actually I’d advise this).

8. Talk to your advisor about what really gets you the most upset. If you can’t do this face to face, then you could annotate it in a reply to their comment. The chance is that your advisor doesn’t know how upsetting it is and you’ll be helping them in their future interactions with students.

9. Ask your advisor about their fear of handing in and get them (and others in your lab) to share their stories. You might find that you have common ground to start sharing how these problems can be overcome.

At the end of the day, this is teamwork. Either you and your advisor are a team, or there are a bunch of advisors helping you. It is in everybody’s interest that the job gets done. Getting a line of dialogue moving with your advisor is essential, even if you have to arrange a meeting about a different subject and then introduce the problem later in the meeting. You need to find a way of getting through the fear, and if it’s going to be a persistent problem, you’ll need to work out what works best for you.

New study looks at requirements for Table Mountain Ghost Frog tadpoles

In a new study, published today by MeaseyLab alumnus Zishan Ebrahim and colleagues, they determined the requirements of the tadpoles of Table Mountain Ghost Frogs, Heleophryne rosei. The iconic Table Mountain Ghost Frog only lives in the streams and kloofs around Table Mountain and nowhere else on the Cape peninsula (or anywhere else in the world). Previously, researchers had determined that the tadpoles require perennial flow (streams that don't dry) in order for the tadpoles to inhabit them. This then is the reason why Table Mountain is the only massif on the peninsula with the frogs. However, in a paper published today, Zishan Ebrahim shows that the frogs also have a sweet spot of temperatures above (and presumably below) which they can't tolerate. 

Zishan monitored physical parameters of Table Mountain's stream water for many years finding that tadpoles don't inhabit all of the streams with perennial flow on the mountain. The warm water that flows down some of the streams could be influenced by the complex hydrological installations on top of the mountain that were originally installed to supply fresh water for the city. Now much of the water on top of the mountain sits in dams where it heats in the sun and may influence the temperature in the streams. There are other problems on Table Mountain, most notably invasive trees, that are also likely to change the hydrological properties of the water and impact on the Ghost frogs and their tadpoles. 

Read more about the conservation relevance of this work in this recently published paper:

Ebrahim, Z, de Villiers, A. and Measey, J (2020) Assessing water conditions conducive to tadpoles of the Table Mountain Ghost Frog (Heleophryne rosei) and the relevance to their conservation Koedoe Vol 62 (1): a1581 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/koedoe.v62i1.1581