The winter school term has come to an end for our Thacher School students! This has been our most abundant year yet with 28 students enrolled in our Field Biology and Conservation courses which focus on field biology techniques and conservation through the lens of turtles. Our innovative students are currently working on various conservation projects which have research, design and engineering aspects to them. This is a wonderful opportunity for students, who are especially interested in future careers in the animal field, to get hands-on experience.

Some of our student’s projects are focused on the following subjects:

Parasitology: By using microscopes, students identify parasites through fecal analysis of turtles in the TC living collection. Students generate a report on what they’ve found including parasite identification, if any are spotted in the sample. Note: Not all parasites are bad!

Ethograms: A complete ethogram is a dictionary of all the behaviors that a particular species or individual animal performs. Students designing ethograms will choose a specific species or individual turtles to monitor and collect ethogram data on for the remainder of the school year and then show their findings through flow charts.

Botany: Students are designing enclosures that more closely mimic their assigned turtle species’ native habitats. In theory there will be benefits to the animals, but this also serves to educate visitors about the natural history of each species. Students working on this project will primarily be responsible for a list of recommended plant species from their turtle’s native range.

Species’ Climate: Students working on this project will examine the current microclimates at the TC in different species’ enclosures and conduct their own research to design a year long climate protocol for the TC to follow for their assigned species.

Species’ Morphology: Students will take biometric data to be included in the TC live collection database. Data collected will (at least) include weight, morphology, and photo documentation from different angles.

We look forward to the next term and sharing the project updates with our supporters!