Bwanji!

In May and June of 2007, 13 undergraduate students from Northern Michigan University are taking a field course in Zambia. Most of the students are majors in the Biology department, and all of them will be doing short field studies of their own design while on the ground in Zambia. The group will be making a stop in London on the way, spending four days seeing Zambia/Africa-related British sites (Burton's tomb, Livingstone's artefacts at the Royal Geographic Society, the British Museum of Natural History, etc.) and adjusting to the time change. The course is being led by me, Dr. Alec Lindsay, a professor in the Department of Biology at NMU, and Dr. Jackie Bird - a parasitologist in our department. We have made this blog so students can hopefully post notes thoughts, pictures and discoveries to the world. This should allow classmates, teachers, family and friends to share in their insights and keep track of their travels. Not only that, but viewers of the blog can add comments to posts - please do! We would love to hear your thoughts. Zikomo!

02 May 2007

Snake Diversity


What I plan to study:
In Zambia I intend to study the diversity of snakes between the different biomes present there. I hope to find some snakes that are restricted to certain habitats, as well as ones that are cosmopolitan, being found throughout all of Zambia. The most common kind of snake I expect to see will be members of the family colubridae.
My concerns:
My major concern is that with the limited time we will have in each region of Zambia that I will not be able to find a large enough sample size to make any real determinations on snake diversity, also that I wont be able to locate any snakes at all due to their elusive behavior.
Image from following site: http://academic.sun.ac.za/capeherp/Crotaphopeltis%20hotamboeia2_Dahne_Sep04_Stellenbosch.JPG

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