Notes from the Lab

Meredith: Not all of our exciting research takes place in the field — there’s a lot going on behind the scenes in our lab, and we rely on an invaluable group of undergraduate research assistants to help us go through the massive amounts of Snapshot data you guys provide! Jess has been working with us for the last few semesters and has some insight on what it’s like to work with this Serengeti data set. 

Hello everyone! My name is Jessica Dewey, and I am currently an undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota working in the research lab that runs this project! Cool, right? I’m new around here so I thought my first post should be an introduction of myself and how I got involved in this lab.

Imagine me a few years ago: a young high school student, undoubtedly procrastinating in some way, suddenly stumbling upon a website called “Snapshot Serengeti”. At the time, I was only certain of two things — I loved animals and I loved research – so this discovery was perfect for me! I spent most of my evening identifying animals, and continued to go back to procrastinate even more.

Now flash forward to last semester, when I get an email from one of the university biology clubs saying that Dr. Craig Packer, head of the Serengeti Lion Project, will be giving a talk about his work. Well I HAVE to go! I sit and listen intently, eager to learn all about research being done with lions. Near the end of his talk he then mentions a website (Snapshot Serengeti, of course) where all of the images from the field get uploaded for the public to identify, and I’m immediately floored. How did I get so lucky, to go to the very University that uses those pictures I spent time identifying years ago in their research? The best moment was when the graduate students working with Craig said that they were looking for undergraduates to help them with their research. I took the opportunity to introduce myself to Meredith, and so far my experience in this lab has been amazing.

I’ve learned a lot about how field research is done, how data is collected and analyzed, and what it takes for someone to actually be a researcher in the field.  Not everything I do is as fun as going through tons of pictures a day, but all of the work in this lab is interesting and meaningful, and that’s what really matters to me. One of the major projects the lab has been working on with Meredith is trying to characterize changes in habitat at the camera trap sites by looking at the Snapshot pictures. We have been going through the giant list of data to find pictures to use for this characterization. We haven’t been going through the images themselves – rather the metadata, or the data ABOUT the data (it’s literally the biggest Excel sheet I’ve ever seen). It can get monotonous at times, but what keeps me going is the thought that when we finish picking out all of these random images, we will get to look at them and use them for this research project.

I hope that was a thorough enough introduction for you all, but let me say one last thing: THANK YOU!  Without the time you all put in to identifying these pictures, the research we are doing would not be happening at the pace it is.

Here is one of my favorite images I’ve seen so far: