Two faces of science

After one year pause (for finishing my PhD in the office), I will again leave to Ifjordfjellet for field work. This year I am well prepaired with a shoe-brush; apparently it is an ultimate tool for cleaning our permanent monitoring plots from lemming pellets. For the question "So what will you do in July?" I can honestly answer "I will be brooming lemming shit away from the tundra." Hopefully I get some great photos of this highly scientific data collecting method!

Another aspect of science is less hilarious (but maybe more rewarding, at least for me). One of my PhD-papers came out yesterday: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0068128 And in a journal where everybody has access to it - not only those who happen to belong to institutions that can afford to pay for the journal to send them articles (that are produced with tax-payers money). So enjoy and be enlightened! (hmm... if you find the food selection strategies of small rodents interesting beyond the fact that they are happy to feed on food that you forgot at the table at your cabin...)

So what is that I have done? The questions here were: what do voles eat? How does it depend on what is available? So what I did was:

I trapped some voles.

 I counted a whole lot of plants

 And I looked what they have eaten (using high-tech methods).

And what did I find out? Voles do have some favourite foods, yes. But more interestingly; in a place where the favourite foods are scarce - they do not use extra time for finding them. I think it is because there are so many predators around that to use time for being picky and choosing this or that is a bit too risky. So they grab what they can, and then run back to a safe hole to eat it. And therefore their stomach contents reflect quite well what is in the vegetation.