S-STEM/TRAIN Scholar Christopher Livingston's Blog

Technically spring doesn't officially start until March 19th this year, but since we are in AZ and everything is blooming and trees are leafing out so I think it is safe to call it spring. Since my future will revolve around plants, spring has become a favorite season of mine. I enjoy watching the transformation that the landscape undergoes and seeing the new blossoms tempting the bees out for full days of work. In my own yard I am observing the trees turning green, the clover is growing tall, and to my excitement the daffodils that I planted last year have sprung up and already have a bloom. I have attached a picture of the daffodil and also some other blooms in my yard: Freesia, Snapdragons, Azaleas, and an ornamental Kale that has bolted but not yet bloomed. This week has been jam packed with things going on which makes sense since we are roughly half-way through the semester. This weekend I will be participating in the Arizona WET Project where community volunteers, usually mas...

Wow! What a busy week this has been for me! This week I worked on my ASU transfer application and my TRAIN application for the fall along with everything else that I normally do. I started the week off on Sunday by meeting up with Dr. Ortiz and Dr. Jennifer Sweat on campus to capture and mount bees. This experience was very interesting because I was able to see the method used for the entire process. Plastic bowls were placed in the garden and around the future site of the native pollinator garden, the bowls had been spray painted with fluorescent spray paint to attract insects and then filled with soap water to kill the bees. Most of the insects that we caught were flies but we had a few sweat bees and also a lady bug (the lady bug survived and we released it, in case you were worried). Dr. Sweat had brought some honey bees with her that she had previously caught in case we didn’t catch any, these were the bees that we looked at under the dissecting microscope and then mounted (phot...

Hey fellow bloggers! This week I worked on my research proposal. When I saw the assignment my initial reaction was "How do I....", but after reading through the assignment and talking with my mentor Dr. Ortiz I was able to put together a rough draft and then went from there. Here I present to you my research proposal, let me know what you think! (Also, there is a picture of the PC  garden at the bottom of the proposal because, why not?) Do your best whenever you are doing anything! -Chris RESEARCH PROPOSAL The CAP-LTER ( Central Arizona–Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research) project through ASU includes a long term study on ground dwelling arthropod biodiversity in diverse locations around the greater Phoenix metropolitan area. This study seeks to understand the impact urban development has on the biodiversity of ground dwelling arthropods, which include insects and arachnids among others. It is important to study arthropods because they are the base of th...

This week we are setting our traps to see the arthropod biodiversity that we currently have in the PC edible garden. Two traps have been built and placed in the garden. Today we are opening the traps to start collecting and on Thursday we will close the traps and see what we get, so we just have to play the waiting game. I’ve included a picture of one of the traps, it’s a pretty simple design that will hopefully yield some interesting finds. Outside of this my classes are moving right along, we haven’t had much work in any of them yet, but I’m sure that’s about to change soon.

To start off my research, I assisted Matt in measuring large black PVC tubing in six inch increments... I didn't really understand why but I was happy to help. Upon further discussion of the pipe measuring I discovered that these pipes were going to be made into insect/arthropod traps that would be used in the garden, I love the garden so this is perfect for me! I am also finding five different scholarly sources about Arizona insects and different types of insect traps. Dr. Ortiz filled me in on more of the specifics of the project to help me find good scholarly sources. We are developing a native pollinator garden on the Phoenix College campus grounds, one of the things that we want to know is how the insect/arthropod biodiversity will change once the landscape has changed. We are building these insect traps in order to study that change, and we will first test them out in the Phoenix College edible garden. This should prove to be a very interesting project!

Hello all, this is my first blog post ever! My name is Chris Livingston (just like the blog says), I am a STEM student at Phoenix College and this is my first semester joining the S-STEM/TRAIN scholarship experience, and hopefully not my last! I will be getting acclimated to my internship at Phoenix College in the next few weeks and I'm sure you will be updated via this blog to see how it's going for me. At first I was a bit nervous about joining this project since I have to balance it with my other classes, but after speaking with Dr. Chapman I feel better about it, in fact I feel a bit excited since it will give me experiences that will be immensely valuable to my future. I look forward to what I'm going to learn and the contacts that I will make through this program. Wish me luck! Here are pictures of the door and door bell of the Dalby building on campus, which is where I will be spending my time working on the project.