Phenotypic Puzzles

Every day in my lab, like many of my colleagues, is a bit different. I start of the day with a meeting with my mentor Liz and then get to work on modeling in R. Basically, we can train the computer to recognize patterns based on comparing the complex system of matrices of different possible causal variables of social behavior variation (like sex, social “status”, and access to nutrition). From training the computer this way, we can see which factors really matter. Because these models have to run millions of times and take several hours to finish (and we have several models that we’re always adding to), I get these started early in the morning.

I also read usually at least one paper a day that Liz and I talk about at our afternoon meeting. Often, it’s about baboon social habits or life, but sometimes they talk more about complex statistical analyses. For my part, it’s a lot of googling random words (like oncogenic) and asking Liz what the heck different things mean.

I’ve only “gone in” once, because it’s so much easier to run models from Blackwell where I already have all my computer stuff set up, but getting a tour of the lab was a highlight of my time so far! The huge lab room was pretty cool, but I really thought the records room was interesting. It has paper records of the entire project going back to the 1970’s.

I’m really looking forward to this Friday’s in person (!!) lab meeting. Zoom meetings can be nice because they’re so convenient, but I really miss seeing people in real life and really won’t miss the awkward Zoom-caused silences and interruptions that will (hopefully) disappear soon.

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