{"id":1285,"date":"2020-12-25T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-25T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevenallain.co.uk\/Blog\/?p=1285"},"modified":"2020-12-25T09:28:18","modified_gmt":"2020-12-25T09:28:18","slug":"scifri-reflecting-on-2020-the-year-everyone-wants-to-forget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevenallain.co.uk\/Blog\/scifri-reflecting-on-2020-the-year-everyone-wants-to-forget\/","title":{"rendered":"#SciFri: Reflecting on 2020, the year everyone wants to forget"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For many people, this year has been quite a trying and stressful time. I fully sympathise with this view given the delays and isolation caused by lockdowns, in the attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19. To me, it has been hard to discern when certain events too place and the whole year has become one amorphous blur of insanity. There is no doubt going to be a number of books and blogs looking back at the mayhem that occurred this year, instead I want to reflect on the more positive things that happened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The year started out with so much promise, I among with almost 900 other people congregated in Dunedin, New Zealand for the 9th World Congress of Herpetology<\/a>. Here I presented some research in the form of a poster and also gave a talk on how scientists can use social media, to help convey the positives of amphibian and reptile conservation. I had a great time in New Zealand and the opportunity to network with so many other amazing people. Whilst there, I also had time to do some sightseeing and to check out some of New Zealand’s wildlife – an opportunity that I may never get again. I said it at the time but there it is again, a huge thanks to my doctoral training partnership EnvEast for helping fund my exploits to New Zealand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Most of the delegates of the World Congress of Herpetology, can you spot me?<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Also in January, an exciting paper was published where were described a new species – Pseudoacanthocephalus goodmani<\/a><\/em>, named after my good friend and colleague Mark Goodman. The parasitic worms were first collected in late 2015 and it took 3 and a half years to establish their identity before working on a manuscript to describe a new species. The toad that shed these parasites was a stowaway from Mauritius, that ended up in our care after an unlikely set of events. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The guttural toad (Sclerophrys gutturalis<\/em>) which stowed away from Mauritius to Cambridge<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately in April spent my birthday alone. However, due to the generosity of everyone out there, I received a number of books (many of which were popular science) as presents (from my Amazon Wishlist) and I’m still working my way through them. Thanks to everyone that bought me a book for my birthday, I really appreciate it! I’ve been reading these as quickly as I can and posting my review of them on the #SteveReviews section of this blog. In late May, I was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society<\/a> – something I am extremely happy about. I’m not yet able to use the post-nominal title of ‘FLS’ as I haven’t been formally admitted due to COVID-19, so watch this space!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When July came around, I was finally able to get out to the field and catch some snakes to collect data for my PhD. After waiting for a number of months for the restrictions to relax, I managed to get to my fieldsite and collect some data – of which I am still in the process of analysing. At this time as well, four papers that I’d contributed to were published in the Herpetological Bulletin<\/a><\/em>. These were projects that had helped keep me sane during the first national lockdown and included topics such as confirming a new population of Aesculapian snakes in southern Wales and describing a case of leucism in slow worms. If you’d like a copy of these, you can find them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of my study barred grass snakes (Natrix helvetica<\/em>) checking to see if I’m a threat after I lifted the cover object it was under<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Whilst things seem to have been all doom and gloom, they weren’t always. I’m sure that this year is going to be a nightmare for future historians due to the concentrated lunacy that was packed into each month. Whilst there may have been other events that helped make this year seem a lot brighter, the scientific ones I’ve mentioned are those that I’ll remember when I think of 2020 in the future. Just as I was writing this, I’ve taken a peek at my citations as listed by Google Scholar<\/a> this year. Whilst I know they’re not perfect, I’ve had 15 citations this year, which is an all time record for me. Fingers crossed that 2021 is a lot better for us all, I hope you all stay safe and cheerful over this trying holiday period. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you liked this post and enjoy reading this blog, please consider supporting me on Patreon<\/a> where you will also gain access to exclusive content.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For many people, this year has been quite a trying and stressful time. I fully sympathise with this view given the delays and isolation caused by lockdowns, in the attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19. To me, it has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[19,87,40,12,136,127],"class_list":["post-1285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scifri","tag-scifri","tag-grass-snakes","tag-herpetology","tag-linnean-society","tag-parasites","tag-world-congress-of-herpetology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stevenallain.co.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/IMGP6194-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1696&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pafnrI-kJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevenallain.co.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevenallain.co.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevenallain.co.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevenallain.co.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevenallain.co.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevenallain.co.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevenallain.co.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevenallain.co.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevenallain.co.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevenallain.co.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}