What I'm doing right now (Sept 9)

I'm currently sitting in a computer lab with an undergraduate in the Ecology Project Lab that I TA (teaching assistant). She's counting the number of eggs on female Rotifers (http://www.rotifer.com/) that reproduce parthenogenically, which means they don't need a man to have babies. The rotifers carry the eggs on their backs like giant balloons taped to their butts. The undergrads are running a life history experiment to see how food concentration (algae, Tetraselmis - http://microscope.mbl.edu/scripts/microscope.php?func=browseAlpha&letter=T&taxa=Tetraselmis) affects reproduction and survivorship of rotifers. So far (as expected), it appears that the rotifers with higher concentrations of food have a significantly higher rate of reproduction. Hmmm, can this research be correlated with the ridiculous population explotion of the most pesky parasite to infect this planet (homo sapiens) and the fact that a McDonald's can be found on almost every street corner of every country in the world? (http://www.populationconnection.org/About_Us/).

Food for thought.