In today post, we are going to talk about the necessity to be persistent and motivated in science to make research. Some months ago, talking with past students who are now trying to implement their own projects, we were discussing about how difficult it is to live from science when you have your own project. Also, a recent twitter from a person who finish a PhD and return to Colombia and who had difficulties to do research due to lack of funding, also make me think about all the difficulties that we have doing science in Colombia. It is true that is difficult and there not many job opportunities and even less grants.I think that one of the reasons why I had been able to do research in Colombia is because I had been able to live from other sources apart from biology jobs, although I had private and public sector jobs in biology, my main income had not been from my career. My way of keep me motivated had always been able to go and see monkeys in the field and I’m grateful with farm owners in my study area who had allowed me to do it at a lower cost.However, probably what make this project, Zocay Project, a long-term project apart from landowner’s support is that I had funds from time to time from Colombian and International grants that allowed me to spend time in the field working with monkeys. It hasn’t been easy, and my persistence had been rewarded. We all have been rejected from grant applications and jobs and what is difficult to do is to apply again after a rejection. There is a lot of techniques and books/articles talking about how to recover from rejections in many aspects of your live, however it is always difficult to do it. Not only because of the individual pressure that each of us put on ourselves after a rejection but also because sometimes it is difficult to see what our applications was lacking? To me each rejection had different phases, starting with disappointing and in some cases anger because I don’t get the grant/ job despite all my efforts. So, I usually take a few days or weeks before looking those applications again. It is a lot of effort and time to make every application, so you really need to be motivated and be persistent to be able to finish them. Another cost of living from research that is rarely discuss apart from low income is what that low income represents if you have a family or not. Live cost is high everywhere and we all need money to at least cover our basic needs. Unfortunately, most grants don’t cover salaries, and some allow you only small stipends for principal researchers, so it is difficult if you don’t have additional income to live from science in Colombia and other countries. This also means you need to have administrative and finance skills that usually biologist don’t have. You need to be willing to make sacrifices and your family needs to be willing to help you with that. So, there are many factors influencing your motivation and your ability to be persistent while you do what you love. I have been lucky in many ways…So, if you want to live from research and you don’t have a research job in which you can develop projects you love, you will need a lot of motivation, mind flexibility and persistence to be able to apply to many grants every year, be organized so those grants you get cover everything you need to do your research and don’t forget to always ask for at least small stipends for you as a principal researcher when possible. Finally, don’t forget to exploit all the other skill you have outside of research and don’t worry about what other people say because you are working in different things apart from your career. There will always be people who criticizes your way of doing things.

If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with us at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities. You can also support our activities by buying our ornate titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== and our new journals in Amazon https://www.amazon.com/X-Carretero/dp/B0CWD1DBJM/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?© Copyright Disclaimer. All pictures used on this web page are protected with copyrights to Xyomara Carretero-Pinzón. Pictures in this post were taken by Francisco Gomez. If you want to use any of these pictures, please leave a message on the website or contact xcarretero@gmail.com

In our two last post we talked about our adventures and observations in the field, however doing science also means more work after the fun part, so today we are talking about some of the work we do after every fieldtrip. Clarification: for me fun part is always fieldwork… As some of you had read, we are doing a revision of ornate titi monkeys distribution limits, so after each fieldtrip, we need to do several things to make sense to all our data and to better understand where this endemic species is really found. This project includes a lot of mapping. We need to download all GPS information we collected in the field. We also need to review each point and verify that is correctly labeled for each observation. We also review each track and calculate total distance of each sampling for reporting. Additionally, as we are reviewing the whole distribution of ornate titi monkey, we also need to verify what areas inside its distribution area are still cover by forest. Therefore, we need to review and process several satellite images and use several layers or maps with different land covers. These layers or maps of different land covers need to be verified, which means we need to verify that each land cover is correctly placed, we used two methods to make this verification. First and every time that its possible we verify land covers on the ground by verifying our maps with direct observations in the real places. When access to those areas is difficult, we analyze several satellite images from the same area from different months to corroborate an specific area is covered by forest or any other specific land use such as palm oil plantation or rice plot, for example.After that we put all our observation points on a map, which includes all forest areas identified as well as all our field observations and observations from other researchers and verified records from other observers. Part of this work requires that we collect information from public databases, citizen science and review published and unpublished information. After all this we calculate current distribution of this endemic species using GIS tools. So after a lot of fieldwork we also spend a lot of time in front of our computers reviewing and processing information, and by this we mean we continue having fun by looking at maps and satellite images to complement what we observe in the field. Hopefully all this new information will help us to better conserve this incredible endemic species of Colombian Llanos, especially from Meta department.If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with us at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities. You can also support our activities by buying our ornate titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== and our new journals in Amazon https://www.amazon.com/X-Carretero/dp/B0CWD1DBJM/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?© Copyright Disclaimer. All pictures used on this web page are protected with copyrights to Xyomara Carretero-Pinzón. Picture in this post was taken by Francisco Gomez. If you want to use any of these pictures, please leave a message on the website or contact xcarretero@gmail.com