What a fun surprise this afternoon to receive this tweet from our friend, Dr. Danielle Lee (DNLee):


You may recognize DNLee as the author of The Urban Scientist, a blog on the Scientific American Network where she writes about urban ecology, evolutionary biology & diversity in the sciences. This summer, DNLee took her readers and followers into the field with her to TANZANIA.

There, she spent two and a half months trapping, marking, releasing, and following African Giant Pouched Rats, Cricetomys gambianus – a species popular for its humanitarian work detecting landmines and tuberculosis – but whose natural history and behavior in the wild is poorly understood.

Because DNLee believes so passionately in sharing science with the public, she blogged, tweeted, and posted videos and photos from her expedition in real time – Check out #DispatchesDNLee (on her blog, Facebook, and Twitter)!

In addition to lugging loads of field equipment and supplies halfway around the world, DNLee also carried along a sampling kit from the Wild Life of Our Homes project! For her latest Dispatch, DNLee shares a video of her sampling the four common surfaces in the APOPO Guest House that served as her home base and living quarters during her time in Tanzania.

Thanks DNLee for sharing your experience – we can’t wait to learn what microbes lived with you in your Tanzanian Guest House!