AusRFS Vic

Hi all thanks for all the welcomes on my intro page. There seems to be a number of us who have studied zoo or genetics on the forum; is this what led us to our love of the pet rat? I know I always felt sorry for all those rats we disected in first year and beyond. Thought it might be interesting to find out what our areas of expertise were/are and where we are now working. I majored in behaviour especially social behaviour (worked on eusocial bees) so thats what I find interesting. What about the rest of you? I also did quite a bit of genetics so I'm interested in that but what I've read gets confusing because I'm not really clear on the colours (too many names) and I'd have too sit down and spend some time to get it clear.

I majored in genetics and zoology, my honours year was an ecology project working with parthenogenetic grasshoppers.

I've been keeping snakes since before I ever thought about uni, and snakes are what brought me to rats (a common story).

Like most groups of animal enthusiasts, rat fanciers have invented their own version of genetics, with their own unique jargon, and their own incorrect information which is repeated often enough to be accepted by them as fact. All of the Mendelian traits rat fanciers work with are completely straight forward though, and if you have a reasonable grounding in genetics you will have no trouble understanding it all immediately if you are presented with it in a proper format. Mouse genetics on the other hand, well, it's equally simple, but there is so much of it you will take a while to memorise it all. There are so few Mendelian traits in the rat side of things and they interact so simply that you can memorise the lot within minutes.

Where can i get the genetics in a clear format? What I've come across so far is far from clear and I have a feeling a bit wrong. Grasshoppers sound interesting,did you go on to work in the field or end up doing something more mundane like me?

What do you mean by "the genetics"? You can do a DNA extraction on some tissue samples if you like. I'm not sure what you are asking for.

I worked in laboratories and animal houses after graduating from uni, but then decided to persue other ventures. Probably a very bad decision!