Massive Post: El Fín
So. I'm back stateside, and a big update is long overdue.
I haven't really updated since spring break in Nicaragua, so here is
what has happened in the past few weeks.
After staying at my host family's house again for one night, we left to go to Monteverde. You can read that link to know more about it, but basically: a bunch of Quakers from Alabama settled there in the 50s, it's now a part of a conservation area called Bosque Eterno de los Niños (Children's Eternal Rainforest), and it's famous because of the extinction of the Golden Toad,which was endemic to the area. We had to bring everything we needed for two weeks (for Monteverde and Cabo Blanco) and hike in with it. The hike wasn't bad--about 4km down a non-driveable dirt road and a little through the forest. The hike out was worse (mainly because it was uphill the whole way), but manageable. Thanks to my great towing of camera gear, my bag was pretty heavy.
We got to stay in this sweet building, which was in direct sight of the Arenal Volcano (See previous post for picture), and the porch outside of our rooms (second floor) had hammocks. It was awesome. We had a bunch of lectures on deforestation, climate change, and more. Mark Wainwright gave us a couple of awesome lectures on frogs (did you know that a tree frog is not a frog?), and led us on a couple of "frogging" trips at night. He's mentioned in this great article about frog stuff.
Other things of interest in Monteverde. There was a sweet scorpion we found, and I found out that they glow under UV light. Many animals utilize other parts of the light spectrum (e.g., most flowers have different patterns under UV light, since bees see in that spectrum), but this scorpion was, in a word, badass.
Also, one night after a good rain there was a complete moth-fest. About a million moths crowded around the lights by our rooms, and there were probably 200 moths in each room by the time we went to bed. They were cool.
On our free day, we had the option of going on a canopy walk. It was basically a series of bridges through the canopy. It was cool, but I'm glad I didn't have to pay the $20 to go on it.
Though I don't have much to say about Monteverde, I can say that it was one of my favorite places that we visited. It was calm, quiet, and relatively undisturbed, and we were without internet/phone for the week. Refreshing.
After hiking to the top, we stayed a night in a little place that I can't remember the name of in a nearby town, then the next morning we left to take the ferry across el Golfo de Nicoya (Nicoya Gulf) to head to Cabo Blanco.
It was big.
Cabo Blanco was the first natural reserve in Costa Rica. It is now an absolute reserve--it's not open to the public, and only a few select groups get to go there each year. This was the marine biology part of the program. J.B. Heisner from Cornell came down for a few days, gave a few lectures on marine biogeography and ecosystems, and led a faculty-led-project where we caught juvenile Damselfish, put them in small aquariums, and placed them by "wild" ones to see if the size of the fish (lots of fish of one species = fish; lots of fish from different species = fishes) made a difference in the behavior of the wild fish (they are territorial). It kind of failed, but that's OK.
There were about a million crabs at Cabo Blanco, both hermit crabs, pictured below, and harlequin crabs (which I now know are called "halloween crabs"), which I somehow managed to not get a picture of.
They. Were. Everywhere.
We spent lots of time exploring the tide pools (both during the day and, secretly, at night), and I saw a small anteater in a tree. Classroom for the week:
In yet another prayer flag run at 6am, I almost stepped on this ~2m long boa constrictor. It was a bit unnerving.
And I followed this guy, a Bare- for about an hour. This induced my first sunburn of Cabo Blanco.
One salty week later, we left for La Selva, where three weeks of intense-ness began.
First off, we went to the local Dole plantation. We had just read most of a book called "Breakfast of Biodiversity," which talked all about the shortcomings and bad stuff about the banana industry (favorite quote: "And with our penchant for viewing the world in isolated litle disconnected fragments, it is apparently difficult for us all to see the connection between the knife that slices the banana into our cereal bowl and the chain saw that slices tree trunks onto the rain forest floor."), so we were prepared to ask the hard questions. The guide expected this, but his answers were no less roundabout. Did you know that the bananas that you and I eat do not exist naturally? Have you noticed that there are no seeds? Also, a banana tree is not a tree.
Yep, they really do pick 'em green (and put chemicals on them so that latex/sap doesn't drip and get them all sticky). The little Dole stickers get put on by hand.
La Selva is the Organization for Tropical Studies' largest field station. The situation here was kind of like at Palo Verde: about three weeks, lots of fun, but a TON of work.
A view from the bridge of the main area--dining hall straight ahead, our rooms to the right.
View of the river from the same bridge (that linked the main area to all of the lab/classroom areas. I crossed it a lot).
The peccaries at La Selva are like the common house cat or shrew. They were completely unafraid of humans, were in the field area by the labs every day, and smelled really bad. Imagine bad body odor with a hint of pig and rotting. At one point I counted twenty seven in the same hundred square feet.
We didn't have many lectures here, and the ones we did have were by guest lecturers. We had one on mammals, the effects of wind power on wildlife, using satellite imagery to assess climate change and deforestation, and using stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen to assess the diets of things, namely Azteca ants on Cecropia trees. That one (actually, those two) was given by Dr. Cindy Sagers of our very own U of A biology department. The great part: everyone came up to me after she left and said that she'd given the best lectures of the semester, and that they were jealous of ME since she was so cool. Turns out, she'll be my honors thesis advisor, which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the second independent project--but only after I talk about our two faculty led projects.
The first, led by Craig and his grad student Jen, involved catching tiny lizards (Norops humilis) and measuring the color of their dewlaps (the flap of skin under the necks of the males used for mating display and aggression). I don't know much more about it since I wasn't part of the group that wrote up the project, but it was fun. We got to run around and catch lizards for a few hours; they're very small and very fast.
And while I was looking for lizards, we found THIS cool snake. It's a small fer-de-lance. Very poisonous.
While I'm at it, here is another cool thing. It's some sort of larvae of something, the name of which escapes me. All I know is that it was on a wall, it looks cool, and it also looks dangerous.
Anywho. The other faculty led project was led by Dr. Sagers. We worked with adult Cecropia trees. The Cecropia at La Selva (two species: Cecropia obtusifolia and Cecropia insignis) are dioecious, meaning they have both male plants and female plants. Only one species was flowering at the time, and the flowers are the only way you can tell the sexes apart, so we only worked with that one (obtusifolia). On the first day, we found adult C. obtusifolia trees, tagged them, recorded their height, diameter, sex, GPS location, etc., and then collected ants. On the second day we identified the ants to species level. We had hypothesized that the female trees would have more aggressive ants to protect their fruits, but we were wrong. The paper (written by four people), in case you're interested:
Cecropia%20FLP%20Final.pdf
Look at that male obtusifolia.
Another: remember the snake from the last post? It was a tree snake, and it was long.
StephenIP2-Cecropia.pdf
We used a computer program to measure herbivory on these huge ass leaves. It took a long time. Most were worse than this one, and only a few as bad as this:
Some more pictures:
The inside of a Cecropia. The tree provides hollow nodes for nesting sites for the ants, as well as food bodies. The ants provide protection from herbivory.
Here's a picture of Dr. Sagers, a UofA grad student, and myself. He was there for a symposium on climate change, and the idea for this "three generation" picture surfaced.
I also collected samples of leaf tissue and ants to use for stable isotope analysis for my thesis. Those samples are waiting at the OTS office in San José for permits to come to Arkansas.
After the sleepless nights of IP writing, we had to study for our last plant test. Here is Susan giving us a last review of the plants we needed to know:
After the plant test, we had about a day to study for our two finals. I did better than last time, and that's all I'll say about it. After that I went to town and bought a machete, then came back and started working on the faculty led project write-up and the re-write of the IP paper. No fun, and it was all in the last week. To compensate, here are some things that were fun:
A collared aracari (I think).
Harlequin beetle! It was huge.
Sweet spider.
Poison dart frog. They're globally endangered, but locally way too common.
And the kicker: A two-toed sloth exploring a porcupine in a tree. They touched noses.
I haven't really updated since spring break in Nicaragua, so here is
what has happened in the past few weeks.
After staying at my host family's house again for one night, we left to go to Monteverde. You can read that link to know more about it, but basically: a bunch of Quakers from Alabama settled there in the 50s, it's now a part of a conservation area called Bosque Eterno de los Niños (Children's Eternal Rainforest), and it's famous because of the extinction of the Golden Toad,which was endemic to the area. We had to bring everything we needed for two weeks (for Monteverde and Cabo Blanco) and hike in with it. The hike wasn't bad--about 4km down a non-driveable dirt road and a little through the forest. The hike out was worse (mainly because it was uphill the whole way), but manageable. Thanks to my great towing of camera gear, my bag was pretty heavy.
We got to stay in this sweet building, which was in direct sight of the Arenal Volcano (See previous post for picture), and the porch outside of our rooms (second floor) had hammocks. It was awesome. We had a bunch of lectures on deforestation, climate change, and more. Mark Wainwright gave us a couple of awesome lectures on frogs (did you know that a tree frog is not a frog?), and led us on a couple of "frogging" trips at night. He's mentioned in this great article about frog stuff.
Other things of interest in Monteverde. There was a sweet scorpion we found, and I found out that they glow under UV light. Many animals utilize other parts of the light spectrum (e.g., most flowers have different patterns under UV light, since bees see in that spectrum), but this scorpion was, in a word, badass.
Also, one night after a good rain there was a complete moth-fest. About a million moths crowded around the lights by our rooms, and there were probably 200 moths in each room by the time we went to bed. They were cool.
On our free day, we had the option of going on a canopy walk. It was basically a series of bridges through the canopy. It was cool, but I'm glad I didn't have to pay the $20 to go on it.
Though I don't have much to say about Monteverde, I can say that it was one of my favorite places that we visited. It was calm, quiet, and relatively undisturbed, and we were without internet/phone for the week. Refreshing.
After hiking to the top, we stayed a night in a little place that I can't remember the name of in a nearby town, then the next morning we left to take the ferry across el Golfo de Nicoya (Nicoya Gulf) to head to Cabo Blanco.
It was big.Cabo Blanco was the first natural reserve in Costa Rica. It is now an absolute reserve--it's not open to the public, and only a few select groups get to go there each year. This was the marine biology part of the program. J.B. Heisner from Cornell came down for a few days, gave a few lectures on marine biogeography and ecosystems, and led a faculty-led-project where we caught juvenile Damselfish, put them in small aquariums, and placed them by "wild" ones to see if the size of the fish (lots of fish of one species = fish; lots of fish from different species = fishes) made a difference in the behavior of the wild fish (they are territorial). It kind of failed, but that's OK.
There were about a million crabs at Cabo Blanco, both hermit crabs, pictured below, and harlequin crabs (which I now know are called "halloween crabs"), which I somehow managed to not get a picture of.
They. Were. Everywhere.
We spent lots of time exploring the tide pools (both during the day and, secretly, at night), and I saw a small anteater in a tree. Classroom for the week:
In yet another prayer flag run at 6am, I almost stepped on this ~2m long boa constrictor. It was a bit unnerving.
And I followed this guy, a Bare- for about an hour. This induced my first sunburn of Cabo Blanco.
One salty week later, we left for La Selva, where three weeks of intense-ness began.
First off, we went to the local Dole plantation. We had just read most of a book called "Breakfast of Biodiversity," which talked all about the shortcomings and bad stuff about the banana industry (favorite quote: "And with our penchant for viewing the world in isolated litle disconnected fragments, it is apparently difficult for us all to see the connection between the knife that slices the banana into our cereal bowl and the chain saw that slices tree trunks onto the rain forest floor."), so we were prepared to ask the hard questions. The guide expected this, but his answers were no less roundabout. Did you know that the bananas that you and I eat do not exist naturally? Have you noticed that there are no seeds? Also, a banana tree is not a tree.
Yep, they really do pick 'em green (and put chemicals on them so that latex/sap doesn't drip and get them all sticky). The little Dole stickers get put on by hand.
La Selva is the Organization for Tropical Studies' largest field station. The situation here was kind of like at Palo Verde: about three weeks, lots of fun, but a TON of work.
A view from the bridge of the main area--dining hall straight ahead, our rooms to the right.
View of the river from the same bridge (that linked the main area to all of the lab/classroom areas. I crossed it a lot).
The peccaries at La Selva are like the common house cat or shrew. They were completely unafraid of humans, were in the field area by the labs every day, and smelled really bad. Imagine bad body odor with a hint of pig and rotting. At one point I counted twenty seven in the same hundred square feet.We didn't have many lectures here, and the ones we did have were by guest lecturers. We had one on mammals, the effects of wind power on wildlife, using satellite imagery to assess climate change and deforestation, and using stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen to assess the diets of things, namely Azteca ants on Cecropia trees. That one (actually, those two) was given by Dr. Cindy Sagers of our very own U of A biology department. The great part: everyone came up to me after she left and said that she'd given the best lectures of the semester, and that they were jealous of ME since she was so cool. Turns out, she'll be my honors thesis advisor, which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the second independent project--but only after I talk about our two faculty led projects.
The first, led by Craig and his grad student Jen, involved catching tiny lizards (Norops humilis) and measuring the color of their dewlaps (the flap of skin under the necks of the males used for mating display and aggression). I don't know much more about it since I wasn't part of the group that wrote up the project, but it was fun. We got to run around and catch lizards for a few hours; they're very small and very fast.
And while I was looking for lizards, we found THIS cool snake. It's a small fer-de-lance. Very poisonous.
While I'm at it, here is another cool thing. It's some sort of larvae of something, the name of which escapes me. All I know is that it was on a wall, it looks cool, and it also looks dangerous.
Anywho. The other faculty led project was led by Dr. Sagers. We worked with adult Cecropia trees. The Cecropia at La Selva (two species: Cecropia obtusifolia and Cecropia insignis) are dioecious, meaning they have both male plants and female plants. Only one species was flowering at the time, and the flowers are the only way you can tell the sexes apart, so we only worked with that one (obtusifolia). On the first day, we found adult C. obtusifolia trees, tagged them, recorded their height, diameter, sex, GPS location, etc., and then collected ants. On the second day we identified the ants to species level. We had hypothesized that the female trees would have more aggressive ants to protect their fruits, but we were wrong. The paper (written by four people), in case you're interested:
Cecropia%20FLP%20Final.pdf
Look at that male obtusifolia.Another: remember the snake from the last post? It was a tree snake, and it was long.
This brings us to the independent project. Scott and I teamed up again, and after long debate, ended up working with juvenile Cecropia. Long story short: we found about 40 young trees, recorded their height, diameter, location, number of leaves, available light, and more. We took ants from the trees (not all of them had ants), had them identified, and took two leaves from each tree to assess the amount of herbivory. We were, in a way, re-proving the proven. It is well known that Cecropia trees have a mutualistic association with ants, particularly of the genus Azteca, but we found some literature that went against that. Our goal was to find out whether the presence of ants on the trees had an effect on the amount of herbivory that that tree had experienced, and we did. Here's the paper:
StephenIP2-Cecropia.pdf
We used a computer program to measure herbivory on these huge ass leaves. It took a long time. Most were worse than this one, and only a few as bad as this:
Some more pictures:
The inside of a Cecropia. The tree provides hollow nodes for nesting sites for the ants, as well as food bodies. The ants provide protection from herbivory.
Here's a picture of Dr. Sagers, a UofA grad student, and myself. He was there for a symposium on climate change, and the idea for this "three generation" picture surfaced.
I also collected samples of leaf tissue and ants to use for stable isotope analysis for my thesis. Those samples are waiting at the OTS office in San José for permits to come to Arkansas.
After the sleepless nights of IP writing, we had to study for our last plant test. Here is Susan giving us a last review of the plants we needed to know:
After the plant test, we had about a day to study for our two finals. I did better than last time, and that's all I'll say about it. After that I went to town and bought a machete, then came back and started working on the faculty led project write-up and the re-write of the IP paper. No fun, and it was all in the last week. To compensate, here are some things that were fun:
This bat was flying a loop on a sidewalk I was on at night, and somehow I managed to get this picture.
A collared aracari (I think).
Harlequin beetle! It was huge.
Sweet spider.
Poison dart frog. They're globally endangered, but locally way too common.
And the kicker: A two-toed sloth exploring a porcupine in a tree. They touched noses.After that crazy week, we packed up, bought last minute souvenirs, and left. I bought a sweet shirt. On the front: "Solamente cuando el último árbol esté muerto, el último río esté envenenado, y el último pez esté atrapado, entenderemos que no se puede comer dinero." Translated: "Only when the last tree is dead, the last river is poisoned, and the last fish is caught, will we understand that we can't eat money." I liked it.
After La Selva, we headed to Rincón de la Vieja, a national park with a volcano, lots of waterfalls, and some sweet bubbling mud plots. We stayed at an awesome lodge in THREE PERSON rooms. They had a pool.
One night Mike (from Vermont, and might be hosting Darby and myself on our way to Canada this summer) and I went on a night hike, mostly in the dark, under a full moon, to a lookout. Had a beer and some creamy sweet Cheetos, played with some horses, and came back. It was windy and awesome. The next day we went to the national park and hiked around all day.
Cool bromeliad (pineapple family).
Cool moss (hey, Mike!)
Leaf cutter ants (Atta cephalotes).
Really cool red-thorned Acacia and an ant on its extrafloral nectary (see Janzen 1966 for more).
And the mud plots! Think sulfury bubbly mud, Land Before Time style. It was cool.
Another sweet bromeliad, this time red. And very, very sharp. Trust me.
Boilin' spring. Stinky.
Eyelash viper we found on a rock.
And to end the day, we swam in an awesome swimming hole (here's to you, S.M.C.C.).
Last field sunset in Costa Rica. The next was in San José, because that's where we went the next day. We went to the OTS office to take care of paperwork and get T-shirts, then we went to our hotel. I went downtown and bought an Imperial shirt, then we had a party that night. Music trading, Facebook making and exchanging, and lots of hugs later, I was on a flight home. The flights weren't too bad. Ben and I got stopped at customs in Dallas/FTW, had to completely unpack our bags, and they cleaned our boots for us. Haha. More music trading, and then by 7:30 on Tuesday I was home (I'd gotten up at 4:45 that morning after going to bed after 2). Also, I went through one of these, and had no idea what it was. Odd. And they lost my snake boots! Oh well.
It's weird being home, but I'll save that for one last post.
After La Selva, we headed to Rincón de la Vieja, a national park with a volcano, lots of waterfalls, and some sweet bubbling mud plots. We stayed at an awesome lodge in THREE PERSON rooms. They had a pool.
One night Mike (from Vermont, and might be hosting Darby and myself on our way to Canada this summer) and I went on a night hike, mostly in the dark, under a full moon, to a lookout. Had a beer and some creamy sweet Cheetos, played with some horses, and came back. It was windy and awesome. The next day we went to the national park and hiked around all day.
Cool bromeliad (pineapple family).
Cool moss (hey, Mike!)
Leaf cutter ants (Atta cephalotes).
Really cool red-thorned Acacia and an ant on its extrafloral nectary (see Janzen 1966 for more).And the mud plots! Think sulfury bubbly mud, Land Before Time style. It was cool.
Another sweet bromeliad, this time red. And very, very sharp. Trust me.
Boilin' spring. Stinky.
Eyelash viper we found on a rock.
And to end the day, we swam in an awesome swimming hole (here's to you, S.M.C.C.).
Last field sunset in Costa Rica. The next was in San José, because that's where we went the next day. We went to the OTS office to take care of paperwork and get T-shirts, then we went to our hotel. I went downtown and bought an Imperial shirt, then we had a party that night. Music trading, Facebook making and exchanging, and lots of hugs later, I was on a flight home. The flights weren't too bad. Ben and I got stopped at customs in Dallas/FTW, had to completely unpack our bags, and they cleaned our boots for us. Haha. More music trading, and then by 7:30 on Tuesday I was home (I'd gotten up at 4:45 that morning after going to bed after 2). Also, I went through one of these, and had no idea what it was. Odd. And they lost my snake boots! Oh well.It's weird being home, but I'll save that for one last post.
posted by Stephen_I @ 4:05 PM
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