3/06/2012

A storm and sunset

It's been a windy few days on Little Cayman!  We had a huge rainstorm this afternoon right at sunset - it was incredible.  We've got a barbeque and bonfire on the beach planned for tomorrow night, which should be lots of fun if the wind dies down enough. We're working on finishing up our (last!) papers, and we'll be on our way home on Thursday morning!

2/19/2012

Little Cayman

We left La Selva yesterday after lunch, stayed the night (or part of it at least) in San Jose, and then at 3:45 this morning we piled on a bus to get to the airport.  Fourteen hours and 3 flights later, we're on Little Cayman!  Needless to say, we're all a little delerious, but the research station here is awesome--literally right on the beach (like 10 feet from the water's edge).  We arrived just in time for sunset and dinner.














The island is pretty tiny--only about 10 square miles.  We flew in from Grand Cayman on a plane that was just big enough to fit our group of 15 and the pilot.  Tomorrow we'll get a bit of an orientation in the morning and then get in the water after lunch!  It'll be so wonderful to be able to swim in the ocean without worrying about getting eaten by a bull shark or a crocodile!

-Madi and Maddy

2/12/2012

And we're back!

            Two weeks, three field stations, and billions of bugbites later, the Bio FSP has emerged from the jungle and has internet access once again at La Selva Biological Station on the Caribbean slope.  There’s so much to write about, but I’ll take it one location at a time, starting with Cuerici.
The Cuerici field station is in one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.  We left Monteverde right after breakfast and drove to San Jose, where we left Ryan Calsbeek and picked up Matt Ayers, our professor for the middle third of the course.  Then we drove another 2 hours or so (uphill all the way) until we were driving on the continental divide.  Eventually our bus pulled over and we met Carlos and Alberto, our hosts at Cuerici.  They drove our bags down to the Cuerici field station, and we followed them on foot with our backpacks.  The hike in was about 4 km, mostly downhill, on a dirt road.  We got to the field station right after dark. 
The next day Carlos (who owns the property and runs the field station) led us on a hike up a trail he cut himself.  The trail is a loop that starts at the field station and goes up through a section of secondary forest dominated by Alder trees and a species of bamboo.  After about 15 minutes of walking we crossed into the primary forest, which has never been cut.  Here we found 1000-year old oak trees growing side by side with orchids, bromeliads, and bamboo.  Near the top of the trail is a lookout facing the pacific coast, from which you can see ChirripĆ³, the tallest mountain in Costa Rica, as well as the Osa Peninsula, which is where Corcovado is located.  Carlos’ family has lived on this land since at least his grandfather’s generation, so he knows it and its history inside and out.  The mountains here remind me of home in a way, but they’re also so much higher and clearly newer – the view from the field station in the morning is almost always a vista of mountaintops floating above the clouds.  The weather here is also different; it’s sunny in the morning, but clouds and fog roll in like clockwork around lunchtime.  After lunch we’ve seen days that clear up again, but we’ve also had rainy afternoons.  It’s colder here too – at night it can be below freezing, and windy.
After a break for lunch we gathered again so Carlos could show us the trout farm that he runs.  Apparently 70 years ago the Costa Rican government thought it would be a brilliant idea to introduce rainbow trout from Canada and the western US into high-elevation streams, but quickly found that they were detrimental to the endemic ecosystems.  They’ve since removed all the trout from the rivers here, but some still live in lakes where people can fish for them recreationally and the government still raises them in hatcheries as food.  Besides the government’s facilities, Carlos has the only other rainbow trout fishery in Costa Rica.  While the government imports eggs from Washington state in the US, Carlos breeds his own fish and raises them, keeping some as reproductive fish, selling some to restaurants, some to the lakes that are stocked with trout, and keeping others to eat.  They’re kept in pools that are built into a hillside so that water can flow downhill from one canal to the next without using any electricity.  The water that flows through the system comes from a spring above the station, and once it’s gone all the way through the different trout pools it rejoins a stream that runs through a hydroelectric generator that Carlos built himself down the hill from the station.  The whole operation is so well planned and thought out, and all without most of the technologies used in the United States for the same purposes.  He’s been breeding fish for 22 years, without the help of books about fish husbandry or information from the Internet.  He also keeps cows, ducks, chickens, a horse, and a few dogs.  Apparently his family used to log the land, but they’ve stopped cutting trees from deep in the forest and instead use the Alder trees along the forest’s edge that regenerate quickly.  He’s clearly brilliant and probably taught himself most of what he knows, so it’s been quite the experience to talk to him about all his endeavors and experiences.  He also only speaks Spanish, so that’s been a lot of fun too.
We were so impressed by the fishery and so touched by how much Carlos clearly cares for the fish and his impact on the land that we decided to do our project on the trout.  We started out by asking him questions about the fishery and asking him what questions he has about raising the trout; about what he feeds them (commercial feed and sometimes worms from the compost), how many he has, whether he’s ever experimented with different densities in each pool, etc.  Turns out one of his biggest questions was just how the water temperature, dissolved oxygen, and pH has been changing.  Imagine running a fishery and not having the equipment to quantify DO, let alone water temperature!  Groups in past years have taken these measurements as their project, so we also measured these things aside from our project so Carlos can begin to have a year-by-year record of temperature, DO, and pH in the ponds.  Our real project, however, was built around the relationship between the relative growth rate of the fish and their densities.  We compared the trout’s body condition to the density of trout in their pond, and we (meaning mostly Maddy, the math major) also set up an economic model to show whether it’s more profitable to grow fish at higher or lower densities depending on their growth rate and the food they’re given.  The growth rates we used were based on a study of wild brown trout, so the model obviously isn’t perfect, but it was really interesting to see how density affected yearly profit—turns out in almost every scenario we imagined it was more profitable to grow the fish at lower densities.  In any case, we ended up spending two full days with Carlos, catching fish from each pool with a net, measuring their length and weight, marking them by clipping their anal fins, and releasing them back into their pool.  The next day we caught them again and used the number of marked fish we caught to estimate the total number of fish in each pond (something Carlos doesn’t know exactly).  Working with the fish was incredible – they’re absolutely beautiful, especially in the sunlight.  We put the fish we netted into a smaller tub, and each took turns hand-catching them from the tub and measuring them before returning them to the water, which was pretty amusing since some of them put up quite a fight.  On our last day Carlos caught 10 of the trout and cooked them up for lunch—only one of them was marked, which almost perfectly matched our population estimations for that pond!
Now that we have internet again I’ll try to catch up with posts about Corcovado and Las Cruces whenever I get a minute to write.  Stay tuned!

-Madi

1/25/2012

Santa Rosa-Monteverde

Santa Rosa was VACATION!!  No projects here at the beach.  Absolutely the most gorgeous beach ever; maybe 4 or 5 miles end to end with mountains wrapping around the ends to make a little bay. It was like we were in a movie. It was so remote; we hiked 11km in to the beach and ran straight into the ocean.  Salt water never tasted so good.  That afternoon the whole group walked all the way down to one end of the beach laughing about how we finally had some time to relax and we couldn't sit still.



We camped in 4 person tents in a campground right behind the beach. It was right in the middle of turtle breeding season and there was no moon, so every night there were turtles coming up to build nests and lay eggs, and every afternoon turtle nets were hatching.  We saw both within 12 hours.  The first night we walked down to the other end of the beach with a guide who studies the turtles and tags/tracks them.  It was a late night but totally worth it...we saw an Olive Ridley laying eggs.  She lays arond 70 eggs and then spends at least 40 minutes covering up and patting down the nest in this circular dance--she was so careful!  You couldn't even tell where the nest was when she was done patting it down.  Watching her return to the ocean under only the starlight was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.  The next day we saw Olive Ridley and Green turtule babies hatching.

After we left Santa Rosa we arrived at Monteverde, which is a montane cloud forest.  Everything here is so lush; someone noted "it's like a greenhouse!"  There are orchids, ferns, bromeliads, and super colorful flowers everywhere.    It was mildly terrifying to get here in our monster (stick shift) bus on the super steep, narrow, windy roads/bridges, but it's been incredibly worth it.  We've seen hummingbirds, waterfalls, plants growing wild in the forest that many people pay lots of money for at a flower shop...but strangely, not too many clouds.  It should be really foggy with nearly constant precipitaition, but it's been sunny every day we've been here.  Apparently it was sunny all of last year's stay also.  It really shows you signs of climate change--it's scary to think this incredibly unique habitat might be gone soon.

Maddy and I did a really cool project here on hummingbird territoriality that we'll try to explain later, but now I'm off to breakfast and then to our next site: Cuerici.  We probably won't have internet access until the first or second week of February, so see you then!

-Madi

1/15/2012

Last Day at Palo Verde

This morning we drove down the road from the field station and hopped on a boat for a trip down the Tempisque river.  We saw all kinds of birds and a bunch of crocodiles; it was great to just chill out for a bit.


Tomorrow right after breakfast we leave for Santa Rosa, which is north of here on the Pacific coast.  Basically we'll be camping on the beach for a few nights, potentially watching sea turtles hatch if we're lucky.  No internet in Santa Rosa, so this is it until we get to Monteverde on the 18th!

-Madi

1/14/2012

Sunrise Hike

After a long day collecting data yesterday we were rewarded with an explosion of color at sunset, which we stopped to watch on the boardwalk that goes out into the marsh.





















And because we weren't tired enough from running around in the sun all day and frantically writing papers all night, we decided to go on a hike this morning to the cliffs above the field station to watch the sun rise.  It was definitely worth one less hour of sleep.




1/12/2012

For real this time...

An actual coral snake. But the first was a pretty good mimic, huh? We all bought it. When we did finally decide that our mimic was a King snake we took it out and handled it. It was the first snake I've ever held! Even though it's bite is harmless, it does bite... and proved it to our professor... and that was enough for me to be plenty nervous.

Last night we went on a night hike to brainstorm ideas for our first independent project. The brainstorming fell short, but we had a good time. As we walked, night hawks kept flying up in front of us as we disturbed them from their perches on the road. When we made it back to camp, we ran right into a hognosed viper, which is also poisonous, and very aggressive. We had to jump back a foot to avoid its lurch towards us. And then tonight, we saw a tarantula. So many predators! 

But don't think we just mess around. We've been working really hard... The last two days I've been slaving around in the forest and meadows capturing butterflies! (40 species of butterflies if you were curious.) We identified them to look at the biodiversity of areas of the forest that have received different levels of disturbance. Turns out more disturbance = more butterflies. 

Madeline 

Coral Snake!

Just kidding, it's probably just a mimic.  We didn't give it a chance to prove us wrong.

1/11/2012

Projects!

So by now we're all deep into our second research projects at Palo Verde. The first two projects of the term are faculty initiated, meaning our professor and each of the two TAs come up with a project question and it's up to us (working in three different groups) to develop a hypothesis and methods to test it.  Our first projects all involved looking at the mutualism that exists between Acacia trees and Acacia ants--the tree gives the ants a home and food, and the ants protect the tree from other herbivores and competition from other tree species.  Acacia ants come in 3 species, some more aggressive than others.  The project I was involved in looked for a correlation between species aggression and the rate of response to percieved herbivory (basically us hitting the tree with a stick).  We also looked to see if the different species had different levels response based on the initial density of ants on the tree trunk in a 10 cm length of trunk around the "herbivory".  We found that all three species of ant responded very quickly to a disturbance, with activity levels peaking between 0 and 15 seconds after the disturbance.  We also found that while one species of ant increases its activity by the same percentage regardless of initial ant density at the site of disturbance, the strength of response by the other two ant species was dependent on how many ants were already at the disturbance sight.  None of us really had any idea what to expect from the project or whether we would get significant data, but by the end of the day we were all laughing at how excited we were about Acacia ants. 

Yesterday we started our second faculty initiated projects, all three of which asked a different question about the behavior of various animals.  There was a butterfly question, an iguana question, and a fish question...all of which involved catching the study subject.  I ended up doing the fish project, although definitely the most exciting part of the day yesterday was watching the iguana group try to surround and pounce on an iguana.  My group decided to try to catch fish in the wetland, but after a few minutes slurping around ankle-deep in muck and knee-deep in invasive water hyacinth we decided to catch our fish in the watering hole instead.  The watering hole is about 3/4 of a mile from the station and used to be a water source for the ranch that existed here before the area was a national park.  Apparently it's one of the only sources of fresh water for wildlife during the dry season, so it's a really good place to see animals.  While we were there yesterday we saw 4 or 5 scarlet macaws that live in a tree nearby.  Anyways, using a seine net we caught a bunch of fish, mainly of two different species, and organized our experiment around whether one of these species would change their behavior based on which side of their tank we added food to.  So basically I spent all of this morning feeding and watching fish:)

Tomorrow we start talking about ideas for our first student initiated projects, which is mildly intimidating but also exciting.  I'm kind of hoping to keep looking at the fish we used today.

Time for dinner!
-Madi

1/08/2012

Palo Verde


After a 4-hour bus ride from San Jose, we arrived at Palo Verde National Park yesterday just before noon.  We unpacked the bus and moved into our dorms, bunk rooms with room for 4-6 people each.  The weather here is incredible - dry, sunny and warm with an almost constant breeze.  Lunch is served each day from 12-1, so Madeline took the time between lunch and our afternoon walk to go for a run down the road, where apparently she saw an ocelot!! 


In the afternoon we went for a hike around some of the trails in the park and saw our first troop of monkeys! They were white-faced Capuchin, in a troop of 15 or so, with a few babies.  Further along we also saw a coatimundi, an agouti, and a million kinds of birds and bugs...and we heard howler monkeys, but didn't see them.  Right in front of the field station there's a huge wetland (the floodplain of the Tempisque River) that's protected as part of the national park.  At the end of our hike Ryan showed us a boardwalk that goes out into the wetland and a tower that we can climb to look out over it, both of which gave us some amazing views of the birds that live there.  Finally, near sunset we hiked a trail that leads up to a ridge a little ways from the field station to a place called "La Roca" (yup, it means "the rock").  The trail basically ends at a huge rock outcropping high above the wetland with the most incredible views.  I can think of few other places I've been where you can look as far as you can in every direction and not see a single sign of civilization - it's incredible.  It felt almost like we were in a movie, watching the wind move over the wetland grasses with egrets flying in pairs over the river.  It was such an incredible spot that a few of us decided to come this morning to see the sunrise.  This involved waking up at 5:20 am, searching for our clothes and hiking boots with our headlamps while hoping not to run into any scorpions, and hiking/running back up the trail in the early morning light.  It was more than worth it...the pictures don't come close to doing it justice.  While the rest of the group walked back towards the field station for breakfast (which starts at 6:30!!) I went for a short run down the road that leads into the field station, obviously hoping to come across a jungle cat, but instead saw another group of capuchin monkeys and some pretty cool birds.  I made it back just in time for breakfast, which included rice and beans (obviously) and SO MUCH delicious fruit.

That's all for now!

-Madi