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

1/06/2012

¡Hola Costa Rica!

Despite a delayed flight and an amusing sense of delirium upon arriving, we made it to Costa Rica!  Actually Madeline managed to get here earlier than the rest of us...definitely a first.  While she was asleep in our hotel, the rest of us stumbled out of the airport at around 11:15 pm to find Ryan Calsbeek, our Dartmouth professor for the first 3 weeks, waiting for us.  After herding us onto the small coach bus that apparently is going to cart us all over the country for the next 6 weeks, the first thing he did after giving us our room keys (Maddy and I are roommates...total coincidence, I swear) was assign each of us a spirit animal.  Obviously.  So instead of counting off from 1 to 13 in order to make sure our whole group is on the bus, we'll be shouting our spirit animals in alphabetical order, from agouti to peccary.  Hence, the title of our blog.  Madeline's is the ocelot, a spotted jungle cat related to the jaguar, while mine is the motmot, which you should just google right now because words won't do justice to its incredible colors.  Hopefully we'll see both while we're here!

3-Toed Sloth in INBio


This morning after breakfast at the Best Western in San Jose we piled onto our bus and went to the headquarters of the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), which runs our program, to learn a bit more about what we've gotten ourselves into and to retrieve boxes and boxes of field equipment.  We spent the rest of the morning wandering around INBioparque, the "Natural Biodiversity Reserve" of Costa Rica, which is basically like a huge zoo stocked with all kinds of plants and animals native to Costa Rica (3-toed sloth, white-tailed deer, pineapple, blue morpho butterflies, etc).  Then it was back to the hotel to drop off our backpacks (and Maddy K, who channeled her inner ocelot by taking a 4-hour catnap) and wander around to find lunch, which we found in the Mercado Central.  Lunch was delicious and yes, involved rice and beans.  We returned to the hotel for some downtime which I used to remove a cockroach from our shower (thank you Bio 14, are you reading this Kelly Kennedy?) and then join Maddy in taking a nap.  Tonight we're going to dinner as a whole group and tomorrow morning we leave bright and early for Palo Verde National Park!

Blue Morpho Butterflies
Hasta Luego,
-Madi and Maddy