Keeping Warm

Today was a scorcher!  I checked the weather in Hickory Corners, Michigan and noticed it was below 10 degrees Fahrenheit.  My skin remembers that cold, less than two weeks ago, but most of me is more used to sweating in bed at night with a fan on.  (Thank goodness for the fan -- some of the sites won't have them, so I'm appreciating it now.)  

I spent the day preparing the first experiment for the independent project on Ant-Acacia Coreid bugs that I'm doing with two other students, Becky and Ellen R.  That meant a lot of walking, hours out in the forest under the sun looking for bugs and the right species of Acacia.  We got to see other interesting things on the way, and just being outside is a pleasure.  I saw my first Great Currasows today, huge birds that walk around on the ground.  They make a fantastic amount of noise running through the woods, like people -- you can hear that they are bipedal and not very careful! 

We also walked by a group of capuchins just as they ran into a band of howler monkeys.  It didn't seem too dramatic.  Actually, the best part was when cars drove by.  It seems that the howlers hear the rumbling of an automobile as a threat, and they answer with their own growls that completely drown out the vehicle (which is pretty impressive, on these bumpy gravel roads.)  A band of five howler monkeys can make a very intimidating roar.

This evening we had a salsa and merengue workshop in the dining room.  I love dancing!  It's like playing cards; I have to be reminded of the rules every single time, but the I pick it up fast and have fun.

That's about it, it was a quiet day.  Amanda actually found a scorpion on our bedroom floor, that was probably the most exciting thing.  :)  She ushered it outside.

In addition to the curassow, I saw a steely-vented and cinnamon hummingbirds, and a great-crested flycatcher.  They're pretty hard to tell from the brown-crested, and now I'm not sure i've actually seen the latter.  Birding is a fun puzzle.  I also saw a gnatcatcher, either the tropical or white-lored.  I'm leaning toward tropical.  

Now i get to sleep for 8 hours.  Yay!  Keep warm up there in North America, ya'll.

On the first Independent Project

No post yesterday because we were working from morning until 1:30 am finishing collecting data, analyzing and preparing the presentation for our first Faculty-Led Project (FLP).  (Okay, so I went to bed at 11:30 -- the rest of the group spent two more hours torturing the data!)  The story in a nutshell: we found these Coreid bugs living on ant acacia trees where most other living things are chased off by the ants.  How is this possible?  We hypothesized chemical defense/camouflage, and inspected the gland where all bugs in this group expel defense compounds.  When you upset the bug, it sprays a liquid that smells like green apple candy.  If you smear some of this on a Q-tip and tap the Q-tip on an acacia branch, the ants run over to investigate, but once they get close to the smell they run away again.  (A clean Q-tip is attacked with vigor).  We're not 100% sure that this is the same mechanism that the bugs use to make themselves invisible, but it's certainly part of their "living with acacia ants" arsenal, and very cool!  Combined with some of the other ecological data we've collected and a chemical analysis of the compound, we think it might be an Oecologia-quality (mid-level journal) paper.  Much more than we expected from this little project!

As soon as the results were presented at 8am this morning, we shifted gears and started talking about our first independent projects.  My FLP group decided to split up into 2 groups of 3 and continue to pursue Coreid bug questions; my sub-group is going to look at how other ant species react to the bugs, and how the bugs react to other Acacia species (there are 2 species of Ant Acacia locally, 4 species of ants on the Acacias, and one other Acacia that doesn't usually have ants on it).  The big group of 6 that worked on the FLP was full of ideas and very exciting to be a part of, but sometimes we got so wrapped up in discussion that it took forever to make a decision and then get moving.  The smaller groups already seem more efficient and relaxing.  Either way, I'm learning a lot about what scientific collaboration is all about.  It feels great to sit around a table for two hours discussing experimental design and implications, and resent being torn away for dinner.  

In between the thrill of design and discovery, I've been exhausted.  I've definitely been pushing my boundaries, cutting sleep and time for reflection short.  This morning I had to go back to bed at 9am for a couple of hours.  I had a vivid dream about going to an all-you-can-eat buffet with the other OTS students.  While everyone else was loading a normal plate and sitting down to eat, I just kept picking out more food, plate after plate, and piling them up.  By the time I actually sat down to eat, there was WAY more food than I could ever manage.  Plus, I'd spilled it all over myself in the process -- spaghetti sauce up to my elbows.  Anybody want to take a stab at interpreting that one?  I woke up laughing and felt rejuvenated.

Highlights from the last couple of days: 

Howler monkeys at one of our acacia sites yesterday.  I got to hear them howling for the first time, and then a bit later they came down with a baby in tow and checked us out.  

I haven't seen any scorpions outside of collection jars yet, but as I was brushing my teeth this evening I heard one of the guys in the next-door bathroom commenting on the number in the shower.  So I'm keeping my shoes on when I walk around anywhere.  I've gotten two ticks just today, though, and not in the kind of place one likes to have ectoparasites.  At least they don't carry diseases here.  

I realized yesterday that I really do unequivocally love the food at Palo Verde.  Beans and rice for every meal (even breakfast), always with some kind of fresh local juice.  Usually I can't identify it.  Often we have avocados with breakfast, sweet breads with most meals.  Yesterday I had my very first passion fruit, aka 'monkey brain,' a slimy delicacy.  Steamed local squash, or cucumbers and radishes in vinegar.  Fresh melon and pineapple.  I think I could eat this stuff forever.  I hope the next places we go are this good!

I was just interrupted from typing this by the news that a tailless scorpion had appeared on the sidewalk outside my room.  It was cool, looked like a big, flat spider.

I'll close this post with my bird list for the last 3 days.  I discovered that the nightjar I saw was the common pauraque (named for the call, which apparently sounds like "porque").  This morning I saw 2 turquoise-browed motmots, which are really gorgeous birds with a call like a soft train whistle.  Other than that, the new additions to the list are limpkin, little blue heron, great egret, purple gallinule, muscovy duck, american avocet, white-fronted parrot, yellow-naped parrot, common pauraque, groove-billed ani, boat-billed flycatcher, white-throated magpie-jay, and red-winged blackbird.    

  

Respect the Pseudomyrmex sp.

It's pretty much all Jay Sobel's fault. He told me I should give Craig Guyer a guitar and get him to play some bluesy tunes.  It was a great idea, but resulted in my staying up until 1am when I had to get up again at 6 so that I could be collecting data by 7.  I'm so tired!  

So I went out to take data on ant acacias, including diameter at breast height.  That involves wrapping a tape measure around the stem.  The ants (Pseudomyrmex sp.) don't like it, so they bite and sting the tape measure, and once in a while the unfortunate (innocent!) soul HOLDING the tape measure.  Bites aren't so bad, but stings feel like hot needles being pushed slowly in and pulled slowly out of sting site.  My hands are still stiff and sore, 14 hours later!  I have to give the ants credit, though.  They have impressive defenses.

The results of our preliminary experiments were dramatic, and we're all excited about it.  But I'll have to give you all more on that later, because I have to go to bed!  Besides, we haven't analyzed the data yet -- but as a teaser, it was the kind of data you don't have to analyze to see that it's spectacular.  

My friend Raffica at Kellogg Biological Station/ Michigan State University offered to upload photos that I email to her (for some reason I can email them out, but not post them to the blog), so hopefully in the next few days there will be pictures to go with past and future posts.  

Really fast, the bird of the day today was the Bare-throated Tiger-Heron.  A pair have started building a nest in a tree right outside my bedroom.  I think I forgot the tri-colored heron yesterday, too.  I'm going to bed now.

Hypotheses, Wind, and How I Still Don't Love Herps

Today was much quieter than yesterday.  Most of the day was spent on developing research ideas, so I had a chance to start doing something with the natural history bits I picked up yesterday.

In the morning I went into the forest with Amanda, a student in Leonie Moyle's lab at IU Bloomington.  We have similar interests, so we decided to search out a few questions together.  We came up with a possible project looking at nectar robbers in a Malvaviscus species (in the Malvaceae, the cotton/hibiscus family).  The flowers look just like a classic Hibiscus, except the petals don't open.  We witnessed a couple of insects chewing or poking through the petals to steal nectar without pollinating -- a bee  and a true bug.  We're hoping to design some experiments around that interaction.

I also enjoyed poking around the Stenocereus columnar cacti that grow on little limestone hillocks in the forest.  They grow really tall, at least 25 feet!  Several different kinds of insects seem to attach egg cases or nests to the cacti.  We finished up the morning with an hour of birding in the marsh, thinking about Northern Jacana mating systems and looking for new birds.  Only two to add to the list today: Muscovy Duck and Great Egret.  I was too busy looking at plants!  We also looked at some water hyacinth flowers.  Water hyacinths usually have multiple flower types in a population: short, medium and long pistils (female bits).  It's an invasive plant over much of the globe, however, and often loses the short-pistil morph in introduced populations.  We talked about some possible explanations for that pattern... it's the sort of thing I've spent a lot of time rolling around in my mind over the last year or so, so it was nice to discuss it with someone new.

After lunch we had some student talks and a lecture on Herps of Costa Rica.  I really like endotherms (warm-blooded animals) better, but the talk temporarily helped me realize how silly that is.  Frogs, toads, turtles, all so cool!  But then he closed with a couple of slides of pit vipers, which we all have sensible instinctive negative reactions to, and I left feeling pretty good about focusing my energies on leafy, furry, feathery, and six-legged beings.  One only has so much time in life.  I'm not going to feel bad about giving less attention to a few groups of exothermic animals. 

The last thing we did tonight was to split up into groups for our first faculty-led projects.  4 other students and I will be working with Dr. Andre Kessler from Cornell on an ant-acacia system question.  Here's the quick and dirty intro: ant-acacias provide room and board for ant colonies, and in return the ants protect the trees from herbivores and plant competitors.  Basically they attack anything that touches them - insect, mammal, or neighboring tree.  If you tap a branch, the ants coming running over to bite and sting within seconds.  But there is one bug that somehow gets around this -- the ants don't seem to see them, and the bugs chomp happily away at fresh new leaves while the ant colony moves on with business as usual.  This is weird.  We want to figure out how the bugs do it.  We have a few experiments in mind, which will commence at 7 am tomorrow.  Some of the methods are funky.  We hope they work.  Read the next post for the exciting results!!  

When I took a shower tonight there was a frog in there with me.  I checked the next shower because I didn't want to bother the frog, but there was another one in second shower.  And really, they're only there because they like the wetness... so I jumped in and contributed to the friendly plastic habitat.  

The buildings here are all open, wildlife-permeable.  Completely uninsulated, but here it is always warm.  There is no danger of frozen pipes.  It reminds me of sleeping in a tent.  But a tent with big holes that let enormous katydids in, which then sit on my mosquito netting and look at me.  The iguanas amble by the door to our room in the daytime, and you can hear them scratching on the roof.  Several people have found scorpions in their beds.  (Not me -- but I check!!)  Tonight there are white-faced capuchin monkeys in the trees outside the dorms.  It's nice, it feels comfortable, a biology-friendly space.  

I don't think I've mentioned the wind yet, so in closing I'll describe it.  It blows hot, dry, hard, and always from the east.  This is winter in the tropical dry forest; as the northern latitudes move further from the sun and it snows 6 inches in Michigan, down in central America the Intertropical Convergence Zone (the band of warm wet weather) moves south and the Trade Winds fill the vacuum, blowing west like they always do.  They drop moisture from the Atlantic Ocean on their way over the mountains east of here, leaving the west side of Costa Rica in the hot, dry rain shadow.  Hence the dry winter.  When winter comes to the southern hemisphere, the warm-wet gets pushed back north.  The rainy season starts in May.  

What this means for me is that I can't drink enough water -- the moisture is pulled right out of the air -- and walking on the road or birding in the open marsh involves getting a big piece of grit blown right in my eye at least once every 15 minutes.  It also means the grass is brown, most of the trees are losing their leaves, and there are at least 3 species of cactus thriving.  It is a very cool place.

Biodiversity of a dry tropical forest

The dry tropical forest has much lower biodiversity than the wet tropical forest.  This is really hard for a temperate-latitude type like myself to believe, because the diversity here is amazing, so I have to remind myself.  Today was the crash course in natural history of Palo Verde; 8 hours in the field hiking around with people who know a great deal about the plants and animals that live here.  I've decided to relegate the daily bird list (only including things I hadn't seen on this trip yet) to the end of the post, because there are SO MANY.  But the mammal highlights are shorter and cuter, so I'll include them here.  A band of white-faced capuchin monkeys was hanging around by the water hole.  This was my first encounter with primates in the wild, and I was amazed by how smart they look... how much like little people.  They look back at you in a way that is totally different from anything else.  They're also aggressive just like little people -- shaking branches, screaming, throwing sticks.  Later in the day we saw some howler monkeys up on the ridge (bigger, fuzzier) but didn't hear any howling.  Then a few hours later, just after sunset, a couple of peccaries wandered through the station.  They weren't shy at all, but not interested in us either.  They just jogged along the periphery.  I know iguanas aren't mammals, but they are also  conspicuous around the station, sunning themselves in the backyard and mating on the roof.

After dinner a few of us went on a night hike.  We were using headlamps and flashlights to look for eyeshine.  At first all I found were wolf spiders (their eyes light up blue, I had NO IDEA there were that many spiders in one field.)  Then we found some nightjars (medium-sized nocturnal birds).  Then we headed into the marsh.  I stayed on the elevated boardwalk, but several brave souls ventured into the muck up to their knees, chasing down glowing eyes that looked bigger than insects.  First they got a leopard frog, and then they got a 2-foot crocodile!  One of the faculty leading the hike, Craig Guyer, grabbed it and brought it over for us to see.  I got to touch it, and it hissed at me!  With its mouthful of needle teeth glinting.  What a great way to end the day.

Tomorrow we'll start applying what we've learned to develop ideas for research projects.  It's all about hypothesis testing.  Step One, how to find a question and formulate it as a hypothesis!  (Maybe that is actually two steps... or more.)  This is something I am excited about getting better at, so we'll see how the first try goes.  

Our group has hit the thrilling honeymoon stage (well known to those of you who have worked in outdoor education or been to summer camp).  It's a fun time.  The awkwardness of the first day has worn off, but no one is frustrated and exhausted yet.  We're all excited about getting to know each other and absorbing everything that is thrown at us.  Except for monkey poo.  Hopefully it lasts for a long time.  

If this post seems a little disjunct, it's because my brain is processing as fast as it can and there is still a backlog.  So many exciting things happened today!  I didn't even touch on plants, but I learned a lot.  Or I wrote down a lot of names and heard a lot of stories that I haven't synthesized yet.  Maybe next week I'll have a plant post for botany dorks.  I have to share that I got my first look at the famed ant acacia today.  What a mutualism!  If you haven't heard of it, google it.  In further miscellany, I can report that the Northern Jacana population looks to be thriving on the marsh.  Jessica Eller studied them when she was here a few years ago.  It's nice to imagine her walking the same paths.  :)

It's now past my bedtime, so I'm going to close with the day's bird list and then turn in.  Thanks for reading, and for the comments.  Let  me know if there is anything you'd like to hear about.

There are several birds I am extra excited about in this list!  

Anhinga, wood stork, roseate spoonbill, glossy ibis, snowy egret, northern jacana, black-bellied whistling duck, snail kite, crested caracara, inca dove, white-winged dove, white-tipped dove, orange-fronted parakeet, barn swallow, blue-winged teal, green-backed (green) heron, streaked flycatcher, rufous-naped wren, white-collared seedeater, double-striped thick-knee, ferruginous pygmy-owl. 

First Day of School

So, I'd been hoping to post a photo a day, but since I left the States I haven't had the bandwidth to upload them.  I'll save them up for when I get back,  I guess.

Today the class officially started.  We had a great breakfast with beans & rice (pinto) and eggs, fresh pineapple and papaya, and amazing juice made from some fruit related to the pawpaw.  If it has an English name, nobody knew it.  After that we spent several hours with packing ourselves up, heading to the main office, packing up the course equipment, and taking care of paperwork.  

In the 20 minutes before lunch I got to go out with my binoculars for the first time.  There are a few excellent birders here to learn from, and even the most common disturbed-habitat birds are a novelty for me, so it's easy to have a good time.  There is a tree near the OTS office with a colony of Montezuma Oropendulas in it.  They are spectacular birds, about the size of ravens but warm brown with yellow tails, red beaks, and blue on their faces.  They build hanging basket nests.  I also saw baltimore orioles, a palm tanager, great-tailed grackles, rufous-collared sparrows, a tropical kingbird, a Great Kiskadee, clay-colored robins, a golden-naped woodpecker, and I think a brown-crested flycatcher.  (I apologize to anyone who is bored for this and all future species lists.  Feel free to skim over them.)  And that was just in the suburbs; wait until I get at the wetland tomorrow.

The ride to Palo Verde took about 5 hours.  We had fancy tour bus: big, shiny, air-conditioned; everyone got two seats to themselves.  A little strange.  I spent half of the time sleeping, half looking out the windows.  There was a lot of sugar cane, which is an increasingly important cash crop here.  (I just learned that it is replacing rice in the Guanacaste region (NW) -- rice is grown by small-scale, family-owned farms; sugar cane is grown mostly by 3 big corporations that are buying up the small farms.)  There were also a lot of flowering trees.  It's the dry season, so many deciduous trees drop their leaves and put out flowers.  The most prominent tree species was some kind of legume.  The individual trees were isolated, but you could see them for a long way because the entire canopy was a mass of fluorescent orange flowers.  

We got to Palo Verde in time to unload the bus and unpack our bags before the sun set.  After dinner there was a long lecture on restoring the wetland (which had been overrun by cattails) followed by a short but much more entertaining primer on life for scientists at Palo Verde.  The condensed version:  1)Watch out for africanized honeybees.  If they go for you, run fast.  2)Avoid rattlesnakes, vipers, and toxic snakes.  3)The ubiquitous scorpions aren't lethal, but you should still be sure to shake out your shoes every morning and check your towel before you dry off after a shower.  4) When the army ants come through the station, just move outside and wait.  They'll leave eventually.  

Now I'm sitting cozily under my mosquito netting with a nice breeze blowing through the screen.  Tomorrow we'll get our first guided natural history hikes.  I'm looking forward to it so much!  Then we'll start thinking about project ideas.  I hope you're all doing well wherever you are.

Last Day of Vacation

Today OTSers started to converge on Hotel City One.  I've met about 10 of them so far (there will be 22 of us total, plus 3 instructors).  They all seem like interesting people, of course -- it will be fun to get to know everyone over the next few weeks.  At least, it should be mostly fun.  Some of it will probably be annoying.  :)

I went walking in downtown San Jose with Christina and Matt this afternoon, saw some parrots!  And a little yellow warbler I couldn't identify -- no surprise there.  We ate some really greasy food and I bought a belt.  For some reason when I was packing I thought it would be a good idea to save space by not taking a belt.  It was not a good idea.  And if I lose any weight on my anticipated diet of beans and rice, it could become a very bad idea indeed.  Luckily we're all safe from that now.

Tomorrow morning we will go en masse to the OTS office at the University of Costa Rica for a little intro and some paperwork, and then pile onto a bus for the 4-5 hour ride to our first site, Palo Verde.  It's a national park with a fresh water marsh and tropical dry forest (deciduous lowland).  Great for water birds, apparently.  Hopefully I'll have some pictures to share in the next few days.

First Day in San Jose

I spent all day yesterday traveling.  It was mostly unremarkable, except that I forgot my Nalgene bottle and found the only place with reusable water bottles in the Detroit Airport was the Harley store.  Now I'm so fashionable I can scarcely stand myself.

Once I got in at the San Jose airport, I changed money and caught a taxi.  I managed some small talk with the driver, who knew about as much English as I know Spanish.  He said I speak "un pequeno Espanol," which I took as a compliment since I've learned so much in the last two months.  He also explained to me that the airport isn't actually in San Jose, but in a neighboring city, and that my hotel is too expensive and not in the nicest part of town.  I knew that last bit already, but couldn't think of how to explain to him that I was too tired and lazy to do anything about it.  He was a nice guy.

When I got to the hotel I found that they never got my email reservation, which wasn't shocking.  They had a room for my anyway.  I was humbled to find how much harder it was to communicate when I had a specific goal and the person I was talking to spoke no English at all, but we figured it out.

My room is fun, decorated in orange and rather spare.  The bathroom is especially nice.  Huge shower, all glassed in, and the first piece of toilet paper (and Kleenex, too) folded into an elaborate origami fan like the napkin in a fancy restaurant.  It looked especially cute coming out of the "Cars: the Movie" themed Kleenex box.  

So far, the most useful item I've brought is a set of ear plugs.  The hotel is on Calle Zero, which I believe is Main Street.  It sure sounds like it, anyway.  The noise last night was like huge semis rumbling past, and the occasional wacky siren closing in and pulling away.  It might be louder now that it's day, but I'm not sure.

I went out for a walk around the neighborhood and a visit to the grocery store today.  I got a map and a general store recommendation from the hotel clerk.  I had almost forgotten the pure joy of roaming around  a place that is totally new and where you only understand 25% of what you see.  My brain is buzzing.  It took 10 minutes to find the street signs and get used to how traffic moves here.  There are lots of fast-moving small vehicles.  The streets are narrow, including the sidewalks; there were spots where I had to stand sideways and shuffle past someone to prevent falling onto the street.  The buildings are odd sizes (mosty small), crooked, and painted bright colors.  It might have been depressing in Detroit, but here with the blue sky and intense sun it is cheery.  Buying groceries was like solving a puzzle.  I was thrilled to find liquidy fruity yogurt, fresh bread, and Costa Rican cheese.  Probably Dutch cheese would be tastier, but less fun.

Tomorrow my friend Christina and her boyfriend Matt will show up to share my last day of carefree lolly--gagging in San Jose.  I'm hoping we'll spend the day walking all over the city.   

packed and ready to go

The last week has been a frenzy of activity, but it looks like I'm ready now.  I've packed and repacked, gotten my shots (tetanus/diphteria, typhoid, and hepatitis A), and carefully chosen which heavy books to bring along (Stiles and Skutch's "Guide to Birds of Costa Rica" and Dan Janzen's "Costa Rican Natural History").  They should give me something to do in my 5-hour layover in Atlanta tomorrow.  I'll spend my first three nights in San Jose getting acclimated; the course (the Organization for Tropical Studies' aka OTS's, Tropical Ecology) gets started Friday morning with breakfast at the hotel.  So there will be 2 days for adventures on my own!

If any of  you have been to San Jose and know of something I shouldn't miss, let me know.  Most of the people I have asked say I should miss San Jose in favor of volcanic hot springs or some quiet time on an isolated beach.  If you're one of those people, I don't want to hear from you.  :)

A tip for anyone new to this blog's format: if you want to see the photos larger, click (or double click?) on them.  Here I'm in Matt's apartment in Detroit with all my luggage, communicating my true feelings in that special way I have...  

getting ready to go

11 days until departure.  Should be long enough to get through my list of "to do's."  I just set up the blog today.  I've been training for the rigors of the tropical biologist's life by observing the behaviour of my cat, Violet.  Here she is with her favorite prey.