into the jungle

This morning after breakfast we got on the same old bus and headed west out of San Jose, into the mountains. It was only a couple of hours' drive to La Selva, but up and down the mountains, so we drove through cloud forest. It was beautiful, you could tell even just from the bus that plant diversity suddenly went through the roof. And there were lots of clouds, some of them low wisps clearly blowing to the west.

Then we drove back down, down further than we went up, and we landed in the lowland wet tropical forest... rain forest.. JUNGLE!

La Selva is a luxury resort for tropical biologists. It has electricity, great internet, hot water, toilets that you can put toilet paper in, a cafeteria that serves gringo food, paved paths... plus lots of amenities that will only interest those of you who are biologists. I'm going to mention them now, so if you're not a biologist you may want to avert your eyes. Or just skip to the next paragraph. So La Selva is a Long Term Ecological Research site. There has been research here for over 40 years, with lots of long-running projects. The whole reserve is mapped out with pipes set in the ground every 100m E-W and every 50m N-S (or vice versa), and every pipe has altitude, lat/long, and soil information associated with it. There is a big sheet-covered board with a black light on it set up every night, attracting all manner of cool insects. Herbarium, library, and lab space that is public in addition to the private offices and lab spaces for more or less permanent researchers. (There are apparently six in residence at the moment). There are also a pile of knowledgeable and available staff. GIS specialists, Orlando Vargas (who it sounds like is personally acquainted with every individual plant in La Selva), a staff of great local naturalists... it's pretty dreamy.

Actually, the paved paths are a little weird. And they have tremendous theft problems... from what they told us, anything from your laptop to your lunch will disappear if you leave it alone for 5 minutes. But it is a comfortable place (a nice change), and seems like working here would make research in the tropics far easier, if less adventuresome.

We had our first orientation walks in the afternoon, and it really blew my mind. I spent a rushed afternoon in a slightly degraded fragment of cloud forest in Guatemala in 2006, which was amazing, but it didn't prepare me for this. Today reminded me that in my soul I'm a plant person. There are huge trees here. The biggest tree in La Selva is over 50 meters. They have huge buttresses, structures that come out at the base like wings, supporting them in the shallow soil. And supported on the tree are innumerable other plants. Lianas, epiphytes (living on the branches or trunk), epiphylls (plants living on other plants' leaves!). Everywhere you look there is a different species. We learned plant families this afternoon like you learn species in the temperate zone. It's an exponential increase in species number. Perhaps you biologists are having a good titter at me raving about biodiversity in the tropics, because that's all ecologists have been doing for 200 years, but wow! Why ARE there so many species in the tropics? or so few in the temperate zone...

Especially exciting things to mention: I saw the world's largest odonate today, a damselfly larger than any dragonfly. Bullet ants, too, the world's largest ants, fully an inch long. We spotted an agouti (huge rodent that looks like a tiny deer). My first toucans. Spider monkeys. Birds -- I'll pool today's list with tomorrow's and put them at the end of tomorrow's post for those of you who are interested. I've seen a LOT of new ones today, even though I hardly gave any energy to it. My head is filled with plants.

We'll be doing another faculty-led project here, and then an independent project. I'm looking and listening and thinking hard to come up with a good idea for my IP. I'll let ya'll know how it develops. Thanks for the emails and comments; even though I don't have time to answer right now, I love to hear from you.