Peanut Head Day

Today was a lovely day. I slept in, until 7 am! It was delicious. I spent the morning writing and nailing down a sampling scheme for my independent project, and then Becky and I went out in the afternoon and collected lots and lots of data. Most of the projects we do on this course have really small sample sizes, so it's extra fun to get more. We'll probably have around 200 data points when we're done. And I get to think about natural selection, which is good clean fun.

I saw two new birds today: black-throated trogon and scarlet-rumped cacique (which is apparently pronounced "ka-seek", sounds crazy to me...). I also saw a fabulous insect, the Peanut Head, aka Machacha. It looks like a moth with a peanut for a head, but it's actually a neuropteran, close to the true bugs, with a long piercing-sucking mouthpart it uses to slurp phloem out of the single tree species it specializes on. We happened to run into this guy working on a travel guide who was looking for the Peanut Head. We befriended him, so he brought it by when he found it. Becky and I took turns holding it for him to photograph. Look for my left hand in the 3rd edition of the guide to Costa Rica's national parks. :)

In the evening we heard a talk by David Clark, hero of tropical tree ecology. He gave a lightning intro to remote sensing in forest research. It's amazing what you can quantify from a satellite photo, and the things you really can't do any other way -- random sampling away from roads and rivers, sampling in dangerous places like northern Colombia, and actually seeing any one of these huge canopy trees from the top. There is so much we don't know!

Amanda and I decided to write a post-course grant proposal together to further the FLP study we did on the effect of floral shape on rates of interspecific pollen deposition. I'm excited about it, it's a great idea and the two days we had just wasn't nearly enough to do it justice. There are plenty of other people applying for the money, but it's certainly worth a try. We'd get to come back to La Selva in July if it comes through.

We got the official word on internet and phone contact for the next few sites: none. We leave La Selva Friday morning, and then no contact for 16 days! I'm sure we will all build character. As if there wasn't already a surplus in this group.