rainy rainforest

Another day running on not quite enough sleep because I was so excited to be here I woke up before I needed to. We'll see how much longer that lasts. :) Spent the morning wandering around the trail on my own and with a couple of other students botanizing, birding, and pondering IP topics. I decided to discard my ideas for pollination projects, because no single flower species is dense enough to make my idea for a 3-day project feasible. Now I'm thinking about an observational study of parrot frugivory. More on that as it solidifies.

We had a surprise-addition resource person when we arrived here, Kathleen Kay. I was excited to meet her, because her work is super cool. Plus she's a relatively recent Schemske lab grad, so I've heard a lot about her. I'm in her FLP. We have 2 days for the project, start to finish, so it will be a simple one, but still definitely the most interesting to me on the course so far. We're going to collect flowers from as many different plant species as we can find tomorrow and compare amounts of pollen from other species on the stigmas. The small idea is that bilaterally symmetrical flowers are less likely to have pollen from the wrong species. The big idea is that this is part of why bilaterally symmetrical groups are more speciose. We might even have time to do a fancy-pants pairwise phylogenetic analysis. I'm too tired to translate, but if we do end up doing it I promise I will!

The thing about the rainforest is that it's rainy. Apparently there is a noticeable dry season here, but I haven't noticed it. With 4 meters of precipitation a year, I guess there is plenty for the dry season too. It has rained every day, and most of the day today. I was outside for a lot of it. It makes me so tired to have wet clothes! But it didn't dampen my enthusiasm for plant systematics and hiking around the trails. It just increased my enthusiasm for sleep, which I am about to go indulge.

But first, the quick bird update! No great green macaws, sorry Jay. But I'm scoping out the wild almond trees. What I did see today: ruddy pigeon, broad-billed motmot, spotted antbird, black-headed tody-flycatcher, band-backed wren, chestnut-sided warbler, summer tanager, variable seedeater, buff-throated saltator, black-cowled oriole.