I feel confident now that I've escaped the group cold. Amanda and Becky both had it, they cough every morning. Becky sounds like a howler monkey at 4 am.
The highlight of my day was a canoe trip up the Rio Sirena with Bill, Elena, and Amanda. As we were walking down the trail to the boats, a huge tapir was walking up! His back was as high as my chest. He looked like a little rhino, big and dense. He took off into the woods pretty quickly. He had a radio collar. (There is a long-running tapir population study here).
We took a big boat out, more rowboat-sized than canoe-sized. We paddled up the river as the tide was coming in, makes the paddling easier. It felt like "Heart of Darkness," but happy, moving slowly up this wide river with nothing but jungle on either side. Lots of shore birds. We saw two crocodiles and a big bull shark, 4 feet long, swimming by just a few feet from the boat. There were some other big fish, and lots of schools of little silver fish. We paddled fast through the sunny spots and lingered in the shade.
Now I'm overwhelmed by writing again. I got two papers back for rewrites today. One of them is more or less in order, just requires small corrections. The other has profound problems in the introduction and discussion that I don't have the energy to face today. It's difficult for me to write in this environment -- no privacy and always pressed for time. I'm sure it's good for me. :)
Sunday, March 9, 2008
3/5 Hard Day
I don't think I'm getting sick, but it was still a hard day. We had FLP presentations in the morning, and then i spent the next 5 hours writing up part of the paper for the butterfly project. I'm writing it with Yoel Stuart, who is a good coauthor, that makes it less stressful. Glad to have a satisfactory hypothesis. I'm sick of cold showers. It's amazing that even though I'm hot and sweaty all day, a freezing cold shower doesn't feel good. Other people like them. I'm happy for them. I'm also itchy all over. I guess I got one bite too many and it pushed me over the edge. I'm going to take some benadryl to knock down the allergic response. One more gripe: my hand-washed clothes smell moldy by the time they dry. And I haven't seen a tapir.
3/4 orb weavers and ithomiines
A big day of feeding spiders. I got good at wedging a butterfly into a spider web. There were a few unresponsive spiders, but high enough participation for us to say that about 50% of the butterflies we collected were not toxic! Interesting result. We decided to frame the study as a comparison between rates of toxicity in the '80s (as measured by a previous grad student of Larry's, using a bird as a bioassay) and today. Now everyone is happy, more or less. We might try to publish it as a note.
I'm exhausted today! My energy level is way below normal. There has been a wicked cold making the rounds, I hope I'm not coming down with it. Maybe it's just from working all day in the heat.
I'm exhausted today! My energy level is way below normal. There has been a wicked cold making the rounds, I hope I'm not coming down with it. Maybe it's just from working all day in the heat.
3/3 catching butterflies
We spent the entire day collecting butterflies for our faculty-led project today. Tomorrow the actual experiments will start.
An interesting conflict has surfaced around our project. There are many different approaches to doing science, and OTS teaches the hypothesis-testing approach. They maintain the other approaches are fine, but we are expected to practice forming hypotheses and predictions to guide our projects. Larry Gilbert likes the natural history approach better, where you just kind of figure out how things are working in the system you've selected (e.g. "how many of the butterflies in this population are poisonous?") and then worry later about how to fit it into the framework of a broader ecological question. The course coordinators want to be sure we can frame this project in terms of a hypothesis so that a concise paper can come out of it for the course book. In terms of my own professional development, I'm definitely benefitting more from thinking in terms of hypotheses and predictions -- it helps me think more logically about what I want to know, why I want to know it, and how I'm going to figure it out. We'll see how it all resolves itself.
So the project itself: there is a big family of butterflies, the Heliconidae, with lots of poisonous mimics in it. (They all look very similar, so if a predator learns one tastes bad, it will avoid all of them in the future). One tribe in the family, Ithomiines, are fairly common around Corcovado right now. They collect their toxic compounds as adults from flowering plants that particularly like light gaps. Larry has seen lots of the butterflies, but not very many of the plants. He thinks there may be a lot of these aposematic (warning coloration) butterflies out right now that don't actually have toxins. But how would we test this? We don't have any fancy tools to measure chemistry. But we do have golden orb spiders, which have been used as bioassays for the chemical compound in question. So we'll throw butterflies in their nets. If the butterfly has the toxic compound, the spider will cut it out of its web. If it doesn't, the spider will eat it. We'll see how that goes tomorrow.
People have been coming in with stories about all the cool animals they've seen. The most prized is the tapir. They're fairly common, but not conspicuous. I've seen a shark in the surf and a big crocodile on the other side of the river, but no tapir.
An interesting conflict has surfaced around our project. There are many different approaches to doing science, and OTS teaches the hypothesis-testing approach. They maintain the other approaches are fine, but we are expected to practice forming hypotheses and predictions to guide our projects. Larry Gilbert likes the natural history approach better, where you just kind of figure out how things are working in the system you've selected (e.g. "how many of the butterflies in this population are poisonous?") and then worry later about how to fit it into the framework of a broader ecological question. The course coordinators want to be sure we can frame this project in terms of a hypothesis so that a concise paper can come out of it for the course book. In terms of my own professional development, I'm definitely benefitting more from thinking in terms of hypotheses and predictions -- it helps me think more logically about what I want to know, why I want to know it, and how I'm going to figure it out. We'll see how it all resolves itself.
So the project itself: there is a big family of butterflies, the Heliconidae, with lots of poisonous mimics in it. (They all look very similar, so if a predator learns one tastes bad, it will avoid all of them in the future). One tribe in the family, Ithomiines, are fairly common around Corcovado right now. They collect their toxic compounds as adults from flowering plants that particularly like light gaps. Larry has seen lots of the butterflies, but not very many of the plants. He thinks there may be a lot of these aposematic (warning coloration) butterflies out right now that don't actually have toxins. But how would we test this? We don't have any fancy tools to measure chemistry. But we do have golden orb spiders, which have been used as bioassays for the chemical compound in question. So we'll throw butterflies in their nets. If the butterfly has the toxic compound, the spider will cut it out of its web. If it doesn't, the spider will eat it. We'll see how that goes tomorrow.
People have been coming in with stories about all the cool animals they've seen. The most prized is the tapir. They're fairly common, but not conspicuous. I've seen a shark in the surf and a big crocodile on the other side of the river, but no tapir.
3/2 Coolest Swimming Hole Ever
Today Larry Gilbert took half of us on a long ridge hike that lasted the whole morning. Saw some great views through tree falls (the ridges are steep, trees don't last as long there as they do in the lowlands). Larry is primarily a butterfly guy, so we were treated to some fascinating natural history lectures and the experience of watching him grab one lep after another right out of the air with his bare hands. He occasionally mentions that his heart trouble has slowed him down in the last couple of years. It's a good think I didn't come on this course 10 years ago, I never would have been able to keep up with him -- it's a struggle as it is.
In the afternoon several of us hiked up the Rio Claro to the coolest swimming hole the world has ever seen. The water was warm but not too warm. The deepest spots were about 8 feet, and big enough to really swim in. At the bend in the river there were some shallow rapids you could sit in to get the water massage, and then slide down and out into the pool. I floated for a while looking up through lianas at the vultures circling lazily far up in the sky. This was the first experience that really smacked of tropical paradise decadence.
It's a good thing there are moments like that, because I'm beginning to discover that there are more biting insects here than anywhere I've been. Except maybe coastal Maine in May. There are some mosquitoes, abundant no-see-ums, and enormous numbers of ticks. I pick off about 20 ticks a day, at least 5 of them imbedded. The only place I've seen anything like it is the New Jersey pine barrens. Throughout lectures and meals you can see people here and there twitch, pull up a pant leg or shirt, and pluck and squash. Luckily these ticks are way easier to kill than the ones I'm used to. But the bites itch for a long time, and are prone to infection. It seems like everyone has at least one sore by now that won't heal.
I was placed in Larry Gilbert's FLP group. I always seem to get my top pick of resource people, I don't know how that works. Larry is a very well known tropical ecologist. He's one of those people who knows lots of natural history, recognizes good questions. and can see how to carry it out. He's full of ideas. Our FLP involves catching butterflies and throwing them in spider webs. Hypotheses and predictions not clear yet; more on that tomorrow. I'm going to bed early tonight, hooray!
In the afternoon several of us hiked up the Rio Claro to the coolest swimming hole the world has ever seen. The water was warm but not too warm. The deepest spots were about 8 feet, and big enough to really swim in. At the bend in the river there were some shallow rapids you could sit in to get the water massage, and then slide down and out into the pool. I floated for a while looking up through lianas at the vultures circling lazily far up in the sky. This was the first experience that really smacked of tropical paradise decadence.
It's a good thing there are moments like that, because I'm beginning to discover that there are more biting insects here than anywhere I've been. Except maybe coastal Maine in May. There are some mosquitoes, abundant no-see-ums, and enormous numbers of ticks. I pick off about 20 ticks a day, at least 5 of them imbedded. The only place I've seen anything like it is the New Jersey pine barrens. Throughout lectures and meals you can see people here and there twitch, pull up a pant leg or shirt, and pluck and squash. Luckily these ticks are way easier to kill than the ones I'm used to. But the bites itch for a long time, and are prone to infection. It seems like everyone has at least one sore by now that won't heal.
I was placed in Larry Gilbert's FLP group. I always seem to get my top pick of resource people, I don't know how that works. Larry is a very well known tropical ecologist. He's one of those people who knows lots of natural history, recognizes good questions. and can see how to carry it out. He's full of ideas. Our FLP involves catching butterflies and throwing them in spider webs. Hypotheses and predictions not clear yet; more on that tomorrow. I'm going to bed early tonight, hooray!
3/1 Corcovado orientation
We spent the morning in orientation hikes. This place is amazing! The wildlife is completely intact (except for harpy eagles, which haven't been seen here since 2001 or so). And the animals are dense. There are more huge canopy trees than La Selva, too, and more diverse plants. I saw squirrel monkeys this morning, little guys with tufty tails. This species is endemic to the Osa, and the only Central American squirrel monkey. Corcovado has 4 monkey species, and now I've seen them all. I'm really going to miss that rustling in the tree canopy when we leave!
Strangler figs are quite common here, and spectacular. I'll try to upload some photos. A mature strangler fig looks like a thick, snaky cage around the host tree. We saw fig fruits today, too -- another famous ecological story, fig-fig wasp coevolution. We cut it open and tiny wasps came pouring out.
It feels hotter and wetter here than at La Selva, even though Corcovado supposedly has a stronger dry season. I don't think I've ever sweated this much in my whole life. When I put on clean clothes, they are soaked through within a couple of hours. I've only really got 2 pairs of clothes. We do all our laundry by hand, and it takes at least one day (with luck) for it to dry. I think you can all imagine what that means for my odor and appearance. Luckily I'm not alone. :) And I have extra socks and underwear. I'm also grateful to have discovered gold bond powder -- excellent stuff! Definitely invented for the rainforest. I use it everywhere.
For some reason, the course coordinators have decided to schedule lectures for 1:00, right after lunch. Don't do this, people! Siesta was invented for a good reason. Something about the heat and wet is exhausting, and it hits hardest right about then. At least half of the class slept through the lecture on the national park. I managed to stay alert enough to understand that gold mining and poaching are constant problems here, and that the financial situation is dire. Local and national politics are complex and tangled, and Corcovado is suffering for it. It takes a lot of money just to pay the 20-some guards necessary to enforce the park's no-extraction policy (wood, gold, meat). But Corcovado is a big attraction for a certain kind of tourist, and brings in more money than it needs to maintain itself. Then the government redistributes the money, leaving Corcovado in the red. It's too complicated for anyone to see an easy fix, but hopefully all involved parties will agree that this place should be the very highest priority. It's incomparable, a truly intact ecosystem. This land supports healthy jaguar and tapir populations! That must be preserved.
Strangler figs are quite common here, and spectacular. I'll try to upload some photos. A mature strangler fig looks like a thick, snaky cage around the host tree. We saw fig fruits today, too -- another famous ecological story, fig-fig wasp coevolution. We cut it open and tiny wasps came pouring out.
It feels hotter and wetter here than at La Selva, even though Corcovado supposedly has a stronger dry season. I don't think I've ever sweated this much in my whole life. When I put on clean clothes, they are soaked through within a couple of hours. I've only really got 2 pairs of clothes. We do all our laundry by hand, and it takes at least one day (with luck) for it to dry. I think you can all imagine what that means for my odor and appearance. Luckily I'm not alone. :) And I have extra socks and underwear. I'm also grateful to have discovered gold bond powder -- excellent stuff! Definitely invented for the rainforest. I use it everywhere.
For some reason, the course coordinators have decided to schedule lectures for 1:00, right after lunch. Don't do this, people! Siesta was invented for a good reason. Something about the heat and wet is exhausting, and it hits hardest right about then. At least half of the class slept through the lecture on the national park. I managed to stay alert enough to understand that gold mining and poaching are constant problems here, and that the financial situation is dire. Local and national politics are complex and tangled, and Corcovado is suffering for it. It takes a lot of money just to pay the 20-some guards necessary to enforce the park's no-extraction policy (wood, gold, meat). But Corcovado is a big attraction for a certain kind of tourist, and brings in more money than it needs to maintain itself. Then the government redistributes the money, leaving Corcovado in the red. It's too complicated for anyone to see an easy fix, but hopefully all involved parties will agree that this place should be the very highest priority. It's incomparable, a truly intact ecosystem. This land supports healthy jaguar and tapir populations! That must be preserved.
Feb 29 -- into the Osa
I woke up at 5:30 in our slightly seedy La Palma hotel, with bites all over my legs from who knows what. I know there were ants in my bed, hopefully that was it. The room was crowded, nothing but beds with small pathways in between. We packed our luggage at 6 am, one truck full of the things we won't need in Corcovado (sent ahead to Las Cruces), one truck full of heavy things to go in by boat, and then our daypacks with clothes and essentials for the hike in. By 7 we were loaded in the back of two pickup trucks with some boards to sit on. I prefer standing. The drive in to the National Park trailhead took about an hour, up a road that was really just a broad riverbed. Then the 20 km hike in to the Sirena Biological Station, right in the center of the Osa peninsula's coast, between the Sirena and Claro rivers. The hike was fabulous. We didn't have to hurry at all, so I stayed at the very back of the group, botanizing and appreciating the wilderness. The fastest group hiked it in 4 hours; I took 8! The first 3 km were fairly steep uphill. There were a series of big storms shortly before we got there, so that portion of the trail was in rainy-season condition. The soil was saturated, red mud up to my ankles. After that the trail flattened and dried considerably.
Before Corcovado was declared a national park, there were lots of squatters on the land. They had cleared large portions for grazing and agriculture. Everybody was moved out -- voluntarily or not -- in the mid-70's, and the land has mostly returned to forest since then. There are still very visible differences between primary and secondary forest, though. It's biologically very interesting, makes for a diverse flora and fauna (birds and butterflies particularly, I think.) The hike in gave me an appreciation for the level of fragmentation present 30 years ago. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day -- good company, plenty of the Osa Peninsula's famed scarlet macaws.
We wandered in to the Sirena Biological Station shortly before dinner. The station is beautiful, a building expanded from one of the nicer abandoned squatter structures. It is all on stilts, with a main two-story building that has a lab upstairs, nice dining hall, a classroom, and three "bungalows" full of bunk beds. All these buildings are connected into one compound with covered walkways. Electricity comes from solar panels; it's available 24 hrs in the lab (for writing papers) but only a couple of hours (and unpredictably) in other rooms. Makes it easy to go to bed early. :)
The list of dangers here is more exciting than usual. There are poisonous snakes (including the fer de lance), of course, but the bushmasters here are exceptional. They were relatively recently discovered to be an endemic species, and regular bushmaster antivenin doesn't work. Apparently there is a little antivenin in the main hospital in San Jose, but you'd be dead before you made it there. Amputation is your best chance. Oh, and the bushmasters are a bit more aggressive here -- they've been known to chase people. Yay! Good news: they're rare. There are bull sharks in the surf, and at high tide in the rivers. Big crocodiles hang out in the rivers, too. Puma are very common around Sirena, but generally not dangerous. Other than that, just the usual.
Before Corcovado was declared a national park, there were lots of squatters on the land. They had cleared large portions for grazing and agriculture. Everybody was moved out -- voluntarily or not -- in the mid-70's, and the land has mostly returned to forest since then. There are still very visible differences between primary and secondary forest, though. It's biologically very interesting, makes for a diverse flora and fauna (birds and butterflies particularly, I think.) The hike in gave me an appreciation for the level of fragmentation present 30 years ago. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day -- good company, plenty of the Osa Peninsula's famed scarlet macaws.
We wandered in to the Sirena Biological Station shortly before dinner. The station is beautiful, a building expanded from one of the nicer abandoned squatter structures. It is all on stilts, with a main two-story building that has a lab upstairs, nice dining hall, a classroom, and three "bungalows" full of bunk beds. All these buildings are connected into one compound with covered walkways. Electricity comes from solar panels; it's available 24 hrs in the lab (for writing papers) but only a couple of hours (and unpredictably) in other rooms. Makes it easy to go to bed early. :)
The list of dangers here is more exciting than usual. There are poisonous snakes (including the fer de lance), of course, but the bushmasters here are exceptional. They were relatively recently discovered to be an endemic species, and regular bushmaster antivenin doesn't work. Apparently there is a little antivenin in the main hospital in San Jose, but you'd be dead before you made it there. Amputation is your best chance. Oh, and the bushmasters are a bit more aggressive here -- they've been known to chase people. Yay! Good news: they're rare. There are bull sharks in the surf, and at high tide in the rivers. Big crocodiles hang out in the rivers, too. Puma are very common around Sirena, but generally not dangerous. Other than that, just the usual.
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