Through a serendipitous turn of events, I found myself a wonderful and caring host family for the last month in Costa Rica. I met the Paniagua family through Kim, the hilarious woman from University of Washington that I mentioned in earlier posts. She had been staying with them for a few weeks and suggested that I move in with them after she left for more adventures.
Let me explain the Paniaguas because they are quite an extraordinary family. The two parents are Cecelia and Francisco, or Kiko as everyone calls him, and they have raised eleven children. Yes, eleven. That is a lot. All of their sons and daughter are grown and all but a handful have kid-lets of their own. The oldest daughter even became a grandmother herself a few months ago.
Along with family members, Cecelia and Francisco have always welcomed people into their home. They have taken in neighbors that lost their homes, children who need a break from their own angry households, visiting relatives who need extra support, and (of course) foreigners, like me, looking for a family and some Spanish practice.
With such a large, busy family, there are always visiting children and in-laws and grandchildren chasing one another through the house. From what I can see, they all treat each other very lovingly and respectfully. Everyone helps out with dishes when they come over for dinner and watches out for all the running children. It is beautiful to see.
And they have welcomed me as a twelfth sibling. “You can come back to Costa Rica anytime you want because you have a large family with eleven other siblings here,” Margarita reminded me during my farewell dinner.
This has been a great decision for me. Although I enjoyed the luxuries of the field station, I missed feeling at home and cared for by a family. There is no internet and no fresh papaya, but the family gives me plenty of hugs, too much coffee, and as many corn tortillas as I can stuff myself with. This is a happy household and I am so happy to be a part of it.
8.17.2009
Berlese Funnels to Sweep-netting
In previous posts, I may have talked excitedly about Berlese funnels, a technique to extract little critters from the leaf litter layer. I had just finished constructing eighteen of these contraptions when I discovered two small obstacles. First, the funnels fish out very, very little critters. From the first sample that I tried, I only first one or two insects that did not look like specks with the naked eye. The rest were around 1 to 2 mm and I needed to look at with a microscope. Second, herbivorous insects don’t scuttle in the leaf litter. They stay in the vegetation where there is more food and fewer frogs and lizards who want to eat them. So I was really surveying the community of itsy-bitsy decomposers rather than large herbivores, even though my question asked about how the herbivore community varied with fragment size and interior vs. edge. Oops.
So I needed to back up and start over. After consulting with a wonderful entomologist visiting Las Cruces, I decided just to sweep and beat-net. Very simple. Take a net. Sweep through all the vegetation, 30 strokes for a 16 meter squared plot then beat the understory vegetation into the net. That should more or less give me an idea about the kind of critters crawling (and hopefully eating) around in the vegetation. Along with katydids and grasshoppers, I collected quite a few spiders. These predaceous critters could give me an even better picture about the arthropod community composition.
Within each plot, I also assessed the herbivory level on and identified to family all the woody seedlings in a 1 m by 2 m area. This data should tell me if herbivory damage varies with fragment size or proximity to edge and if different types of seedlings grow in fragments of different sizes or near vs. far from the edge.
I collected all the samples in one feverish before flying back to the States. Never, never again will I let myself believe that all will go according to plan and that I have plenty of time to do anything my little heart desires. Now it is time for data entry and arthropod identification when I return to Grinnell this fall.
So I needed to back up and start over. After consulting with a wonderful entomologist visiting Las Cruces, I decided just to sweep and beat-net. Very simple. Take a net. Sweep through all the vegetation, 30 strokes for a 16 meter squared plot then beat the understory vegetation into the net. That should more or less give me an idea about the kind of critters crawling (and hopefully eating) around in the vegetation. Along with katydids and grasshoppers, I collected quite a few spiders. These predaceous critters could give me an even better picture about the arthropod community composition.
Within each plot, I also assessed the herbivory level on and identified to family all the woody seedlings in a 1 m by 2 m area. This data should tell me if herbivory damage varies with fragment size or proximity to edge and if different types of seedlings grow in fragments of different sizes or near vs. far from the edge.
I collected all the samples in one feverish before flying back to the States. Never, never again will I let myself believe that all will go according to plan and that I have plenty of time to do anything my little heart desires. Now it is time for data entry and arthropod identification when I return to Grinnell this fall.
8.16.2009
Ultimate Frisbee for July 4th
For the fourth of July, Chris and I took a break and played some ultimate frisbee. The team that Ben and I picked up with in San Jose sponsor the “Volcanic Tournament” every year in La Fortuna and invite players from all over the world. The regular tournament fee is pretty pricey ($350) because it includes accommodations in a swanky resort, all meals, and a guided hike through the rainforest. Well, Chris and I have had plenty of hikes through the rainforest and we don’t mind camping conditions, so we opted to pay $20 to play and stay in a cheap, clean little hostel in town.
The players mostly came from Latin America (lots of Panamanians) and the States, but there was also one German player. And plenty of ex-pats living in Costa Rica. The tourney directors mixed up all the players onto different teams. This is called a hat tourney. It is great because you have a chance to meet people from different teams (and in this case different countries), but it can be challenging to learn to play smoothly with a new group of people in just two days.
My team’s captain was Jenny, a very fast, very aggressive (on the field!) Tica from the San Jose pick up team. She is lots of fun, but I am grateful that I didn’t have to guard her. We had plenty of Ticos, a few Panamanians, and some Texans, including one whose parents had immigrated from Mexico. He served as our Spanish-English translator. Communicating with one another could be a challenge. Although most players were bilingual, a few could speak only English or only Spanish. And the English translations seemed to be slightly different abbreviated versions. It was neat for me to understand both sides. Surprisingly, I kept up really well with all the Spanish conversation. A big improvement from when Ben and I played ultimate in San Jose. Hooray! The months in Costa Rica have been worthwhile!
All in all, our two days of ultimate were a wonderful and welcome break from fieldwork. It felt good to get my sprinting muscles moving again. And I enjoyed comparing notes with players from other countries.
Getting back to fieldwork was a bit of a shock. After running for two days, we had to sit on a bus for seven hours and then go right into the field to hike and check on the seeds. A very, very painful day of fieldwork—but well worth it.
The players mostly came from Latin America (lots of Panamanians) and the States, but there was also one German player. And plenty of ex-pats living in Costa Rica. The tourney directors mixed up all the players onto different teams. This is called a hat tourney. It is great because you have a chance to meet people from different teams (and in this case different countries), but it can be challenging to learn to play smoothly with a new group of people in just two days.
My team’s captain was Jenny, a very fast, very aggressive (on the field!) Tica from the San Jose pick up team. She is lots of fun, but I am grateful that I didn’t have to guard her. We had plenty of Ticos, a few Panamanians, and some Texans, including one whose parents had immigrated from Mexico. He served as our Spanish-English translator. Communicating with one another could be a challenge. Although most players were bilingual, a few could speak only English or only Spanish. And the English translations seemed to be slightly different abbreviated versions. It was neat for me to understand both sides. Surprisingly, I kept up really well with all the Spanish conversation. A big improvement from when Ben and I played ultimate in San Jose. Hooray! The months in Costa Rica have been worthwhile!
All in all, our two days of ultimate were a wonderful and welcome break from fieldwork. It felt good to get my sprinting muscles moving again. And I enjoyed comparing notes with players from other countries.
Getting back to fieldwork was a bit of a shock. After running for two days, we had to sit on a bus for seven hours and then go right into the field to hike and check on the seeds. A very, very painful day of fieldwork—but well worth it.
6.30.2009
Thirty Days to Go!
It is hard to believe that in one month I will be snuggled back at home in Pittsburgh, helping my mom in the garden and cooking veggies from the farmers market. And it is hard to believe that I have spent almost five months in the tropics. And it is a bit stressful to think about the lengthy To-Do List that Chris and I need to finish before I leave! So time has flown by since I got on the plane in snowy Pittsburgh last February with a sore belly from the appendectomy. The last bit of my Costa Rican adventures promise to be very busy and marvelous. I know this month will fly by, just like the last five have, so I will do myself to savor the pineapples, bromeliads, and toucan calls in the morning.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Just returned from another stint up in Las Alturas. This time, Chris and I picked up an extra companion and field assistant. Kimberly stumbled into the community of Las Cruces researchers serendipitously when we ran into each other in town. Since then, she has been helping out on various projects and drinking coffee with us in the library. She ended up in San Vito with a wonderful host family after similarly serendipitous meetings while she was traveling through Costa Rica after her study abroad program finished up in May. Kim is fantastic to have around, partially from her research experience as an undergrad in the University of Washington's College of Forest Resources and partially because of her general hilarity. The three of us had a great time laughing while measuring seedlings or trying to cook pasta out in the woods. What a great trip!
The fieldwork focused on measuring seedlings in the various exclosure treatments. Chris wants to seed how the prescence or absence of different mammals--peccaries, agoutis, and small rodents--affects plant recruitment, or how much seedlings grow, how likely they will survive to maturity, and how many seeds are predated. The measurements that we are taking now will be the baseline for when Chris returns in the spring. He will be able to seed how much the seedlings have grown inside and outside of the exclosures and how many seedlings are missing inside and outside of the exclosures. And measuring seedlings is very tedious--and possibly painful when some barbed wire is thrown into the mix. Several more of our trips will be dedicated to measuring seedlings.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Just returned from another stint up in Las Alturas. This time, Chris and I picked up an extra companion and field assistant. Kimberly stumbled into the community of Las Cruces researchers serendipitously when we ran into each other in town. Since then, she has been helping out on various projects and drinking coffee with us in the library. She ended up in San Vito with a wonderful host family after similarly serendipitous meetings while she was traveling through Costa Rica after her study abroad program finished up in May. Kim is fantastic to have around, partially from her research experience as an undergrad in the University of Washington's College of Forest Resources and partially because of her general hilarity. The three of us had a great time laughing while measuring seedlings or trying to cook pasta out in the woods. What a great trip!
The fieldwork focused on measuring seedlings in the various exclosure treatments. Chris wants to seed how the prescence or absence of different mammals--peccaries, agoutis, and small rodents--affects plant recruitment, or how much seedlings grow, how likely they will survive to maturity, and how many seeds are predated. The measurements that we are taking now will be the baseline for when Chris returns in the spring. He will be able to seed how much the seedlings have grown inside and outside of the exclosures and how many seedlings are missing inside and outside of the exclosures. And measuring seedlings is very tedious--and possibly painful when some barbed wire is thrown into the mix. Several more of our trips will be dedicated to measuring seedlings.
6.23.2009
More Adventures
A quick up-date on fieldwork:
While Chris has been camping at Las Alturas, I have been having my own adventures while setting up plots for my study on how fragmentation affects insect communities and herbivory on seedlings. The basic design is for three blocks with three 2 meter by 1 meter plots at the edge and in the interior of each of the seven forest fragments. That means 18 plots and 72 flags for each fragment, 126 plots and 504 flags for the whole project. Ouch. Lots of wire and plastic. Sticking flags in the ground should be simple enough, but I--and probably every other field ecologist--always seem to run into problems: Uh, oh. My randomly selected point runs through a thick mass of thorny vines. Yuck. For the sake of randomization, I have to go through it anyway. Uh, oh. Less than ten seedlings fall into this plot. Have to shift the plot 10 meters over in a randomly selected direction. Setting up plots in the field always takes longer than setting them up on paper.
Yesterday, my sense of direction was the problem. I decided to take a short cut to the next plot through the forest rather than skirting the forest edge. Then the batteries in the GPS unit died. (Why do batteries seem to die so often this summer? First car batteries, now AA batteries.) So continuing to bushwack would have meant getting lost again--without peccaries for entertainment. So I followed the sound of the nearest river and hiked back along it. I soaked my boots and only finished two out of the three blocks I had planned to establish, but arrived safely back at the station without incident.
Today, I encountered problem #2 at Pina Colina, a beautiful, tiny fragment of primary forest next to Las Cruces. After sloughing through mud and dodging a barbed wire fence to finish one block, my glasses mysteriously spontaneously combusted. The frame broke and the lens fell out. Fortunately, both lens are intact, so I will just have to get new frames when I get back home. And I have a spare pair with me. Thank goodness! The walk back to Las Cruces was a little bit exciting, since all the landmarks that I usually use just looked like various green blobs. At least I was close to the station. We'll see if more adventures are in store tomorrow.
This afternoon we had our first Tuesday Afternoon Coffee Break, featuring strong Costa Rica café, cookies, and stories and jokes from Rodo, the busy Tico who manages the library and herbarium. It is great to hang out and chat with all the other researchers!
While Chris has been camping at Las Alturas, I have been having my own adventures while setting up plots for my study on how fragmentation affects insect communities and herbivory on seedlings. The basic design is for three blocks with three 2 meter by 1 meter plots at the edge and in the interior of each of the seven forest fragments. That means 18 plots and 72 flags for each fragment, 126 plots and 504 flags for the whole project. Ouch. Lots of wire and plastic. Sticking flags in the ground should be simple enough, but I--and probably every other field ecologist--always seem to run into problems: Uh, oh. My randomly selected point runs through a thick mass of thorny vines. Yuck. For the sake of randomization, I have to go through it anyway. Uh, oh. Less than ten seedlings fall into this plot. Have to shift the plot 10 meters over in a randomly selected direction. Setting up plots in the field always takes longer than setting them up on paper.
Yesterday, my sense of direction was the problem. I decided to take a short cut to the next plot through the forest rather than skirting the forest edge. Then the batteries in the GPS unit died. (Why do batteries seem to die so often this summer? First car batteries, now AA batteries.) So continuing to bushwack would have meant getting lost again--without peccaries for entertainment. So I followed the sound of the nearest river and hiked back along it. I soaked my boots and only finished two out of the three blocks I had planned to establish, but arrived safely back at the station without incident.
Today, I encountered problem #2 at Pina Colina, a beautiful, tiny fragment of primary forest next to Las Cruces. After sloughing through mud and dodging a barbed wire fence to finish one block, my glasses mysteriously spontaneously combusted. The frame broke and the lens fell out. Fortunately, both lens are intact, so I will just have to get new frames when I get back home. And I have a spare pair with me. Thank goodness! The walk back to Las Cruces was a little bit exciting, since all the landmarks that I usually use just looked like various green blobs. At least I was close to the station. We'll see if more adventures are in store tomorrow.This afternoon we had our first Tuesday Afternoon Coffee Break, featuring strong Costa Rica café, cookies, and stories and jokes from Rodo, the busy Tico who manages the library and herbarium. It is great to hang out and chat with all the other researchers!
6.18.2009
Peccaries, Snakes, and Seeds, Oh my!
The research project continues to move along. Martin and his work crew finished building the exclosure structures at Las Alturas a few days ago. As you can see in the pictures, these are serious pieces of construction with thick bamboo poles, metal sheeting, and barbed wire. Chris decided to make the Las Alturas structures very sturdy since peccaries (wild Costa Rican pigs) can trample and push their way through almost anything. Like the smaller exclosures that we just finished building at Las Cruces, these either exclude agoutis and allow mice or exclude mice and allow agoutis. All (hopefully) exclude peccaries. Selective exclosures are often used in ecological research because they allow us to measure the relative effect of whatever is excluded. So in this experiment, Chris is measuring the relative effect of peccaries, agoutis, and small rodents on herbivory of juvenile tree seedlings: do seedlings have higher or lower chances of survival depending on whether or not large mammals are present? how does this difference in survivorship influence what kind and how many seedlings mature into canopy trees?
At Las Alturas, we also collected boatloads and boatloads of fruits for another round of seed predation experiments. We owe our seed-success to a stroke of luck. An enormous branch dripping with had fallen right next to the trail. A type of Ocatea, a genus in the Lauraceae family. In the picture, there are the long green fruits with bright red caps. As you can probably tell, they are related to avocados. Then, a few feet down the trail, we found thousands of tiny green fruits in the leaf litter. So perfect! Chris and I both had worried that we would not be able to find enough fruits for more experiments.
And of course, our fieldwork left plenty of time for adventuring. At one point, I keep off to collect another kind of fruit near a stream while Chris worked on some of the seed predation structures at the camps. The trails are well-marked: machete cuts and flagging. I had no problems getting to the stream, but, on the way back to the road, I didn´t pay attention and somehow wandered far off the trail. After a few minutes of wandering back and forth, I had to admit that I was completely disoriented. No idea how to get back to the camp, or even in what direction it was. So I turned back, following the sound of running water to the stream. I must have ended up really far upstream from where I had started. No familiar landmarks. So I calmly pulled out my compass and walked north-west away from the river. The river runs parallel to the road that cuts through Las Alturas west-east. I figured that I just had to walk away from the river and I would meet up with the road eventually. And I did!
Along the way, I saw beautiful parts of the forest that I had never seen from the trails. I enjoyed the exhilaration of being alone in the forest with no bright blue flagging and cut palm stems to guide me. And--this is the highlight of my summer--I saw a herd of wild peccaries. The peccaries that I saw at the central green at La Selva looked like toy poodles compared to the herd that approached me. Their shoulders must have reached well above my knees and they were so wide and stocky that one could have easily knocked me over. There were at least ten adult peccaries that I could see on three sides of me. The hair on their backs stood on end. Clearly, they were not happy to see me--I was thrilled to see all of them. I stood for a few minutes watching the peccaries with a huge grin on my face. Seeing peccaries at Las Alturas had been my summer goal, and there I was, surrounded by a herd of peccaries!
Unhappy, aggressive peccaries. The kind of peccaries that chased Martin up a tree a few months ago and that can charge people if they feel especially grumpy. Uh, oh. I very slowly and calmly walked away in the one direction without peccaries. So all was well.
Back at Las Cruces now. Chris and I have been cleaning and counting seeds and putting them in the depots in the forest. I have been making more progress on my independent project. I have permission from landowners to work on their properties and a sampling scheme. So life continues to be wonderful and productive!
At Las Alturas, we also collected boatloads and boatloads of fruits for another round of seed predation experiments. We owe our seed-success to a stroke of luck. An enormous branch dripping with had fallen right next to the trail. A type of Ocatea, a genus in the Lauraceae family. In the picture, there are the long green fruits with bright red caps. As you can probably tell, they are related to avocados. Then, a few feet down the trail, we found thousands of tiny green fruits in the leaf litter. So perfect! Chris and I both had worried that we would not be able to find enough fruits for more experiments.
And of course, our fieldwork left plenty of time for adventuring. At one point, I keep off to collect another kind of fruit near a stream while Chris worked on some of the seed predation structures at the camps. The trails are well-marked: machete cuts and flagging. I had no problems getting to the stream, but, on the way back to the road, I didn´t pay attention and somehow wandered far off the trail. After a few minutes of wandering back and forth, I had to admit that I was completely disoriented. No idea how to get back to the camp, or even in what direction it was. So I turned back, following the sound of running water to the stream. I must have ended up really far upstream from where I had started. No familiar landmarks. So I calmly pulled out my compass and walked north-west away from the river. The river runs parallel to the road that cuts through Las Alturas west-east. I figured that I just had to walk away from the river and I would meet up with the road eventually. And I did!
Along the way, I saw beautiful parts of the forest that I had never seen from the trails. I enjoyed the exhilaration of being alone in the forest with no bright blue flagging and cut palm stems to guide me. And--this is the highlight of my summer--I saw a herd of wild peccaries. The peccaries that I saw at the central green at La Selva looked like toy poodles compared to the herd that approached me. Their shoulders must have reached well above my knees and they were so wide and stocky that one could have easily knocked me over. There were at least ten adult peccaries that I could see on three sides of me. The hair on their backs stood on end. Clearly, they were not happy to see me--I was thrilled to see all of them. I stood for a few minutes watching the peccaries with a huge grin on my face. Seeing peccaries at Las Alturas had been my summer goal, and there I was, surrounded by a herd of peccaries!
Unhappy, aggressive peccaries. The kind of peccaries that chased Martin up a tree a few months ago and that can charge people if they feel especially grumpy. Uh, oh. I very slowly and calmly walked away in the one direction without peccaries. So all was well.
Back at Las Cruces now. Chris and I have been cleaning and counting seeds and putting them in the depots in the forest. I have been making more progress on my independent project. I have permission from landowners to work on their properties and a sampling scheme. So life continues to be wonderful and productive!
6.09.2009
Fieldwork as Usual
No other camping excursions to pulperías to report. Just good, clean fieldwork fun. Chris and I spent the last several days setting up his seed predation experiment. He wants to understand how predation by different kinds of mammals contributes either to seed mortality. To do that, we set up miniature buffets in the forest that are accessible only to small mice and rats (mesh with holes too small for an agouti to wiggle through), accessible only to toy poodle-sized agoutis (a metal ring too high for mice to jump over), and accessible to all animals (no mesh, no metal ring).
For ¨bait,¨we gathered three different kinds of fruits out of the forest. My favorite part of the experiment. Gathering fruits is a cross between an Easter egg hunt and harvest party in the garden. Unlike Anna, Chris does not need to be picky about exactly which trees the seeds come from. Thank goodness. Tree-hunting puts a crick in my neck. Today, we set up a few more structures and checked on the seeds that we had already put on. I was really excited to find some seeds missing and others clearly damaged. We will continue to monitor the seeds' fates throughout the summer. I will keep you posted.
I have also settled on an independent project question(s): Does habitat fragmentation affect insect abundance and community composition? If so, can changes in the insect community explain changes in the amount of herbivory levels on juvenile trees with fragment size? This will give me a great opportunity to practice identifying insect and plant families and explore some other forests around Las Cruces. Very excited.
Tomorrow morning Chris and I are off to Las Alturas again. With underwear, frisbees, and toothpaste. This time we are camping out for three nights to check on the seedlings in the plots and scout around for more seed sources. I am so looking forward to camping! Since Martin needs the car, Chris and I will be taking a taxi. It is almost disappointing; I had a great time in the pulpería. We are stopping back by to visit the family before we trek off into the woods.
For ¨bait,¨we gathered three different kinds of fruits out of the forest. My favorite part of the experiment. Gathering fruits is a cross between an Easter egg hunt and harvest party in the garden. Unlike Anna, Chris does not need to be picky about exactly which trees the seeds come from. Thank goodness. Tree-hunting puts a crick in my neck. Today, we set up a few more structures and checked on the seeds that we had already put on. I was really excited to find some seeds missing and others clearly damaged. We will continue to monitor the seeds' fates throughout the summer. I will keep you posted.
I have also settled on an independent project question(s): Does habitat fragmentation affect insect abundance and community composition? If so, can changes in the insect community explain changes in the amount of herbivory levels on juvenile trees with fragment size? This will give me a great opportunity to practice identifying insect and plant families and explore some other forests around Las Cruces. Very excited.
Tomorrow morning Chris and I are off to Las Alturas again. With underwear, frisbees, and toothpaste. This time we are camping out for three nights to check on the seedlings in the plots and scout around for more seed sources. I am so looking forward to camping! Since Martin needs the car, Chris and I will be taking a taxi. It is almost disappointing; I had a great time in the pulpería. We are stopping back by to visit the family before we trek off into the woods.
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