El Camino a San Vito

Monday is our day of rest from biology in the tropics. So Ben and I went hiking through the rain forest to San Vito, the small mountain town about a 20 minute drive from the station. The hike was a lovely journey through ecological principles. We saw all the plant families that we will be tested on tomorrow morning. Heliconiaceae: think bananas. Great big leaves that rip easely; this may help cool the leaves, said Susan our plant specialist professor. Maranstaceae: the stems have a "pulvinus" or a flexible piece of tissue that allows the plant to move its leaves to either catch more sunlight or pull together to stay warmers at night. Piperaceae: the seeds are black pepper! The leaves are noticeably oblique and the joints are knobby. We also walked through different kinds of ecosystems wiht different microclimatic patches. Some areas were hotter or wetter or sunnier than others, creating what Vince, my Grinnell professor, would call a "patchy world" or "dynamic mosaic." Different places for differently adapted species. Patches were under different stages of succession: primary forest with enormous, ancient trees; secondary forest with scraggly pioneer species; and lovely gaps for sun-lovers. Epiphytes are still my favorite. These plants perch along tree branches, putting out roots to catch falling litter and water. The collections can build up into several centimeters of soil on the branches. Some tree species will even produce aerial roots to benefit from this extra mat of soil. So, long story short, I spent most of my day off reveling in ecology.

And (this is exciting!) a graduate student working out at Las Cruces offered to take me on as a research assistant for the summer--if I can find money for housing and rice and beans. He is studying successional dynamics in sites with and without large mammalian predators. And he also plays frisbee. The position would be lots of good fieldwork, plant identification, and hikes. That sounds fabulous. We'll see what other opportunities I can find along the way.