EcoMap Costa Rica : Blog

and just a thousand words...

and that's just the way it goes...

I woke up today feeling weird in my own room this morning but this is where my journey continues.

I was quite the drama queen coming home yesterday. Elise got the worst of my "laughcry" after Enrique said bye to us all coming home from La Fortuna. I couldn't control myself as we were both trying to go up the rocky hill to our cabin without a flashlight. It makes me laugh thinking about it.

the definition of a laughcry: the midway point between hysteria and abashment; really, it is what it sounds like haha

The morning of our departure I went to the the Toucan cabin to wake John so we can make our last round through the forest to collect flags, blue tape, and my butterfly trap. But he was just waking up and waiting on the bathroom.

So I sat by Joe to wait while looking out the window at the volcano. It made me sad that this is the last morning I'll be waking to this picturesque moment and I pointed at the volcano to Joe and was only able to say "the volcano! :(" before I broke out with a long laughcry episode. I could only imagine Joe sitting there confused because all he did was pat my back saying, "there, there," and then looked at the volcano and said "bye, bye." 

I had everything ready and packed so I could get to the dining early without having a race with time. I wanted to stop by the stables for a bit but I opted not to because that would have been really weird if I laughcried in front of the horses.

Getting in the airport was the peak of my laughcrying tendencies which was pretty entertaining to everyone. I guess I'm still maturing in how I adapt with change because I was still asking where the volcano was when we were going back to the UD campus. So apologies for my childish behavior! But I'm back! The smooth roads feels nice again. I almost feel pro driving on them after being really amaze how Jose, our bus driver, handled the road back and to the airport.

I'm excited to share my experience here in the states and to finish the research paper with my Invertebrate group. We have a lot to talk about. I can't wait to help Sebastian out in identifying his ants and John with the data!

A link to all the pictures of trip will be coming soon. Look out for them in the next blog!

Hello Blog!

The above title conotes the rules during our waterfall rappelling adventures today.  It was awesome. I believe the guides at Desafio took rule # 3 a little to serious, but that did not affect the amount of fun to be had. Today was a great way to end a great week. Everyon had a blast during their free day-fun.  The week has been filled with field work, laughs, cooking lessons, great food, and adrenaline activities.

It is safe to say that most wish to stay in Costa Rica; however I am pretty sure Dr. Brown would dissaprove as would everyone's family.  I won't lie, I kind of wish to stay here as well.  But I have an idea that this will not be my last time here.  I love the people here and I love the research.  It really has been a joy and a priveledge to be the field assistant on this trip.  It has been educational to be on the other side of a research project. And I am really proud of all the student's work this year.  I can't wait to tackle the analysis when we all get back to the Uof S.

Please wish us well with out travels tomorrow. 

Adios Costa Rica, Gracias por su genorosidad.

 

A short post, but we all survived the rappelling today.  Four different rappells, with the shortest at 48 feet and the longest at 150 feet.  Between each we scrambled down a slot canyon through the creek and other mini-waterfalls.  Here are some of the pics--I'll let John, Elise and Roselyn post their pics tomorrow.

I don't know where to begin to start this blog off. I'm just overwhelm that this trip is coming to a close.

Today we didn't have any field work but knowing that today was our last full day I still woke early wanting to absorb all that I could see. I wish there was a way I could capture all the beauty that floods this place and keep it forever and... and just bring it back with me to the states. 

It shows through my obsessive compulsion in wanting to click away on my camera... as if I'm going to miss a moment that will be gone in the next second and that there's no way of ever retrieving back that moment again. But to be reasonable, moving on through these moments and letting them pass us by to the next, we still take with us what we learned from them in some fashion... whether big or small.

I know I'm leaving Costa Rica with so much on my mind. The people here are all so very kind and I want to thank them a million times over!!!

here's to:

Steve and Debbie - who made this place possible and I'm sad that I never got to meet during our time here
Oscar - who was so welcoming and made this place feel like home!
Mireya - who gave cooking lesson, shared recipes, showed me how to make cheese, and bringing Lorita to breakfast this morning
Carlos - who has the best smile and help make it fun to milk a cow and a goat!
Ronald - who I'm sorry that I didn't speak enough Spanish for him to understand me but allowed me to help feed the horses with him
Enrique - who gets the superlative for being most influential to me on this trip! I hope we get to meet again friend!
Chito - for making sure I didn't drown when I jumped into the waterfall and taking the horses out to race them around with us!
Dr. Brown - who made this class possible! her dedication is beyond any professor I know! Especially for kicking butt at water rappelling when she had doubts in the beginning! Soon you all will hear stories of her zip-lining, rafting, and racing horses!
Richard - for his work here with the groups and sharing his knowledge to the class! he was a great help for me in La Fortuna today in getting gifts for my friends back home!
The class - this experience wouldn't be complete without any one of you! you guys really rock! like really really! really really really! The Walker Bros! Christian & Austin, Sebastian, John, Jomar (Joe & Omar), Forrest, Allie, and Turin!
Elise - our field lab assistant! who really help us all out and bring the group together! she had such a pleasant presence here! I can't imagine someone else doing a better job!
The Staff - who help tidy up our cabins and made sure our stay was comfortable
Sam, Beanie, & Chew-Chew - the cute dogs you see in my previous blog

I think I'll stop there since I just started thanking dogs... but you get what I mean.

I'll be leaving tomorrow morning with bug bites all over that I could care less about at this point, 10 salsa bottles, so many pictures waiting to be print, data ready to be analyzed, and memories... memories that I can't decipher into words at this hour but I know they will help prosper whatever lies for me after this.

I hope this isn't adios forever but an hasta luego! Costa Rica! We will meet again!

Dear blog readers,

Today was our free day and I chose to go zip-lining with Turin, Joe, Omar, and Forrest. It was fantastic - although I was scared most of the time. We all loved our exhilarating experience.

Christian just finished gathering up some of the flags marking bird points A through G, and what is probably our last blog post is now being written.  It's been an amazing week - we'll be heading back up to the US tomorrow morning.  We'll spend the next couple of days writing up our paper and analyzing data.  

Good morning,

I'm sitting out here on the porch enjoying the beautiful view of the Arenal volcano and wanted to share a few of my thoughts since I haven't been able to blog in a couple of days.

I think you all have been kept up to date pretty well with our habitat studies here in Costa Rica.  So right now I'd just like to say a few things about our overall experience here.  We've all had a lot of firsts here whether it be seeing or catching a certain bird, butterfly, ant, or countless other things in the forest.  Since coming to Costa Rica I've learned quite a bit about plants and soils, where and how they grow in certain areas, and in the process have gotten to also see birds and bugs that the other research groups were studying.  Some of the things that stand out to me most when I think about the last couple of days in regards to new experiences are:

Getting bitten by a number of tropical spiders

Seeing five snakes all together making their way through the forest on vines and branches as they hunted lizards

Stepping on a snake while walking back from one of our quadrats in the evening; that really startled me...

Seeing a bat snatch a bug out of the air 2 feet from my face as I was lying in the hammock

Milking a cow and goat for the first time

Seeing birds and animals that I've always wanted to see in the wild such as toucans and sloths

An overall awesome experience in Costa Rica of course...

Today since all our field work is done we have a free day for some fun activities and adventures (all the research has been awesome and fun already) such as zip-lining, rappelling, or exploring the canopy of a forest.  We're not able to do everything so I chose to go zip-lining.  I've never done that before so there's another thing to add to the list.

Team Habitat has just a couple of things to do before we write our final paper on the research that we've done.  I'm excited to see how all the data we've gathered is related and how the forests have been impacted by the different conditions, plant species, and soil characteristics that we've observed.

So of all the pictures I've taken thus far, these are just some of my favorites! I feel like I have lived many lifetimes here and it has only been 5 days! Enjoy the pictures!

The pictures speak for themselves!

Today was our final day of work in the field. I collected the last nine of fifteen pitfall traps I had placed. I'll bring the collected specimens back to Dallas with us, and identify them once we're back in the lab. Then I'll identify all the individual ants down to species, and calculate species diversity and abundance in our three habitat sites.

For our last day of field work the students were busy picking up last-minute pieces of data and trying to find out if there was anything else we needed before we leave.  We again got started with the birds early when I opened the nets just before 5, and had the busiest day yet at the nets.  I checked a normally fairly quiet set of nets to find four birds in it at once--two Buff-throated Saltators, one Passerini's Tanager, and a female Variable Seedeater.  The process of removing a bird from the net can't be rushed, but is made more difficult when the bird finds the most sensitive part of your hand and pecks at it repeatedly (as shown by Austin the other morning).  Somehow all four of the birds I removed wound up finding the same spot on me, but perhaps the retribution is deserved since we did interfere with their day by trapping them.  The netting was steady throughout the morning and brought in the most birds we've had all week.

Late yesterday afternoon, I completed the panoramas and they are now online, here.
The new Bird Point 'O' on the new trail through spring 3's original forest has also been added to the online map (click image to see the interactive map).

And here is this morning's view from the Mariposa cabin:

Today was supposed to be a long and hard-working day, but the habitat group worked professionally and was more efficient today. We were able to finish all our fields work today in order to start analyzing the data we collected. We encountered many diverse plant species, some that I have never seen before. Unfortunately we encountered 5 snakes and they looked like they were vipers. Joe was the one who spotted them and then started freaking out. His reaction scared us all and I did not want to go back in there again but you got to do what you got to do.  We eventually calmed down and chilled out until we made sure that the snakes left and the area was safe to go back in and continue our work.

Later that day, Christian and Austin spotted an owl and had the telescope aiming directly at it. We had to be very careful at approaching the telescope and I had to enter my stealth mode in order not to scare the owl away. The owl was starring directly at us just chilling, knowing that we are there but didn't do anything and it kind of freaked me out but was hilarious at the same time.

I am glad that we got done with the fieldwork early and i was very successful day for our habitat group. After having dinner, which was delicious as every night, we went on a night walk to try to observe owls, bats, and other interesting species that are not visible in daylight. We ended up not seeing many animals but was a fun walk with the whole group together.

We headed back to the cabin and chilled as usual, then passed out.

Need more be said?  Well, go ahead and assume the affirmative.  Our day started out promising with a Band-tailed Barbthroat in the net.  Here it is in Austin's hands.  

Today I placed the last nine pitfall traps, and collected the twelve traps I had placed earlier. The ant diversity here is incredible. The traps caught three Odontomachus bauri workers, a beautiful black trap-jaw ant that is a generalist predator on leaf-litter insects. Its mandibles, used to capture prey, can close at speeds of 145 miles per hour, giving these ants the fastest self-powered predatory strike in the animal kingdom. The average duration of a strike is a mere 0.13 milliseconds, or 2,300 times faster than the blink of an eye.

I also was able to capture a single worker of large, very fast and agile black ant species that I have so far been unable to identify. As John mentioned, it seems to be mimicking wasps, which is not a behavior I have ever heard of. Myrmecomorphy, or the mimicry of ants by other species, is common in wasps; but as far as I know, the mimicry of wasps by ants is not well-documented. Further research will be needed once we return to Dallas to determine the classification of this ant.

All in all, it was a great day of field work. I love it out here. I think I could do this kind of work the rest of my life. Tomorrow's our last day to collect data. I'm looking forward to spending another day with these amazing ants.

-Sebastian

Hello All!

Turin and I have been going to be around 9 (last night 8:30PM). We haven't gone to bed this early since...a long time. We are exhausted from waking up at 5 AM to join the mist-netters and start our bird observations. After some data-entry this morning, Dr. Brown allowed for the girls to go on an amazing horseback ride (which Roselyn has beautifully described) since horseback riding was my first choice for free day. Since there wasn't anyone else who had it as their first choice, I took the opportunity to go today. Oscar, one of the workers/guides here, arranged for a ride for us gals down and up to a beautiful waterfall in Monterrey. Upon our return, Turin, Elise, and I rushed out to do our evening bird observations, and Turin and I are up "late" entering in our data.

So--day 3 is usually the day when the workload starts to push past the Day 2 high intensity effort into the downswing toward our Friday departure, but also when the heat and lots of hiking/less sleep tends to hit the students as well.  It's also the day when a group of vine snakes turn into vipers, so before anyone worries the students were all fine and the snakes were nonvenomous.  It is unusual to see that many at one time, so it was perhaps something that was a bit scary!

The habitat team did have some rough terrain to cover today and some thick plants to thrash through, making their concern about snakes very real.  They had a huge number of plants to catalog but got more efficient in their work today.