After almost two months in the rainforest, it is time to return to Texas. I am proud to say this was a successful field season. I walked on nearly every trail in the reserve, successfully deploying my camera traps and acoustic recorders and taking vegetation measurements at all sites. Overall, I have nearly 8,000 wildlife photos and over 800 hours of recordings. Thankfully I am able to use various programs to help me automatically identify species in my data. After I know which species were found at which site, I can create food webs weighted by the occupancy of each species, and compare these webs across the differing vegetation and forest types of each site to look for patterns. This work will help us understand how disturbance to a forest impacts the species interactions and ecosystem functioning. By understanding these impacts, we can predict how future human-induced changes to landscapes can impacts species and use this knowledge in conservation planning decisions. A fun side project that I was able to work on involved putting one of my spare cameras beneath one of the bridges at the station. The scientists who work here told me that an ocelot likes to go under the bridge to go to the bathroom (you can certainly smell it after it does). Four years ago they documented a few ocelots near the bridge and wanted to see if we could see them again, and we did! The individual above has the same markings as an ocelot captured in photos four years ago. He has been peeing in the exact same spot for over four years. Pretty crazy, and also great information for the station to keep tabs on the wildlife here. I cannot thank my field assistant Randall enough. He is actually going to be working on another camera trap project with another researcher after I leave. I know he will be amazing in that role too and I look forward to seeing the results from that work in the future! I cannot put into words how grateful I am for everyone I have met during my field season. It would have been impossible without them, and I am especially thankful for their patience with my Spanish. Thank you to La Selva and OTS for keeping me safe, fed, housed, and supported in more ways than I can count. I was truly blessed to do my work in such an amazing place with fantastic and brilliant people. And of course, thank you to the forest for allowing me to conduct my work and giving the space for me to find so much peace and joy. As I leave there is a group of graduate students coming in for an OTS field course. If you are interested in this or something similar, you can find more about it on OTS website! They have both undergraduate and graduate programs, and programs conducted in English and Spanish. Time to head back to more heat and humidity in Houston! I am sad to leave but happy to return to my community at Rice as well. This summer I will have an elementary school teacher as an intern and she will help me go through my field work data. Stay tuned for more results and to hear more about this awesome opportunity for collaboration with a teacher this summer! Hasta luego Costa Rica and thank you for an amazing field season.
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Now comes another fifteen days of data collection (fingers crossed our cameras capture some more great images), which means fifteen days to explore, do some other graduate school work, and continue organizing the data I collected so far. But emphasis on the explore part! I worked on a different project in Costa Rica last year and became friends with another ecologist who is from and lives here in Costa Rica. During a few of my free days, I visited them in San José to learn more about Costa Rican culture. Our first stop was Refugio de Vida Silvestre Cerro Dantas for a hike. This is a wildlife refuge that is busy every weekend with hikers, bikers, and local outdoor enthusiasts. The reserve is actually on the other side of a large volcano from my field station! We made some adorable friends from our hike. They followed for 12km! We stopped for some rest at the "magic bus", an abandoned bus with unknown origin, and headed back down. And don't fret, my friend and I gave some yummy treats to our new friends at the end. We then headed off to get a sweet treat, granizados, which is shaved ice with fruit and syrup, powdered milk, condensed milk. Quite sweet but so delicious. We had ours with ice cream which is the traditional way of the "Churchill" copo from the Puntarenas region of Costa Rica. We also went to the market for some empanadas arregladas filled with cheese and topped with cabbage and some sauces. The market was also full of fruit, meat, fish, spices, and artisan goods and I actually bought a chorreador, which is a traditional coffee maker using fabric to hold the ground beans and pouring water into the fabric. It always makes great coffee! I learned about Costa Rican history at the Museo Nacional de Costa Rica in San José. The military was abolished here in 1948, and the museum building is the former Bellavista Military Barracks. The museum begins by walking through a butterfly garden filled with gorgeous species and facts about them all. Throughout the museum is then different exhibits about the economic, political, and cultural history of Costa Rica. My favorite was an art exhibit using glass sculptures inspired by nature. The museum is also next to the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica, where congress meets, so it was cool to see that building too! The steps outside were also busy with people dancing, chatting, and playing music so it was just an awesome place to be. And I learned so much!
I went on another hike as well, en el cerro Guarari. This hike went through coffee plantations and farmland, as well as some higher elevation forest. It was really gorgeous and is near Volcan Barva, a volcano that is visited by many people. As we walked back down a road after reaching the peak (in pouring rain), we stopped at a restaurant for another traditional meal, Casado which is beans, rice, plantains, meat, and salad.
Just a few more days until the final photos are in! Check back for my final update from this field season soon.
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AuthorI am an ecology PhD student in the Beaudrot Lab at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Archives
November 2023
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