7/31/2013

7/31/2013


I have a little less than 23 hours left and I still haven't started on my discussion.



Which is a big chunk of work!



Today was a ridiculous amount of computer work.






I've spent the last few days working towards a singular piece of information:

That may not look very special to you.



 But it's a pretty darn crucial piece of information for my project.




And it was not easy to make. I've never: used one, made one, or used the programs that work with them.



At the end of the day it's much more than a silly little cladogram. It's the relationship between the families of the lizards I'm working with and the area of the forest they live.


 And more importantly, this is just a visual format of a code.


Now I can see what how to predict what makes these lizards get too hot.

Is it the species?

Is it their size?

Is it their family?

Or is it the niche they live in?

Hmmm






I don't even have any cool moth photos today...I'm swamped.

Tomorrow after 6pm though, I think I deserve a little night hike to the swamp... : )

7/30/2013

7/30/2013


Not much exciting to report today.


Well, it's pretty exciting to me. 



I am neck deep in paper writing.




There are four main sections to a scientific paper: introduction (background), methods (what you're doing and how), results (what you found), and discussion (explain what your findings mean, any problems you had and possible directions in the future).


I feel pretty confident with my introduction so far, the methods is kind of done (just some fine tuning) and today has been crunching, crunching, crunching numbers.

 I wouldn't say I'm half way done though. The fun stuff is just beginning.


It's important that I write out and explain what I found, run the right stats for it, make the right figures (graphs, tables, etc.) and explain those figures correctly in the paper...

Wowza is my head spinning!

And then I move on to the discussion.

I've spent the past six weeks tropsin' about in the jungle. Sitting behind a computer screen for 12 hours a day and just thinking is waaaaay more exhausting.





I wish I had some awesome pictur.....












jk















Of course I saw more awesome moths today!

I also learned something pretty cool from a tourist.




Socratea exorrhiza (Walking Palm) Try as I might to stay away from plants, this one is pretty cool. It grows up on these thick stilt-like roots, that way if there is too much competition for space or light it can extend new roots out in a certain direction to lean (sometimes at over a 45° angle!)

There were more butterflies than usual this morning flapping all around the river station.





I thought maybe there were some flowers blooming nearby that they were feeding on.




Eventually we discovered some tell-tale sign hanging on the vines in the nearby forest. There were thousands of them. Must have just emerged too. Pretty wild stuff!

Can't chat too long, I have my work cut out for me. As of writing this I have exactly 48 hours until my papers is due...I love a good challenge.

7/29/2013

7/29/2013


The end of an era!

It's hard to believe my field work ended today! I let the last of my little babies go : (

Let's not pretend like I won't still go out and enjoy myself in the jungle... I just won't be catching lizards for science anymore.



Walking around in the jungle makes me feel like a kid again. Or how I imagined I was as a youngin'. Kids can just phase out and stare at bugs or leaves of grass.

Somewhere along the line I guess I got too wrapped up in paying bills, or getting good grades, or going on that next vacation.

 I love the jungle because I can get lost right outside the office door. You can't go a meter into the jungle without finding something awesome!








Nephila clavipes (Golden Orb Weaver) I'll be the first to admit I used to be terrified of big spiders. These are actually really mellow though. I hear you can hold one without it biting you...not gonna test that theory.

If you look close there's a lot going on. First, look at the web, especially the color, and you'll see why they're called 'Golden Orb Weaver'. Second, she's got a prey item in her fangs. Sometimes butterflies with mild toxins will get caught in their webs. The spiders can recognize them and then free them from the web. Third, and you might have to look a little closer, there's a tiny little spider just above her abdomen. That's not a baby or a smaller type of spider. That's the male of the species!

 He may be tiny but he's no dummy. He lives on the outside of the web and eats scraps of food when the female isn't looking. She's so hungry she'd eat him if he got too close. This time though, he saw that she was busy with her prey item so he took the opportunity to slinker on over and mate with her.

If he doesn't wait for her to be preoccupied or full there's a pretty good chance he'd get eaten before he ever got the chance to mate.

 "Hell hath no fury..."


 Pretty wild stuff!








It's been stormy every night the past week which makes some really cool foggy mornings over the river.


Sometimes it's hard to make it to breakfast in time when you have to walk across the bridge and not become consumed with this:

It's definetly the best spot to bird too. Most of the jungle canopy is so thick that only the smaller birds that fly below the canopy can be seen. From the bridge I've seen everything from parquets, toucans, parrots to herons!






If you're bored of these pictures yet, I'll clump them together so you can scroll right through.

Mandatory cool moth photos!

Admittedly I'm not sure if these are even moths. One looks like it's made of blue cheese and other is almost neon green... that's enough for me.

I had an amazing opportunity today, something that hasn't happened (reptile/amphibian wise) in a while.






I found a new order!








It goes: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.

No. It's not just a little earthworm. Much like every other thing in the jungle you need to take a closer look at anything to get a good idea of what you're working with.








Gymnopis multiplicata (Purple Caecilian) It's domain is eukaryota (multi-cellular), kingdom - animalia (mammals, birds, insects, etc.), phylum - chordata (backbone, spinal cord, and some other silly characteristics), class - amphibia (salamanders, frogs, etc.), order - gymnophiona...

These things are awesome. They live mostly underground so they have degenerate eyes, meaning we don't think they do much but see shadows anymore. They also have these special light-sensitive organs on their tails that aren't on any other type of vertebrate! Since they live underground they're hard to study and not much is known about them.

I'm floating on cloud 9 from finally seeing one!






I also was fortunate enough to see a new type of snake tonight.



Corallus annulatus (Annulated Tree Boa) Unlike the other tree boa I found, this one has a very mottled stomach. It's also very secretive and not normally seen. It was a beautiful animal. Unfortunately my hands were full so I had to trust a tourist to get a photo. Little biter tried his best to get me, but you can see from the spots on my hands his bark was a lot worse than his bite.

Truth be told, my friend Nate has a rosy boa that chewed on me for a few minutes, and that hurt way more than this little beauty.


Sorry snakey, you can't have it all.





Returning my very last set of lizards (Stream Anoles) to the stream tonight I was given another gracious gift from the jungle.






One of my old study species just couldn't stay away and dropped in to say hello (literally jumped on my arm).






Agalychnis callidryas (Red- Eyed Tree Frog) Clearly a favorite. I don't know how anything so precious ever came into existence, but if I could just hang out with these for 8 hours a day for work, I'd be: a) pretty pumped and b) probably not very productive.

It was so hard to walk away from this little guy.

I want one!

Tomorrow it's official. Crunch time begins and I need to be able to knock this paper out of the park.

Realistically it won't be 'publishable' manuscript per se. Not yet anyway. It's a great way to make sure we follow through with what we started though.

Sometimes the whole publication process can take years.

 With all the work I've put into this thing though, it feels like I have to do my best to make sure it sees the light of day.

7/28/2013

7/28/2013



Early to bed, early to rise.


I've followed that sentiment fairly religiously my whole life, including my time here at La Selva. I'm not much of a night owl.



I was on my way to bed last night, this is about 9pm, when I swore I could hear some guitar playing off in the distance.

Assuming the jungle creatures hadn't gotten the band back together I decided it would be best to go and investigate.













And five hours later my voice was gone and my eyes could barely stay open.

I stumbled across some fellow researchers having a jam session! At first it was mostly latin songs or classic campfire stuff (john denver, james taylor, etc.)

Luckily I ended up asking 'do you guys know any 90's jams?'...

You know. When 90's music was on the radio I couldn't really stand it. It must have been on so much that it became engraved in my psyche though. Because I just can't get enough.

Highlight: Seal - Kissed by a rose.

And no. We didn't sound good at all, but damn was it a fun time.

Something about belting out 90's jams in the middle of the night is good for the soul. Hard work is just as important as play, sometimes I forget that. Luckily no one there had anything resembling a good singing voice so we need not be too embarrassed.

Pumpkins. STP. Ace of Base. Mariah. C+C Music Factory.

They're all there to remind me to take it easy.














 Before I get on about today, let's get this out of the way:








 Mandatory awesome moth photo.

Today was bitter-sweet. I think I caught my last round of lizards. :  (

I'll test them in the lab tomorrow. But after Monday at midnight we're cut-off from any field work.


They're trying to replicate the end of the field season. As far as data collection is concerned we've been told to act like we leave the jungle Monday night.


I'll take the lizards I caught today back to the field tomorrow night and then that's it. Only thing left to do is write a paper in five days and try my best to soak up the jungle before it's all over...









Not to brag or nothin', but the wife is coming down on the last day and we're going to go sit on a tropical beach for a few weeks...






Not to brag or nothin'.
















It was with a heavy-heart that I caught the last of my lizards (for this trip anyway).





Norops oxylophis (Stream Anole) It's going to be hard to say goodbye to all my little babies. I didn't notice the little guy under my thumb when I took this photo. Yeah big guy? Mr. tough-n-stuff gonna bite everyone else? I know I'm scared.

The males of these species were probably some of my favorite. They'd get all hot and bothered and try to 'display' to me. That colored patch of skin is called a dewlap. They normally flash this towards other males in the environment as a way to flex muscle and chase away competitors from their ladies. Think of it as equivalent to their bro-tanks.

Thecadactylus rapicauda (Turnip-tail gecko) Who doesn't love a gecko? They're just too charismatic and pretty to ever be scared of. Not going to lie though, they're a lot more bitey than you'd think. 

It's really getting down to the end of the line. It's hard to believe it will be over in less than 2 weeks.



I'm not gonna lie, the end of this trip means the start of a whole new one.

Life is tough sometimes...

7/27/2013

7/27/2013

Busy busy.












Instead of a long diatribe about what's going on, how about this:

The clouds seemed to unload extra fierce this morning.


Even under a roof we couldn't inhale our breakfast without getting soaked!

There are some positives to a 'rain day' though. I've gotten a lot of computer stuff done that I've been putting off for way too long.

I've learned a very important lesson these past few days.











LABEL AND EXPLAIN EVERYTHING!






 I have huge charts of numbers with just a few random numbers and a letter as their titles. I feel like I have to decipher hieroglyphics to remember what I'm looking at. And I'm the one who made the darn things!



What 11a_a.csv or Jr_4000.csv mean, I have no idea.



Wupps.



Sorry data.




 You...are...outta here!














The jungle comes alive when it's raining. And all the weird bugs come out of their slumber and try to hide on the buildings.



So here's some of the new friends I made today (don't judge, but I named some of them).

I'm just baffled at what selection pressures could lead to such bizarre animals. It's not just strange colorations, most of them have odd protuberances coming from all ends to serve some unknown purpose. 

In her finest winter coat.

This one is my favorite. I'm pretty sure it's some kind of weevil. Those hairs are just too bizarre. It also freaked out and flew away into the rain when the flash of my camera went off. Camera-shy I guess.

There is life in every corner of this jungle. You can't turn a leaf over (literally) without finding some kind of creepy crawly or cool new animal.


I thought it was weird how this rain drop wasn't falling off the leaf. Things are rarely what they seem in the jungle. I don't know what these are going to turn into when they grow up. I'll keep my eyes on it and let you know.

Really nothing else to report on the day. I'm neck deep in paper writing. I need to re-write about 70% of my introduction so I have my work cut out.







Oh yea, I almost forgot...











This happened!

It's sometimes overwhelming how much I love sloths...

7/26/2013

7/26/2013



Why yes, it did thunder and lightning a bunch last night.






But no...








I didn't hear a darn thing!







Where would I be without my amazing wife? She thought to send earplugs in my care-package.


What a life-saver.


Brushing my teeth last night I was sure it would be another sleepless night. And then I was reminded of those cushioned angel-kisses called earplugs.

Ah... what a difference a good nights sleep can make!








Today was, mostly, rain-free. Meaning I wasn't stuck in front of the computer all day, and got some more field time in!



Before that though, maybe I should clarify something from yesterday. I realize now that throwing out some random p value and saying it was a good thing doesn't real mean diddly squat.


What I'm trying to show with this project is a relationship between niche (like forest floor, stream side, or in the trees) and what maximum temperature a lizard can handle. Regardless of the species or or how large these lizards are the most important thing that determines what their maximum temp is, is their niche.


Yesterdays stats showed that is indeed the case.


Doesn't matter what kind of lizard or what their size is. The most important aspect is what part of the environment they've carved out (evolutionarily) for themselves.



Pretty cool stuff.








But on to some purty pictures.



Today I figured I'd check out one of the 'swamps' on the map that has been dry most of our time here. With all the rain we've been having I figured something had to pool up there.







Bingo!

The swamp during the day isn't nearly as terrifying. Although there are still swamp monsters lurking about...

It sure thought it was a swamp monster with all the moving around it did in the water and tall grass. Despite my beliefs that a velociraptor was about to eat me, I was surprised to catch one of my snarling and ferocious study species!




Iguana iguana (Green Iguana) The juveniles are just too cute. Sorry godzilla, you're coming back to the lab with me for a little soak in the hot-tub!

Wandering around the swamp I learned a new and exciting lesson.













Thank you jungle, you're such a noble teacher sometimes.















Rule #12























DON'T F***ING TOUCH THESE!!!

I don't need to tell you how I learned this joyous lesson.


I don't think this photo does much justice to how bad these thorns feel. This was after I had run around screaming pulling as many as I could out on my own.

Pity was cast on me again though.



If I hadn't run around screaming I never would have found these

Theobroma cacao (Cocoa Tree) The actual fruit tastes more like a strawberry-banana treat. I'll admit, I was a little disappointed when I cut into these fruit and a fresh snickers didn't fall out, at least give me a kit kat. I must be thinking of a different variety or something.

All in all it was a pretty productive day. It's just nice to be back in the jungle again.

I even caught some more animals for my study

Corytophanes cristatus (Casque-headed Lizard) How did I get so lucky? All of my study species are just too adorable for words. I didn't even need to hold on to this little rascal, he just wanted to give me a finger hug the whole way back to the lab (I was more than willing to oblige).

One of my original hopes for this blog was to have a record of all the cool animals I see down here. That's still the case, but I was hoping to be able to identify all the animals in the photos I put up.
















Screw that.









Some of these moths and spiders are way too cool to not post a picture of. I have no idea what they are, but they sure look cool.



This spider had an almost iridescent blue outline that I couldn't stop staring at... I think it wants to be a sea star when it grows up too.

Why this spider makes thicker 'spoke' webs, I'm not sure. The weird colors and spines on its abdomen were sign enough for me to stay the heck away.

There are only three days left of data collection and then we're cut off!


It's really crunch time, but at the same time I want to soak up every second I can in the jungle.


Back to it!

7/25/2013

7/25/2013


I'm a big baby.



















You heard it here first.





I can handle heat, humidity, bug-bites, rice and beans for months on end, bites, scratches, stings, and smelly water.














Lightning storms...nope!














I was pretty sure the world was going to end last night. This one was way worse than the storm we had a few weeks ago. And just like then, I was shaking like a leaf the entire time.


I do feel a little better, because in the morning everyone (including the mid-westerners) agreed it was a pretty darn good storm.



Thunder is NOT supposed to shake the walls.




 A few of the 'big' ones felt so close my ears were ringing!


(Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit)



So say it all you want, I'm a big baby, and I don't like scary lightning. I'll handle snakes, spiders, and all manner of bitey creatures before I ever want to try to sleep through a storm like that again!


It rained all last night and most of today.


Remember that pretty little stream near the river station?

One of these days I'll swerve my way down there and take a picture standing under that log in the background. It has to be at least 2m above the water...normally.






Then it rains all night and looks like this:

The weirdest part is that no one who lives down here seems to care!


Me: Oh my God! The creek near the riverstation is flowing backwards. Should we think about evacuating?!
Crazy People: Meh... I've seen it much worse.



Like I said.



I'm a big, worry-wart, baby.




I spent another long day in the lab trying to grind out some data analysis.



Many of the researchers are big on using this program called 'R' for all their statistics. I've always heard it's very powerful... you just have to know how to write your own computer code!





I can barely figure my way around my wife's iPhone!






After 6 hours in the lab I actually got pretty excited about all my stats work.








I'm going to have to get over my fear of statistics, because that's how scientists talk to each other. If another scientist has no background knowledge of what my project was about, they look for this magic little number, in my case it's called a p value.



When I show my stats I'm basically trying to say that more than 95% of the time I won't show a relationship where there is not one (called a false positive, or Type I error). Think of a blood test, I'd want to say less than 5% of the time my blood test would show a patient had a disease when they really didn't.


Ugh, what a mouthful.


Now I'm just confusing myself.



In any case, I got a p value=0.0004621... which is really small, which is awesome!


Being stuck in doors all day means I didn't get a million cool animal photos.


But the jungle is good to me. Sometimes you never have to leave your desk for cool wildlife to show up.



Crax rubra (Great Curassow) The male (brown) had 4 different females dancing around. Every time they'd start to wander off he'd flap his wings and make all kinds of squawking noises until they got back in a line right next to him. Come on bird, this is the 21st century...chauvinist. 

Unknown Moth. I'm not gonna lie, moths are pretty kewl.

It's amazing how draining it can be staring at a computer screen all day. I'm thinking of paying homage to the lightning Gods so I can get a good nights sleep. 


Hopefully tomorrow I can get back out there and wrangle up some more lizards.

7/24/2013

7/24/2013



Have you ever had a perfect opportunity to take an amazing photo? To capture something beautiful and hard to believe?

An artistic tour de forceto be shared with friends and loved ones.







I had one of those today...





And my camera choose that exact moment to stop working!






Nooooooooo!





Oophaga pumilio (Strawberry Poison-dart Frog) These things are amazing parents, and I had an unreal experience to witness it in action. Unfortunately.... this is not the picture I was going for. Damn you camera!

I saw what looked like a clump of dirt stuck to one of their backs. Turns out it was one of their tadpoles!

They will carry one of their tadpole babies on their backs. Giving them a piggy-back ride to the top of a tree where they're placed in a bromeliad.


Bromeliads are frequently full of water and a perfect place, far from predators, to place a little tadpole baby.

The tadpole first eats anything else alive in the bromeliad, but eventually might starve. The mother slowly makes the rounds to all her tadpole babies and lays an unfertalized egg into the plant for the growing tadpole to eat.

Now that's dedication!

The trees here are huge! And to imagine a tiny froggie jumping up one every day to lay an egg seems like an almost insurmountable task.

It's too bad I couldn't get the shot with the tadpole on the back... but you get the idea.







Today was pretty on and off, rain-wise. Meaning I was in the lab crunching a lot of data most of the day.

Aside from the froggie parents of the year, I didn't get the chance to be outside as much as I'd like.

I did find a cute bird nest nearby. See that odd shaped grey fluff-ball in the lower part of the crack. It's a beautiful baby bird.

And then comes the inevitable, unfortunate part of the story that seems so common to my trip to Costa Rica.


One lesson I'm learning about the jungle is that things are rarely what they seem to be. For example, one of my favorite birds, the Acari, may seem beautiful and majestic.




Not true.








They are viscous baby-killers.






You'd think this would be a face you could trust. It's like a real life Toucan-Sam. "Just follow your nose!" [to a nest full of babies to eat!]...

Worst baby-sitter ever!





Consider yourself lucky that I didn't get a picture of this cartoon-looking bird eating tiny, little, baby birdies one at a time.



Horrifying.






Near the river station I also ran into another monster/alien/demon today:

This thing had a body that was ~15cm long! I don't know if it could bite or what. No way in hell I stuck around no enough to find out. If any one knows what kind of insect this is, it would be nice to know. Especially considering it's taking up residence on the screen to my bedroom window.



Hopefully tomorrow has less rain and more lizard catchin'.

7/23/2013

7/23/2013



Good news/Bad news.







Good news: I went on a pretty epic hike today and saw the farthest boundaries of the property.








Bad news: I'm pretty sure my feet are about to fall off.







My first five and half weeks here were mainly spent on the Northern end of the property. Most of my animals could be found close to the lab, so there was no reason to walk to the far-ends of the earth to find any.



Outside the yellow square has been, mostly uncovered ground so far.

Today, for one reason or another, I got the great idea that Laura, Alyssa (two other REU) and myself would hike the entire perimeter!

 I figure it was somewhere around 18-20km. Took a little over 7 hours. And was easily some the most intense hiking I've ever done.


I'll shut up though and let the pictures do the talking.








We were warned that the back of the property was a bit 'hilly'.




 The understatement of the century.






The back 1/4 of the property is a series of muddy ups and downs that felt like they'd never end.



First we go up.

Some hills had nice roots for stairs. Some were thick mud that you just slid down. Most were pretty brutal.





But worth the amazing views.

The deeper we went back into the property the wilder it felt. The canopy got denser in spots, then opened up and the undergrowth was repressive. I can honestly say I don't think I've ever sweat so much in my entire life.


The landscape slowly changed from manicured trails, to thicker jungle, to wallowy mud-pits.



And with every up.





Came a slippery, muddy, catastrophe of a down.

We got a little bit dirty today...





Some of the trees back there were just monstrous. You always knew the spots where one of those titans had fallen. Suddenly it was blindingly bright, small trees were popping up everywhere and the heat really turned up a notch.


These clearings, called gaps, are really important to the forest. Especially in primary forest where very little light ever touches the forest floor.

Plants are, essentially, explosive growers in these gaps. They have to grow as fast as they can to out compete their neighbors for valuable sunlight.

It's also a great spot to find snakes sunning themselves!



Bothrops asper (Fer-De-Lance) Such a powerful and beautiful animal. I never get tired of looking at them!

 Gaps are also a great place to see a huge variety of amazing butterfly species!

At the bottom of most of the hills, in each little secret valley, was normally a stream or pool of water. Always a much needed respite from the tyrannical jungle heat.



And, unfortunately for my two companions, a great chance to force them to take a million photos for my family back home!

After the first four or five streams I stopped the torture and put a halt on the photos.




















Oh who am I kidding. Yeah right I did. Keep that camera snappin' sista!

There were significant chunks of the trail that were more streams and branches than trail.

As awesome as that sounds, someone as clumsy as me does not belong trying to balance on mossy logs over moving water.

Believe it or not, somehow I didn't fall. Miracles do happen.

Eventually we came to a hill that is hard to describe.


 I would have taken a photo, but by the time we realized how far up we actually had to climb up, there was no way in hell I was going to climb back down for a silly photo op.

Luckily, the jungle sometimes takes pity on poor souls like me.
















After a brutal up and a slippery down...

I doubt if a body of water has ever felt so damn good in the history of mankind.



Ahhhh, reprieve.




By the end of our trip we were all pretty much obliterated.

Feet sore, water-bottle empty, food gone, clothes soaked, camera full...minds blown.


I won't be doing the trek again tomorrow, but it was definitely worth the effort.

Plus, we even caught a few cool animals along the way!


Enulius sclateri (White-headed Snake) Not the most creative name. I would have preferred the bandit snake. Not a whole lot is known about these snakes and they're apparently rarely encountered. What a silly looking head they have.

Norops oxylophus (Stream Anole) When I scared this thing along a stream we were trudging through it jumped into the water and tried to swim under a log! I've never seen a lizard act so peculiar. So of course I snatched it up thinking I had found a new species of swimming stream lizard...Nope, turns out these are pretty common and well known to dive for a few minutes to avoid predators.

I'd say the day was a win-win. Plenty of animals caught and seen. Plenty of exercise and jungle experiences. And enough selfies to fill up a photos album.



Feet, take a break, you deserve it.