Army ant cleaning crew

A little while back, army ants came through the lab clearing and made their way through all the rooms in both the old and new labs. These ants are pretty amazing -- they just appear one day in a steady stream of antiness and go everywhere in search of insects and other food. Anything that crosses their path gets swarmed and devoured...even HUMANS!! No, no, I am kidding, but these ants do give really painful stings so you need to be careful around them. This swarm actually crawled up a wall and attacked a wasp nest under an eave. The wasps had no chance and the ants ate all the larvae in the nest while the adult wasps circled the swarm helplessly.
Army ants are almost constantly on the move, but make temporary "nests" called bivouacs. The bivouac looks like a termite nest (a large brown blob on a tree/vine/liana) but is comprised solely of ants -- a living nest. These ants had their bivouac about 15 meters behind the lab buildings. I took a couple of pictures, but didn't want to get too close -- you also can't breathe on these guys because it makes them very mad and more likely to attack and sting you. The bivouac I saw was approximately 2 meters tall!
Although they may seem scary, these ants are really great at cleaning all the dead/live insects out of houses and offices. I let them do their work in my office (I left for a couple of hours) and hopefully they got rid of all the smaller ants and roaches for me!

Salchichita: The Return

Yay, the little weiner dog from the rain forest will soon be returning to La Selva from the big city! She went to live there about a month ago because she was getting into too many fights with animals here (porcupines, monkeys, anteaters...the list goes on) and she was getting hurt. Apparently the people taking care of her in the city don't really like her (!!--how can that be?!) and want to get rid of her. Carlos and I talked with the owner and said that we would gladly take care of her and make her an in-house puppy so that she can't fight with rain forest animals that might eat her. The owner agreed that we could have her and she might be here again in a couple of weeks! We will be taking her back to Florida with us too and I think that she will really like it there. She is already bilingual so she will fit right in. Salchi is such a nice dog and I think she will really like living with us. I will start looking up what shots and paperwork she needs to come back to the U.S. with us but from what I hear, this is not too difficult. This is really nice and exciting news!

Birthday week 'o fun

My mom and her friend Judy were here at La Selva from last Tuesday and they just left yesterday morning. It was really fun having them here to see the rain forest and all the little animals therein. We had a good time wandering the trails in secondary and primary forest and we saw a lot of nice animals (monkeys, poison dart frogs, owls, agoutis, squirrels, trogons) and best of all...no snakes!



My birthday was on Saturday and after breakfast, we went back to the house where mom and Judy were staying and opened presents--I got lots of great stuff: DVDs (X-Files, My Neighbor Totoro from Carlos), books (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Cute Book), a game for my little pink Nintendo DS Lite, and tons of other cool stuff! Since it was raining pretty hard that morning, mom, Judy, and I stayed inside reading, watching DVDs, and making pies (peaches and cream cheesecake--my favorite). I made a little felt bear from The Cute Book which has patterns, cute pictures, and descriptions (fun Japanese translations) for different critters you can make: from bear and fish to bad guy and kidnapper--what a weird book! We had a little party that night with my friends on station and we all ate delicious cake and snacks.


Mom and Judy left yesterday after about a week of rain forest fun and now they are back in Washington where there is rain but definitely not as much as there is here!

Mom's coming soon!

Not much fun stuff to blog about this week. This morning I saw a peccary wallowing in some mud--it was really cute. He was snorting around under the water's surface (I think he was eating worms or some other invertebrates) and blowing bubbles. It was too funny, but by the time I ran back to get my camera, the muddy little piggy was gone. Well, that was the higlight of my morning!

My mom is coming down here for a visit very soon--I am really excited! This will be her first time in Costa Rica (and Central America) and I have a lot of fun things planned. She will arrive on Tuesday afternoon with her friend Judy and I will meet them at the airport. From there, we will come to La Selva and the adventure begins. I am planning on taking my mom on a lot of nice walks and tours throughout the forest. I also want to take her on a boat trip down the Rio Puerto Viejo (that runs through the La Selva reserve) and on one or two night hikes to see nocturnal animals. Mom will only be here from the 11th to the 16th, but we will be able to celebrate my birthday and bake my favorite birthday cake--peaches and cream cheesecake! My dad isn't able to come on the trip because of work and (even more importantly) animal baby-sitting duties! Oh those crazy critters!

A visit from Jane Goodall

Yesterday, Jane Goodall (of National Geographic and chimp behavioral biology fame) visited the station. It was really amazing. She met with the researchers after lunch and gave a short talk about her current conservation efforts and the programs she is endorsing/running. It was really great to meet one of my childhood heroes and to hear her speak was awesome--she is very charismatic and passionate about what she does. She shared some nice personal stories about her life and her path in the field of behavioral biology. The best part was when she opened her talk by imitating the chimpanzee greeting call--this is apparently something she does to every group she meets! I will upload some pictures later...what a cool experience!

E. O. Wilson

Last Wednesday (22 August), Carlos and I along with my friend (and former OTS classmate) Arietta traveled to San Jose. The main goal of this trip was to pick up our renewed permits, but we also all wanted to see a much-publicized lecture by the eminent Dr. E. O. Wilson held that afternoon at the Unversity of Costa Rica. Well, when we went to the MINAE office to pick up our permits, they weren't there so we said we would pick them up in the future and next we all went out to lunch. We ate Italian food at a little restaurant near the university called Il Pomodoro. It was pretty good--especially the garlic bread. Next we ran errands until 1:30pm when we wandered over to the auditorium for the talk. E. O. Wilson is a pioneer biologist well-known for his extensive research on ants, sociobiology, and island biogeography. It was really great to see him give a talk. Afterwards, Carlos, Arietta, and I took a bus to the Automercado to pick up some groceries then took the last bus back to Puerto Viejo and called it a night.

More Moleman!

I went to San Jose a couple of days ago with Carlos to turn in the renewal reports for our research permits at MINAE--the ministry of energy and the environment in Costa Rica. This has to be done every 6 months. While in the city, we stopped by the San Pedro mall to watch the Simpsons movie. It was in English with Spanish subtitles (yippee!) and it was a pretty good movie. I definitely think that it coud have been better had they put in more scenes with Hans Moleman (see picture above if you have no idea who this is). He is my favorite Simpsons character and was most definitely underused in this movie, but it was still worth a see!

Days 10 & 11--Back to Costa Rica

After a busy day yesterday and a late night/early morning, I took a 10:30am bus from Morelia back to Mexico City with my friend Julia. We next took a taxi from the bus terminal to the airport, checked in, and walked around to find our gates (I was flying back to Costa Rica and Julia was headed back to Germany). We ran into Susan (who also was at the conference and works in La Selva too) and the three of us ate some food and waited until our flights boarded. Susan and I were on the same flight back to San José which left at 6pm Mexico time. We arrived in Costa Rica around 10pm and I met Carlos outside the airport around 10:30pm. We went back to the Dunn Inn and called it a night.

We spent the next day in the city and had a nice lunch at one of my favorite San José restaurants: a Lebanese restaurant called Lubnan. We ordered a “mezza para dos” (table for 2) which consisted of tons of little dishes of food. My favorites were the hummus, labne, cucumber yoghurt salad, falafel, and sweet pork on stick-things. There were a lot of great things to eat and I can’t even remember them all! We also went to the San Pedro Mall (near the University of Costa Rica) and watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I really liked this one (although it was my least favorite Harry Potter book). We spent another night at the Dunn Inn and left the next day for the bus back to Puerto Viejo Sarapiqui and La Selva. It was nice to take a relaxing break with Carlos since we are always working (day and night) on our respective dissertations when we are on-station. Mexico was great, but it was nice to come home to Costa Rica!

Day 9--ATBC day 4, Judgement Day

Today was the last day of the conference and, more importantly, the day that I gave my first presentation of my dissertation research! I woke up really early (due to nerves) and bought some snacks and water at a corner store before I went to the first talks of the morning. I had turned my talk in to the ATBC administration yesterday so that it would be prepared on the computer for today. I was scheduled to give my talk in the morning session of the symposium entitled “Seed dispersal and seed predation in Neotropical palms.” There were many people in this symposium that I was very excited to meet (since I had read all of their papers and they are working or have done work similar to mine). I watched the first four talks (which were excellent) while trying to calm my nerves. At 11:40am I got up on stage and after a brief introduction by the symposium organizers, I gave my talk. The room where this symposium was based was HUGE with a big stage, microphone, and everything. It was pretty intimidating and I was nervous at first, but after the first 2 slides, I hit my stride and was more comfortable. After my 15 minute talk, there was 5 minutes remaining for questions and I was able to field all of them with no problems. Phew! I was so glad that was over and everyone was very complimentary both towards my research and the talk itself--I felt very happy and relieved by this point and watched the last talk after mine before going to lunch.

I returned to the second half of this symposium after lunch and saw some more superb talks--this was by far the best symposium I attended at the conference (and not just because I was in it--ha!). By the end of the day I was pretty exhausted, but I met up with my friend Danielle and a few others for a quick dinner/snack before heading out to the ultimate fiesta of the ATBC 2007 conference. We had to take taxis there, but the venue was great. I chatted with a lot of people and soon the party really took off. There were tango dancers, a belly dancer, a guy twirling flags, a live band, people on stilts, and even a (fake) bull. The party ended at around 2am and we taxied back to the hostel to get some sleep. Tomorrow I take the bus back to Mexico City and fly back to Costa Rica.

Animal Rescue Team--GO!

Wow, this was a very interesting morning. It started off normal enough with Carlos and I making breakfast when we heard a little scratch at the front door. I opened it to reveal a small, quiet little puppy--Salchichita! Usually she zooms right in wagging her tail and jumping around wanting to be petted, but this morning she was slow and limping and she went straight to her little bed. She had a big cut under her armpit and a scratch on her back. She was also really bruised. It turns out she had a fight with a tamandua--an arboreal anteater that is bigger than she is. These things can be really mean and have sharp claws…you should never muck with them! Salchichita is OK now, she was given an injection of antibiotics by a vet and her wounds are clean and healing. We will take care of her some more tonight, but for the day, Carlos and I brought her to the neighbor’s house.

In more animal rescue news, an Orange-chinned Parakeet (Brotogeris jugularis) flew onto our screened-in porch wall this morning and started chirping at me. What the heck? I moved over to it and it just calmly walked up the screen using its beak and feet--this was obviously someone’s pet (though these are native and this guy was probably taken from the wild…grrrrr). We found a stick and got the parakeet onto it, but the parakeet walked onto Carlos’ finger and wanted to be petted. I fed it some bread and Carlos went next door to try and find a cage for it. Well, it turns out this little parakeet actually belonged to the neighbors! It accidentally flew out of their house and we returned it safe and sound. Woo-hoo, go-go Animal Rescue Team Alpha! It all started with that baby sloth!