Day 7: Fluorescent Forest Fungus! 💚

Tonight we went on a night hike, which was less terrifying than last time, but not something I’d pursue regularly. EXCEPT… we saw fluorescent fungus carpeting the forest floor! 🤩 It was magical. There is a fungus that lives on a specific species of tree leaf, a tiny, unassuming leaf, but on a moonless night the forest floor glows green! You have to have the specific tree and lots of rain for it to grow. Indigenous tribes used to collect them by daylight and place them to guide their journeys at night. 💚💚💚 Think Avatar, and then imagine it in real life!
Today we started our research projects. I am on the tree-fall team. We have two specific trees that have fallen in the forest where we are monitoring the growth of the plants that are suddenly exposed to sunlight after years of shade. Many seeds sprout in the forest and then stay small for years, waiting for sunlight when they grow like mad. We are looking at 3 parallel 15 meter transects that run perpendicular away from the tree. At 5 meter intervals we are measuring temperature & humidity (with sensors programmed to collect data), percentage of groundcover (that’s with the white pvc square you see me holding), the diameter of trees growing along the line, and percentage of canopy cover using the spherical densiometer - a little curved mirror with grid lines on it to calculate the percentage of sky that is visible. We had to have our guide do some bushwhacking to get to our measurement spots because the plants have grown so much over the past year. I sang a little song as I walked into the jungle: Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me… So far, so good.
After lunch we worked on rebuilding the orchid and bromeliad library garden. And I unwittingly was twinning with my lead researcher. 😊
Some of today’s learnings:
- Singing helps fear
- Many plants in the rainforest have adapted to grow their new leaves in a reddish brown color. This fools predators into thinking the leaves are dead, so the new growth doesn’t get chomped.
- Pink river dolphins have a twisted jaw, probably to add asymmetry for echolocation. And for us to hear them communicate, we have to slow down the recordings because their frequency is above our hearing range, the opposite of blue whales, whose sounds we need to speed up.
- Fluorescent Fungus!
- That beautiful frog has enough poison to kill three people.
- Jungle science is real cool, even when you are sweating to death.
What do you want to know? What should I look for tomorrow? xoRead more