Day 10: Forest Frolicking

When I scroll through my photos from today, I see JOY and SCIENCE and BEAUTY. We started our day by following our fearless and funny guide and his machete out to our new tree fall site. Multiple trees had fallen recently, so we were collecting the baseline data for a multi year study. First we had to choose our tree. We decided that the largest one, which had probably taken the others down, was our tree. If you want to see the description for what we are doing, I explain it in a video. We are measuring ground cover and canopy cover at regular intervals in transect lines away from our tree. We had fun climbing about and dodging biting ants, while we collected data.
Next we headed over to our second tree site to look at our butterfly traps. We caught a blue morpho, the butterfly on our hats! 🦋 We also got katydids, moths, some other butterflies , and other flying critters lured in by our alcoholic banana mash. I have gotten much better at gently getting them out of the trap and into their envelopes for transport.
After lunch we took a looooong jungle walk full of wonder and learning. We headed to a place called Abuelo’s Garden, a very special part of the forest. The trees there have a symbiotic relationship with a species of ant. The ants nest in the trees, creating little bulges along the branches. They produce a herbicide that kills any other plants that grow in the area. You can see on the photos where there is a line of brown on the ground. The trees have all of the light and nutrients to themselves, thanks to the housekeeping of the 🐜 🐜 🐜. You must ask permission of the forest to enter the area and give gratitude upon your departure. The place naturally brought a feeling of reverence.
The walk was filled with flowers and mushrooms and incredible trees and forest sounds and FRESH JAGUAR TRACKS! What a day…Read more