Month: October 2010

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Awesomeness quadrupled

World world world, this isPitilla Pitilla! We are back here at our favourite of all biological stations after testing out another one for a couple of days: Naranjo beach in the Santa Rosa sector of theNationalpark. What can I say? It was awesome! Just check out the pics of our adventure: we waded through 13 kms of mud, crossed dangerous tropical streams, fought the raging ocean and saved a puffer fish and a few hundred baby turtles. Dolphins and monkeys were spotted, as were scissor-tailed flycatchers and apparently a Caracara. Cold beers were consumed (YES, there is a fridge at the station!) and we even learned a few things, e.g. that mama turtles do not like full moons, low tides and 4 girls doing cart-wheels on the beach. Anyway, we did!

So, trip successful! Back to science…..really? Well, we started planning the next “workation” last night: to the active volcano Rincon de la Vieja! More details on this blog very soon…..

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iguanas and internet

Hello from the Santa Rosa dry forest! The Costa Rican part of the lab is on “workation”, i.e. a bit of work today, a walk to the beach tomorrow. It feels weird to be away from Pitilla station. So many iguanas here. And people. And I can sit in front of a house with fridges, icecream and fans (the cafeteria) and have a perfect wireless internet connection while somebody else is cooking lunch for me.  Almost too civilized….wait, dew just dripped from the Guanacaste tree above into my laptop. And I am watching birds while working. And the mosquitoes are biting. So not actually civilized. Thank god.

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bromeliadThe search continues! We are searching high (literally) and low for more bromeliad invertebrates to finish off our experiments. One week to go until I add the remainder of my communities and then 2 week until I find out if any of this actually worked! Jana is at the same point and would like me to ask if anyone has any larvae of Dytiscid beetles lying around? She still needs for and we think maybe they’re on to us and have all jumped ship!Lisa and Helen are absolute life savers – staring into trays of sludge from dawn until dusk helping us find what we need! Jana and I don’t know what we would do without them!Tomorrow is the start of a bit of a break from science – we’re heading to Santa Rosa station for a night and then trekking the 12 km to the beach at Naranjo. Lots of people, cafeteria, remote beach, and sweltering heat… here we come!
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Pumpkin party!

Here are some pictures from the Srivastava lab pumpkin carving extravaganza! We spent the entire day carving and creating this trophic pyramid, and took away the prize for “best biology”.