Community Ecology in Mesocosms
OKOK, after these success stories, I have to mention that all my experiments are running now! Nowhere near to beeing completed, but running. I think that’s worth a blog entry too, ey? 🙂 And of course this was only possible with the help of Pitilla’s AMAZING frield crew: Helen, Lisa and Robin! The girls saved me with their never-ending willingness to sort bugs, fabricate nets and cook dinner for the over-worked weary wet postdoc. Thanks so much!
I completed my 6-month long experiment this week and figured this accomplishment deserves a blog entry!
The moss was collected in May and carved out into two-patch metacommunities with different levels of connectivity.
In May and August we subjected select patches to Tulgren funnel extraction (which removes a bunch of the mites and collembolans) for synchronous and asynchronous disturbance treatments.
Finally, in November we sampled all 168 patches by putting them through Tulgren funnel extraction. Now, just another 6 months sorting mites under the microscope and I will have my data for my Masters thesis!
Many thanks to all the people that have helped make this experiment possible. I was on crutches when setting up, so it literally would not have been possible to start this experiment when I did without many of the following people’s assistance:
– Olga Lansdorp – official driver and field hand extraordinaire
– Jiichiro Yoshimoto – field and lab helper, moss waterer
– Youhua Chen – field and lab helper, through set-up and all 3 extractions
– Seane Trehearne – Totem field contact
– Rebecca Taves – helper for final extraction and take-down, skilled mite sorter
– Pamela Matute – helper in final extraction and take-down, mite sorting whiz
Finally, much thanks to Diane Srivastava for guidance and for providing me with so much help!
-Gennifer Meldrum, November 13, 2010
I know this is (or is supposed to be most of the time) a “scientific blog”, but I’d like to shed some light on another aspect of field biology: The food.
I feel that mostly field biology is supposed to be tramping around in the woods from dawn until dusk, climbing mountains, fording rivers, and surviving on some granola and oranges from your field pack. I once heard field biologists described as the jocks of the scientific world. As much as I hate to dispel the myth, the truth is that our work here in Costa Rica looks a little more like this: collect leaf litter and water from bromeliads, bring back to the station, and sit on the porch in shorts and flip flops for the rest of the day sorting through it. While we do have to go and find said bromeliads, most of them are not too far afield. (The other day I was at one of my field sites and I sneezed… someone in the kitchen said ‘bless you’ out the window). And now that the collecting is completed and various experiments are merrily ticking along with minimal supervision, what do we do at the station? We learn to cook.
I am not the cook in my family. My specialty is usually doing the dishes. But the number of things I have learned to cook from scratch while living at Pitilla station is rapidly growing! So far on the list is rice (trust me, I couldn’t do it before), bread/pizza dough, tortillas, plantain chips, cinnamon crepes, curry (more or less from scratch), and macaroni and cheese from scratch (I could do that before but certainly not unsupervised). This is the reason why most of us GAIN a few pounds doing field work rather than losing as we usually expect:
Wednesday
Breakfast: Cinnamon crepes with honey and maple syrup
Lunch: Rice and beans (of course) with fried plantain
Dinner: Chickpea curry with carrots, rice and sweet potato/potato/manioc hash browns
Thursday
Breakfast: Rice pudding with raisins, brown sugar, and honey with canned peaches
Lunch: Leftovers – curry, rice, and tortillas
Dinner: Plantain chips and fried queso seco appetizer, Macaroni and cheese and the obligatory beans
Friday
Breakfast: Fresh baked banana bread (thank you Jana!)
Lunch: leftover mac n’ cheese with garlic cheese bread, steamed broccoli, and beans
Dinner: Pizza and beer night! Pizza with dough from scratch, oven roasted garlic, and cervezas!
All supplemented by a steady snack diet of coffee and cookies and baby bananas with dulce de leche. mmmmm…
…It’s a tough job but somebody’s gotta do it!
Haha! You are old now!
How can you not LOVE ants???? OK, they do bit, it’s nasty, hurts and itches. They crawl into any kind of food, no matter how well you thought you sealed it against them. They do occupy and fiercely defend some of our best bromeliads.
But the again: they are AWESOME! How on earth can they find our food within minutes of putting it down on the table? How DO large ants get into a tightly sealed honey bottle?
And no one who has seen a procession of leaf cutter ants carrying flowers through the forest can seriously hate ants. The most amazing o f all ants, however, must be army ants. They excite the whole forest like a visit by the pope. Small insects try to run, hop, scuttle away by the millions, birds flock to the site, munching up the poor little powerless critters while chanting and chatting and attracting more opportunistic birds and poo-eating butterflies.
And army ants are fast. Man, watch out, they can probably outrun you (at least after a month of Pitilla food). The most amazing ant event occurred yesterday (only briefly mentioned by Robin below): the ant war! Army ants (Robin’s irritation bin number 7) encountered a swarm of tiny ants (number 3) moving house on the deck of the station. War broke out in Petrona’s slippers. The battle was fierce, with large army ants biting small ants to death and carrying them and their pupae away in no time. But the little ones did not give up. They fought back like the bravest of all soldiers and the army ants eventually gave up (or had enough food for the day). After 20mins of super-action, everything disappeared within a few seconds and all that was left was 2 dying army ants…..what an event. (Note: this is not at all related to today’s Remembrance day or to Nicaraguans preparing to invade us only 10kms away, nor do I in any way support the glorification of war!). But it was SOOOOO exciting!
Some of my best Pitilla times were ant times.
So I forgive the ants their annoyingness and deeply admire their awesomeness.