Hello from the Costa Rican Srivastava lab outpost! Just a few poctures to show the poor left-behind people that we are actually working hard here at Pitilla Biological Station. Working hard and staring at giant caterpillars. But that’s work too. Maybe. Never sure here, because everything is just so much fun!! Unfortunately, the weather is nice every day. That might sound odd, but what we really really need is a few days of Vancouverian downpour…. to fill up our dry bromeliads. How are the damselflies and chironomids supposed to lay eggs and multiply to the numbers we need for the experiment if there is no water whatsoever??? Oh well, at least these are good laundry days 😉
Jungle musketeers
Believe it or not: we made it to Pitilla!! The 5 Srivastava lab musketeers are safe and happy in the jungle! Been running around in the forest all day, looking at things and awing and things. We saw an amazing army ant swarm with amazing ant birds all around it! I couldn’t stop jumping up and down in excitement! Right now, the big lab mum is cooking dinner for us while we are watching the sun go down behind the volcanoes. Life as a scientist…..magnifico!
Field work: we are coming!
…some frantic microscope de-assembling, hat-making and swearing over heavy trunks later we are (almost) ready for 3 months of jungle! Hooooray field biologists!
Another eco-evolutionist’s toy
My nerdy colleague Dennis Hansen just facebooked this:
Timetree
You can find out when two taxa split up. Very enlightening: bromeliads and humans diverged about 1400 Mya ago! What does this tell us? Mainly that Dr. Jana is trying hard to not-work! 😉
Sustainable UBC?
…speaking of carbon neutral blogs. Anyone keen to come find out how UBC is planning to become more sustainable? They are making a big fuss about their “Sustainability Initiative“. But does it actually mean anything? I am thinking of going to this symposium. Jana