Ecuador DAY THREE July 23, 2013

Last night I added an additional wool blanket, so when I awoke to the Andes, I was in no hurry to emerge from my cocoon. Still, a new day of hunting for caterpillars and piper plants awaited. After a breakfast of scrambled eggs, a puffy empanada de queso, and some papaya, we again broke into teams. Two teams would venture off to look for caterpillars on the forest trail and roadside. My team of two grad students and two teachers were tasked with the collection of piper pink-belly plants. Andrea Glassmire, PhD student at UNR, led us onto the Stream Trail and then took us off trail to seek specimens that would be suitable for cloning for her research project, one which she has also begun in Costa Rica. Getting to her chosen area was a task as we climbed through bamboo and fern, straddled fallen trees, and slogged through muddy pits. Once we reached an ideal piper plant, one which stretched 30 feet into the canopy, we began to snap off sections of limbs to carry back to the station in a bag filled with a few inches of water.

All went well until Andrea decided to pull down on a piper branch to reach some stems which were more than 10 feet high. Andrea suggested that I reach up for the branches while she pulled down and lowered the main branch. I said, no, I should pull the branch down while she selected the plant stems. Well, this turned out to be a bad idea... As I pulled on the branch, I felt (and heard) two loud cracks as the branch gave way and separated from the tree. One crack was the branch, but the other was my left shoulder. Already nursing a torn rotator cuff in my right shoulder, I quickly realized that I had just sustained a similar (and possibly worse) injury to my left shoulder. Ouch! The pain was pretty intense, but I also felt pain for the piper plant. I didn't know it was so fragile, and I didn't like that I had just caused damage to the rain forest. Andrea assured me that it would all be recovered in one year, but that news and an Aleve did not make me or the piper feel much better... We returned to the station with our samples and transplanted them into the pots we had prepared the day before. If they took root, we would suspend them at high and low heights in the canopy near the station.

After the transplanting, I spent a few hours nursing my shoulder, and we also enjoyed another fine lunch provided by our local Ecuadorian chefs. During the meal, I spoke with a man named Jim who has been living at the station for two months. He is a retiree (and former Sasquatch hunter) from America who is building a treehouse a mile or so from the station. What a fascinating man! He spends his days in the forest looking for beetles and photographing all sorts of specimens. He has a background in zoology, PR, and web design but has chosen to take to the jungle in his golden years (some say to escape what he sees as the pending economic collapse in the U.S.). He will be secluded in his treehouse and expects to enter his new home by ascending with ropes, like mountain climbers. Amazing (and crazy?).

After lunch, I spent a couple of hours spreading and pinning more than a dozen moths, skippers, and butterflies. Our samples will be dried and sent to a university in Quito where they will be identified and catalogued. The process of pinning is delicate but seems to be an important part of entomology and taxonomy. 

 Later, after dinner, Andrea gave a lecture on the pink-belly piper, her focal point of research and the reason my left shoulder is aching as I write this journal entry. Andrea explained that there are 1,500 different piper species and that there are more than 250 species of Eois caterpillars on pipers. The piper is found in the tropics worldwide at the 1800-2400 km elevation. In her studies, Andrea and her colleagues found 11 morpho-species on just one plant. This is an example of a genetic divergence without a host plant shift, and this process has been occurring since the Pleistocene era. Another amazing tidbit -- we are studying ancient plants that still thrive today. What an amazing place!

QUESTION: In any given biome, does variation of life (biodiversity) indicate that the ecosystem is healthy? Why or why not?

Ecuador DAY TWO July 22, 2013

I awoke before my alarm clock after a chilly night of mostly still sleep. When I opened my eyes, facing the uncovered windows, the first thought that entered my head was, "Oh my, I just woke up in a cloud forest in the Andes of Ecuador!" Out my window was a green expanse of forest canopy, tall mountain peaks (also covered by a dense blanket of green) and scattered white clouds. Birds were singing and flying every which way just beyond my window panes. I crawled out of bed and decided to join the beautiful world outside.

Good morning, Ecuador!

After a breakfast of fresh fruits, granola, yogurt and bread, I was "volunteered" for a five-person team which would venture into the forest to collect 20 pots and a wheelbarrow full of forest soil and leafy top soil. Our goal was to collect enough soil to pot several saplings and seedlings of pink-belly piper plants. The plants would be cloned by Andrea Glassmire, a PhD candidate under Dr. Lee Dyer's advisement at the University of Nevada, Reno, and then returned to the forest, suspended in their new pots. Oh, and I understand that there is some sort of slingshot contraption that will help launch our freshly potted plants into the forest canopy. Should be quite a sight!

Our soil collection was both adventuresome and laborious. We entered the forest at the Yanayacu Stream Trailhead and soon jumped off the path and made one of our own. We stopped in approximately seven locations to peel away layers of leafy, decaying top soil. With a shovel, a couple of us took turns digging holes to unearth quality pails of moist soil, as directed by Andrea. I did a yeoman's share of the digging, and we formed a sort of firemen's brigade to move our pails back to the trail where our wheelbarrow awaited. We filled the wheelbarrow and 20 buckets and made our way back to the research station. When we arrived, another team had assembled rigs of cable that would be used to suspend our piper plant clones. A third team was still out on the forest's outskirts collecting several species of caterpillars and leaf samples.

After a healthy lunch of soup, avocado/onion/tomato salad, llapingachos with a peanut butter-based sauce, and a fried egg, we discussed what would be our agenda for the afternoon. I decided to join the team which would learn how to spread and pin moths and butterflies for display. This was a fantastic lab, led by Suzanne Rab Green of New York's American Museum of Natural History. She demonstrated how to pin the specimen through the abdomen and then gently spread its four delicate wings and antennae. Suzanne can pin and prepare 30+ specimens in an hour, but we struggled to do one or two moths in 60 minutes. A steady hand, good eyes, and patience are required to properly pin butterflies, skippers, and moths. Clearly, practice also makes perfect.

As we finished our pinning practice, we noticed that the clouds had cleared and the afternoon sun was now allowing the forest to bask in a warm glow of clear skies and sunny rays. We stopped what we were doing and made our way down the station driveway and local road, walking south past a few ranches and a lot of forest growth. We came across a roaming horse and even found a flowering plant which was decorated with a colony of butterflies and a few beetles. Fantastic! We snapped a few pictures and collected a plant sample and made our way back to the station.

After dinner, Dr. Walla lectured about the history and role of the Yanayacu Biological Station and its objectives in identifying caterpillars and parasitoids (the insects that lay eggs in the caterpillar and feed off of their flesh). Through his talk, we learned that most caterpillars have not been linked to their adult forms, especially in moths, and that there are 113 families of moths. Regarding parasitoids, Dr. Walla informed us that researchers at the site have identified one new wasp species, called Napo; it was named for the Yanayacu province and is about 1/4" long with an aggressive demeanor. His lecture continued with details of oviposition, a butterfly laying its eggs under the leaf of a plant, metamorphic stages called instars, and a look at biodiversity. Dr. Walla stated that a tropical community of insects can never be sampled completely so scientists must use diversity indices to estimate or generalize biodiversity. Scientists like Dr. Walla or Dr. Lee Dyer (lead Earthwatch scientist) look at diversity of interactions and quantitative species interaction. With regard to their focus, Yanayacu has collected more than 78,000 caterpillars (but almost half have died). One final notable Earthwatch factoid was evidence that the species richness per plot (the plants and animals in a given plot) is similar between Yanayacu and the research area in Louisiana, with approximately 20.8 different species in the plots. Fascinating... and sure to be a talking point on Day 3.

QUESTION: If you were to go explore your own backyard, how many different species of plants, animals, and insects could you find?

Ecuador DAY ONE July 21, 2013

CLIMATE CHANGE AND CATERPILLARS

Day One of our Eartwatch Institute expedition began at a leisurely pace. After rising from a restless night, our last of four at Hotel Quito, I showered and then strolled the grounds of the hotel, again impressed by the mild climate, expansive views of the Inter-Andean valley, and the manicured landscape and inviting amenities of the property at which I had just spent my first few nights in Ecuador.

Hotel Quito

Hotel Quito, view from Mr. B's balcony

By 8:30 a.m. I was meeting my teammates in the 7th Floor restaurant for a buffet breakfast and some excited talk about our coming adventure in the cloud forest. In less than two hours we'd be loading a small bus and then bounding through the Andes en route to the Yanayacu Biological Station and Center for Creative Studies. Our 3.5-hour trip took us on a climb out of the city and up the mountains, reaching a peak of 14,000 feet before descending the eastern slope of the Andes.

At the summit, our expedition leader, Dr. Tom Walla of Colorado Mesa University, asked our bus driver to pull over. Dr. Walla wanted us to experience the elevation and to enjoy some wildflowers and other vegetation. Perhaps the most interesting plant amid the tundra-like vegetation was the gunnera. At that elevation, the plants leaves were small and resembled a small geranium, growing low to the ground and no larger than a silver dollar. Dr. Walla told us to later be on the lookout as we neared the 7,000-foot level; here the same plants would be huge, growing taller and fanning out to the size of a large beachball.

Dr. Tom Walla

While our little pit stop atop the mountain was educational, it was also a rather miserable experience; the elevation brought cold temps and freezing rain that soaked our ill-prepared team and stung our faces. We scampered back to the awaiting bus and made our way down the eastern slopes. The drive was beautiful as we found ourselves surrounded by lush, green mountainsides covered by ferns, bamboo, countless trees, roaming cows, small villages and outposts, and a few llamas here and there. We made two more pit stops (one for gas and one for snacks) in small towns and then turned off the main road onto a rougher and windier gravel road which would lead us 5 km to Yanayacu.

Baeza

Baeza

Baeza

Our driver would expertly avoid hanging branches, a few on-coming vehicles, potholes, and recently-cleared mudslides to deliver our team of eight teachers, two volunteers (both retired and in their late 70s), two grad students, two research scientists, and Dr. Walla's 8-year-old son Aiden (plus loads of luggage) to our home for the next nine days, Yanayacu.

Once settled into our cabin-like rooms of single or bunk beds, we assembled for a late lunch and then donned our rain gear for our first hike into the cloud forest. In rubber boots, we gingerly walked down the slick drive toward the muddy main road and then walked about 100 yards to the trailhead. After a quick orientation on our general mission, the work that has been down for the past decade, plant types, and snakes and insects, we entered the moist and mossy wonderland of the cloud forest, one of the most important and impressive in the world, with more than 30 genera of plants. 

As raindrops worked their way down vines and elephant ear-sized leaves, I was overwhelmed by the lush surroundings. We were being enveloped by ferns moss, and a variety of palms and other tropical trees. An active stream criss-crossed our path, and we slid across several wooden bridges, each no wider than a foot or so. Along our nature hike, Dr. Walla was sure to stop and identify various plants and evidence of caterpillars, the stars of our research project. He identified the piper plant with its knobby stems and venous, large leaves. He overturned one leaf and revealed a tiny Eois caterpillar, what he called the prize of the cloud forest and our expedition. It's hard to believe that one of our focal points of study is merely millimeters in length!

Soon Dr. Walla and some others turned back, but he allowed a few of us to continue our hike. Those of us who stayed on the trail discovered more plant life, more slippery stream crossings, and more evidence that Ecuador's cloud forest is an amazingly remarkable place.

As we finished the hike and prepared to head back to the station, the rain picked up and really showed us why everything around us was so moist and green. While we were damp explorers, our spirits were certainly not dampered. We were exhilarated and anxious to find out what Day 2 of the expedition would bring!

QUESTION: How can studying just one community or ecosystem teach us something about climate change?