Ecuador DAY FOUR July 24, 2013

Today began like the others -- with amazement of the beauty and diversity surrounding the Yanayacu Biological Station. Thankfully, my work would be light today, too (since my left shoulder was no happier than the day before). 

After breakfast, I elected to join fellow Eartwatcher Keith Christiansen at the caterpillar zoo, known as the maquina since it works like a machine as caterpillars enter one end of the barn structure and emerge from the other side as adults (moths, skippers, or butterflies). Our task would be to photograph collected caterpillar specimens with two digital SLR cameras outfitted with macro lenses and soft flashes. The images would be used for the project's digital catalogue and database. 

Dr. Lee Dyer and gusaneros Lucho and Wilmer

Keith getting ready to shoot

La maquina

At first, it was slow work as we first shot the number written on the specimen's plastic bag and then removed the leaves and searched for the caterpillar(s). Each bag contained host plant leaves and one to eight (or more) caterpillars (plus random beetles and spiders). We were tasked to photograph each caterpillar from each side and from above (top view). This was easy for some of the larger and/or slower caterpillars, aka orugas. It was rather challenging to photograph the specimens which were exceedingly small or fast-moving. Still, I enjoyed this assignment very much and even continued with it after our lunch break. Having a background in photography and an interest in cataloguing made this task enjoyable. Plus, after shooting what must have been more than 40 specimens, most of them different species, I was really able to view such a wealth of caterpillar variety. We only scratched the surface, but what a remarkable surface it was! In addition, as my partner and I worked, we were visited by long-winged butterflies, dragonflies, and a stick bug who appeared to be rather curious about us and our photographic work.

 

As the afternoon lengthened, lead scientist Lee Dyer called Keith and I from our task in la maquina so that we could contribute to a larger task. Many of the team had assembled to inventory caterpillars found on the leaves of a few piper plants that Dr. Dyer and Dr. Walla had retrieved from local roadsides. These pipers have been growing in distressed areas of the forest and the density of Eois caterpillars on these plants may give an indication as to the health of the rain forest in this region. We meticulously examined each leaf of two piper plants, looking for tiny to "large" Eois instars, caterpillars at various stages of development. Our team searched more than 1200 leaves and found many caterpillars nestled along the veins on the leaves' undersides. As of this evening, our task was incomplete but the researchers seemed pleased with our progress.

Our evening ended with a dinner celebration of Dr. Dyer's birthday and his lecture on immature insects -- the various families of caterpillars studied and identified by Dyer and his research teams. It is remarkable how much they have learned about the role of climate change on biodiversity, specifically caterpillars, plants, and parasitoids. And yet, Dyer mentioned that most of the new species of caterpillars and/or adult moths that they have collected and identified as unique will never be named due to a lack of interest, funding, and taxonomists. As more and more ecosystems are destroyed, Dyer suggests that it is just like libraries burning down without any of the books ever being read. This news is both sobering and sad...

QUESTION: If our tropical rain forests are like libraries full of unread books (unnamed and unknown species), how can we protect them before all of the "books" are destroyed?

Surprise! Happy birthday, Dr. Dyer!

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?