Time for some sleep.

Well, the theme of right now is: tired. Yep. Seeing as I have to get up in 5.75 hours, this will be short. Today we started our Faculty Field Projects at La Selva. My group is looking at five successional plots, as I believe I previously mentioned. We decided to examine the arthropods living in the plots, which was pretty fun because there are a ton of cool bugs here. The best ones of today were some neatly colored beetles, and the salticid (jumping) spiders. Such cute spiders! The project that I did at Cabo Blanco, our previous site, used the salticid spiders. I used to be pretty skittish about spiders, but now I'm only skittish about MOST spiders, since I've been won over by the cute jumpers. I've decided that Spiderman is a jumping spider, by the way.

Anyway, along with the bugs, we also saw quite a number of hummingbirds today! They love the heliconia, these giant plants that are in flower right now. I saw lots of hummers chasing other hummers, and flying all over, and perching, and...I'm beginning to appreciate why Chris studies them. But not enough to leave my ants behind!

Along with the birds and the invertebrates, we also had the rare treat of seeing howler monkeys, white-faced capuchin monkeys, and a spider monkey all in the same spot! Oh, it's so much fun to be a jungle tourist.

Good night!

Free at Last

Well, tonight I finished working on the first draft of a paper, and I also recently finished up revisions on another paper, so soon I might actually have enough time to ENJOY being at La Selva! For instance, it's about time for me to check out all of the herps (reptiles and amphibians) at night, so that I, too, can enjoy the sensation of vulnerability that results from an encounter with a venomous snake. After all, that's why I'm here--to escape from heat- and humidity-controlled buildings and discover what the real, living world is like!

Earlier this evening, we listened to a talk by Deborah Clark, who is a well-known figure in the Tropical Biology universe. She and her husband have been studying trees at La Selva for several decades. Last night, Deborah spoke about her tree research and how it relates to global warming--it was the same talk I'd heard at ASU this past spring. I think the biggest takeaway message from that talk was that not all tropical rainforest acts as a carbon sink (or "carbon bank", or whatever you'd like to call it). So you know the whole idea of purchasing "green credits" by buying up tracts of rainforest to soak up the excess CO2 that's being produced in industrialized nations? Well, it could be crap. Of course, it could also be one of the best ideas in recent history, because La Selva may or may not be representative of tropical forests found elsewhere in the world.

Anyway, tonight Deborah presented a brief talk on paradigm shifts in tropical biology research. Most of the stuff she talked about related to fairly specific biological concepts, and I don't really feel like boring you with those details. The exciting part is that, as she put it, people like me are still in a sense starting with a Tabula Rasa when it comes to understanding what's going on in the big, wide world. That fact is as spectacular as it is terrifying, and inspires me to run around and muck about in this crazy jungle.

P.S.

The theme of today was, "Everything is crap."

But what the heck, just go with the flow anyways and enjoy it.