I arrived in Costa Rica on the afternoon of May 6th. When I walked outside the airport, it was expectedly hot and humid. The group congregated together and shortly thereafter boarded the bus to the La Selva research station. The bus ride was about two hours and it provided a good first impression into what the Costa Rican countryside looks like.
We had dinner shortly after arriving at La Selva. I didn’t know what exactly to expect in regard to the food we would be eating, but I was blown away after this first dinner. The rice, lentils and fish were outstanding. I quickly learned that every meal would be this scrumdiddlyumptious. I look forward to every meal here.
On our second day here, we started the day with a 2-3 hour introductory hike of sorts. Our tour guide pointed out all sorts of cool creatures to us, including sloths, leaf-cutter ants, birds, a toad, bats under “leaf tents,” and lizards. I thought the bats were especially interesting. They were hidden under these large leaves that drooped down, providing the bats a tent of sorts to sleep. As our tour guide explained, the leaves are not naturally like that; the bats chew them at the center to make them fall down and form the tent. The leaf-cutter ants also kind of blew my mind. There were so many of them carrying leaf pieces, all in a uniform line back to their queen in the colony. Our tour guide told us about how all of them we were seeing were females, since the males die immediately after mating in the air. Their only purpose is to reproduce. I was pretty shocked by this; I didn’t even know something like this existed in nature.
After doing “Project Speed Dating” later that night, in which we spoke about our research ideas with each member of the group, our research partners were determined the next morning. Once we got together with our partners, we finalized what we wanted to do for our research. Grace and I ended up deciding to look into how abiotic factors, such as atmospheric carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity, as well as relative distance from farmland impacts poison dart frog populations. This will allow us to examine the potential impacts of the effects of climate change – like rising global temperatures and CO2 levels – on these frog populations. Furthermore, taking into account the distance from farmland variable, we will be able to visualize any apparent effects of nearby agricultural activity (i.e. pesticide use) on these populations. In light of the scientific literature indicating that pesticide exposure has negative impacts on amphibian survival and growth, our findings may be able to add to this research and illuminate a decrease in frog populations at distances closer to farmland. This two-fold investigation into frog populations holds broader significance in the context of biodiversity due to global amphibian decline and the wide-ranging ecosystem level effects that it threatens to present. Additionally, amphibians serve as an important bioindicator and their loss may dampen scientists’ ability to identify deviations from normal environmental conditions early on.
In the next few days, during both research collection and just hikes around the research station, I observed all kinds of awesome wildlife. A few of my favorite sightings were freaky-looking spiders, a coati, snakes, toucans, and howler and capuchin monkeys. There was one occasion in particular where a bunch of capuchin monkeys surrounded us in the forest, looking down with apparent interest. It made me wonder what they think of us / how they perceive us. I’ve also seen a lot of different types of birds, especially on our early morning bird hike. I’ve noticed there are a lot of really old people here. From talking to others, it seems like they have traveled here simply for the excellent bird-watching prospects. Other than the toucans, I haven’t had too much interest in the birds, but it seems like these old-aged, dinosaur types are enthralled by them. To each their own, I suppose.
We have thrown the frisbee around a few times with a guy named Zarí who is a TA . Since starting this activity, we have gotten to know him more, talking with him at meals and playing cards with him at night. He has genuinely been so fun to be around. I will miss him dearly. His real name is Andés, but he goes by the name Zarí, which is apparently short for the Spanish word for possum. He said that he got the name when he climbed a tree as a kid. When he climbed it, some other kid shouted that he was a possum, and the nickname Zarí was born. He is actually dating a girl that just graduated from IU and lives in Bloomington, so there’s a chance he might come to IU sometime in the near future. I look forward to seeing him again if he actually does come. Aside from my dear friend Zarí, I have also really enjoyed my time with all of my fellow classmates here at La Selva. Everyone is kind and very easy to talk to. The card games have been especially enjoyable and I feel like we have all really bonded over them. I look forward to continuing to get to know everyone.
We had a very interesting lecture with Dr. Libby, which went into a lot of different avenues about monocrop agriculture, how government subsidy influences it in the US, how the debt crisis as well as these subsidies have essentially made developing nations beholden to the import of said monocrops and to the will of developed nations, and more. There were a lot of different complex variables discussed, but the overall takeaway was that events in recent history have molded a system in which biodiversity suffers as a result of profit-maximizing agricultural practices, people around the globe are compelled to consume nutrient-poor meats and produce, and developing nations are both urbanized and kept poor as local subsistence farmers fail to compete with low-priced, subsidized goods like corn. It’s a very convoluted, globally-reaching issue that will require systematic change to remedy. Change is possible, however, and awareness of the problem needs to be amplified, along with actions taken to make progress towards a better future.
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