January 15th, 2018
I arrived in Panama City, Panama on Sunday night January 14th. After a long day of travel I ate some Patacones, plantain biscuits, and went to bed in preparation for a busy Monday!
On Monday, January 15th we headed to the STRI Earl S. Tupper Research and conference center to fill out paper work and pick up an ID. I spent most of the day in the library exploring the Entomology books and embracing the air conditioned rooms. Above are photos of my first Panamanian arthropods spotted and the Tupper facilities. At 5:30pm we took the boat to BCI, photos to come.
On Monday, January 15th we headed to the STRI Earl S. Tupper Research and conference center to fill out paper work and pick up an ID. I spent most of the day in the library exploring the Entomology books and embracing the air conditioned rooms. Above are photos of my first Panamanian arthropods spotted and the Tupper facilities. At 5:30pm we took the boat to BCI, photos to come.
January 16th, 2018
FIRST OFFICIAL DAY ON THE ISLAND! My eyes are in constant motion, every single thing is interesting and new. Today I only hiked 750 meters and it took me about 1.5 hours. Why you ask? Because every step I encountered something so enthralling that I had to stop and admire it.
An ode to the Euglossines!
My freshman year at UNC-Asheville I took a class about honey bees. We spent one week discussing bee diversity and my professor brought in drawers of pinned specimen to look at. In the drawers there were gorgeous iridescent bees! They had big pointy hind legs and they were bright blue, green, and purple, some were even a mix of colors, vibrant reds, golds, and oranges blended together like fire. The bees I saw in class that day were called Orchid bees from the tribe Euglossini. They are native to Central and South America, with the exception of a recently introduced species to Florida. Euglossini's are unique pollinators, rather than the female collecting the pollen, which is usually the case in the bee world, the males do the work. Males visit orchids in pursuit of volatile compounds that they rub onto their legs to attract females. Think of it as axe body spray for bees. When the males collect these compounds the orchid flower will leave them with a parting gift called a pollenarium. The pollenarium is a mass of pollen grains from a single anther and it attaches to the male so that when he visits another flower it can be deposited onto the stigma to create the next generation of orchids. Today the first insect I saw was a Eulaema sp., a member of the Euglossini tribe. I watched it collect mud for about 15 minutes. Its buzz was so loud! Watching the Eulaema made me feel as if I had went full circle, four years ago I was admiring these creatures as preserved specimen in Asheville, North Carolina and today I was standing three feet away from a living one. Later on my journey I saw about four different species of Euglossines! |
NEST NEST NEST NEST
To the right is a video of a Tetragonisca angustula nest!!!! Seeing this nest captivated me for about half an hour. I will definitely go visit them again soon. It was really cool to watch the foragers go in and out of the nest and to see all of the guards patrolling the perimeter and smelling the foragers to grant them access to the nest. You will see all of this for yourself in the video! Tetragonisca angustula are stingless bees, meaning they don't have stingers! They do, however, administer a pretty brutal bite. These bees create their tube-like nests out of resins collected from plants. |
|
|
The world's first farmers
To the left is a video of leaf cutter-ants carrying freshly cut leaves in their mandibles back to their nests. I didn't have a tape measure on me so I don't know exactly how long the trail was to the nest, but it took me 167 foot steps to get from the beginning to the end of where I could see them! There are two genera of leaf-cutter ants, Atta and Acromyrmex, and a total of 47 different species. Not only can these ants carry roughly three times their body weight but they are also farmers, cultivars. They collect leaves to bring back to their colony where they then chew the leaves and feed it to a fungi that they use as their primary source of nutrition. The ants keep the fungi at a specific temperature for growth and will even use an antimicrobial bacteria to keep the fungi safe from pathogens. |
January 17th, 2018
Today Callum taught my lab mate Filipe and I how to hunt for Megalopta nests. My eyes were focused on dead branches so I don't have many photos from today. It has been unseasonably rainy on the island so we didn't find much. We did, however, see a massive tarantula and I found some pets for the lab. Even though it was super damp in the forest it was really exciting to learn how to find the nests and to explore BCI. Some interesting things to know about nest hunting: we are essentially looking for holes the diameter of pens inside of dying branches. Trust me, it's waaaaay cooler than it sounds! Often you will see a hole in a branch and think it is Megalopta when in fact it is the home of...
A. Funnel web spiders that give you the death glare when you shine a flash light in her eyes
B. A colony of ants who try to jump out at you for disrupting their home life
C. Termites termites termites
D. Confused beetles
E. Angry wasps
F. Everything else small enough to crawl into the hole of a branch
It's kind of like a piñata, full of surprises when you break it open! Or maybe more like a choose your own adventure game. What i'm trying to say is that today was awesome :)
A. Funnel web spiders that give you the death glare when you shine a flash light in her eyes
B. A colony of ants who try to jump out at you for disrupting their home life
C. Termites termites termites
D. Confused beetles
E. Angry wasps
F. Everything else small enough to crawl into the hole of a branch
It's kind of like a piñata, full of surprises when you break it open! Or maybe more like a choose your own adventure game. What i'm trying to say is that today was awesome :)
|
Arachnophobia!
Today while looking for nests my lab mate Filipe found a massive female tarantula in her burrow. I believe she is Sericopelma rubronitens. Filipe played a short game of tug-of-war with the tarantula using a stick (I don't recommend doing that). Don't worry, we kept our distance and both us and the tarantula are safe! She was really strong. This is my first time seeing a tarantula not in captivity so it was pretty amazing to say the least. |
January 18th, 2018
Locomotor Activity Monitor [LAM]
To the right is a slide show of my day! No gorgeous flora and fauna of the Isla Barro-Colorado. It rained all day so we couldn't go collect bees. Instead of exploring the forest, I explored every drawer in the lab to build a feeding apparatus for an LAM machine (Locomotor Activity Monitor). We are planning to use this machine to record the circadian rhythm of the Megalopta. The lab has never used this machine before and there is only one published study that has used the LAM for bees, so we are essentially starting from scratch. I'd prefer to say we are pioneers instead of guinea pigs! After many hours of effort the venture was a success!!! This is only Phase 1 though... we still have to collect the bees for the machine, properly set it up in an incubator, and learn how to use the recording software. *Credits to Gionanni-Guzman, M., et al. 2014. Journal of Experimental Biology. (217)1307-1315. for the inspiration* Finn the human (pictured above) very accurately conveys my thoughts and feelings about today! Thanks Finn.
|
Materials used:
|
|
|
FIG ROMANCE la la la
BEAUTIFUL! One of the most incredible things I have EVER seen. If you have ever consumed a fig around me you have most likely been subjected to the glorious tales of the fig wasps. These little creatures are responsible for pollinating figs. They have a very important and close relationship with the fig fruit and the two rely on one another for survival. The little black dots are the fig wasps frantically escaping the attack on their home. TAKE AWAY MESSAGE: WASPS CAN POLLINATE TOO!!! |
Above is a video tour of my room at BCI.
*Spiders in my shower not pictured **haha kidding ***not really kidding ****don't worry they were cute and harmless |
January 19th, 2018
Limited photos today! We went out to hunt for bee nests this morning and sadly only found two, but on the bright side the weather was a lot less rainy than anticipated. It was also really nice to go into the forest since all of yesterday was spent indoors. I went collecting with Kate, a graduate student from Utah State University, who is working on Megalopta physiology. She was here last year so it was nice to hear her perspective and absorb some of her knowledge from the field.
Tree Hugger
Check out the sneaky fellow to the left. This Chameleon look alike was found hugging a tree today in order to blend in to its surroundings. I believe it is the helmeted iguana Corytophanes cristatus. Check out the below video of this cool creature in action. It really wanted to move away from me but liked where its legs were situated. I guess iguanas like their comfort. |
January 20th, 2018
Today I learned the nuances of being a monkey researcher. It involves walking along the forest floor with open bags/nets held out in front of you. These bags are to be utilized in the collection of monkey urine and fecal matter. This is the brutal game of catch that the researchers must play in order to have samples to analyze. The woes of being evolved in a direction that is less suitable for tree climbing play out in this example. That is all for today. This was dinner conversation. Welcome to science island, welcome to BCI.
Naturally I had to make this image. The monkey researchers inspired me.
Naturally I had to make this image. The monkey researchers inspired me.
On that note: I guess that ends the week.
Thank you all. Chow!