Pre-hike update

¡Hola a todos! I’m writing a quick post before I take off early tomorrow morning for Victor's and my Ausangate hike! It’s going to be awesome. For a sweet preview of the hike, check out these folks’ trip report: http://www.gang-gang.net/nomad/andes/andes11a.htm It turns out that Gabe, Ursula and I are all flying together to Cusco. Yay!

Research is going well! All of our saplings are happy, mosquito-net covered, and the appropriate half of them have now been successfully colonized by ants. Last week we collected 26 wild ant colonies, chilled them, photographed them, counted them (poor Gabe got that exciting task), and transferred them to our saplings. Also, Patricia came back to the station for a few days to help us sort through our fungal cultures. She showed us our first successful endophyte culture! This photo might not look particularly exciting to you all, but it was the cause of much cheering and celebration when we saw this through our microscope. :)

photo: endophyte!

(Sorry you have to click the links to see the photos; I'm having a terrible time uploading them to the blog.)

Last Friday I took a half-day off from ant research to join Claire and the antbird team. We woke up at 5:30 in the morning (which was late for them and early for me), and I got to help them set up mist nets to catch antbirds. Claire is researching how habitat fragmentation affects different bird species, depending on whether the species are habitat generalists or whether they prefer specific habitats. We caught an antbird, took samples, and then attached a radio tracking beacon to the bird. The species we caught is a bamboo specialist, so we took it to a different patch of bamboo (outside of it’s territory) and released it. The goal is to track the path of the bird as it flies back to its own territory—Claire wants to see whether it will hesitate to cross patches of forest that don’t have any bamboo. I stayed with Claire’s field assistants, Luis and Randi, for a couple hours so they could show me how to radio track the bird. Now when Claire needs an extra assistant, I’ll get to help track her birds!

photo: tagged antbird

For the past few days I’ve also been collecting specimens of the little dewdrop spiders which we’ve found living along with Allomerus ants on many of the wild Cordia trees here. I’m going to do a side project on them and try to figure out whether they’re ant mutualists. We’re pretty excited about them at the moment because we think they come from a genus of spiders which normally parasitizes other spiders’ webs and steals their food. When Megan, Antonio and Gabe fly to Lima on the 20th, I’m coming with them (yay!) and Megan is going to take me to the museum in Lima to get the spiders identified.

Other random news…
Peru’s independence day was on July 28th! In the afternoon, almost everyone at the station took a few hours off and hopped on the boat to Boca Amigo, where we had a few beers to celebrate.

Megan and Gabe discovered that I don’t know any Aerosmith and have decided that my education is seriously lacking in the music and pop culture departments.* Never fear, I am getting music injections from Gabe’s vast collection. ;)

I found a HUGE caterpillar a few days ago! It was black with green stripes and a red head, and it was longer than my index finger and fatter than my thumb. I was very excited and brought it back to the station, but for some reason everyone else was mostly just creeped out by my gigantic caterpillar. Hah. :P It’s turned into a gigantic pupa now (see photo!), and we’re all waiting to see what hatches out of it.

photo: pupa

That’s all for now, folks! Tune in again in a week or two for stories and photos from Cusco and Mt. Ausangate!

*However, they did not know Golddigger. I played it for them... and sang along. Somewhere in a dorm room in Cambridge, Raquel is reading this and smiling.