Another ant story

A chapter from EO Wilson's new ant novel, which will be coming out soon:
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/01/25/100125fi_fiction_wilson?currentPage=all

Check it out- ant fiction!

Here's Wilson talking about the novel in an interview: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/01/wilson-interview.html

(Thanks to Harvard OEBug for the links.)

A Peruvian Thankgiving

HI FOLKS! Sorry it’s been so long. Despite the hiatus, CICRA and I are still very much alive and well!

So… the strike never happened and we’ve all been working/researching away. Not many exciting things happened to me in the second half of Novermber because after I took the monthly measurements and hacked away the treefall, I spent the next two weeks working on grad school applications and didn’t get outside very much, despite the fact that I live in the rainforest. It was a mild form of torture. On the plus side, I had lots of fun hanging out with Roxana (another ant researcher) and the Sarahs (Sarah C is Jesus’ assistant; I still need to introduce you to her). We also had a Thanksgiving party!

All of us gringos decided to cook Thanksgiving dinner for the Peruvians. When they heard that we’d be cooking, they seemed a bit worried. We noticed that several of them went to Boca Amigos in the afternoon… perhaps for a pre-dinner snack, in case our cooking didn’t live up to Peruvian standards? But we actually did a pretty darn good job, if I do say so myself. On the menu:

Tandoori chicken in spicy yogurt sauce* by Mini
Stuffing by Sarah F and Gideon
Apple-onion-honey chutney by Sarah F
Pineapple-carrot-cabbage-raisin-vinagrette salad by Sarah F and Gideon
Cornbread by Sarah C
Mashed potatoes by Iona
Araza suspiro (an amazingly delicious Limenaen custard-like dessert) by Roxana
Sweet potato pie by yours truly

(*We didn’t have turkey, so we decided to go all-out and be completely non-traditional with the chicken.)

All of the cooks were Indians… which I suppose makes the Peruvians the Pilgrims? We used strips of pink lab tape and macaw feathers to make Indian headdresses. :) I will upload photos eventually, but the internet is so bad here right now that you'll just have to wait with baited breath.

Update: no one else is online and I have the internet all to myself. Mwahahaha photos photos!

On Gold, Strikes, Arson, and Evacuations

I’ll start this post with some background on recent Peruvian news. (Hang in there, you’ll soon see why it’s relevant.)

About a month and a half ago, the Peruvian Minister of the Environment proposed that 80% of the area of Madre de Dios, the region where I live, be closed to mining. This would be a great victory for conservation in the area.
Gold miners damage the environment in so many ways: when they move into an area, they cut down trees and hunt the native animals for food. They dig up the river bed, run the silt through liquid mercury to extract the gold dust, and then dump the remainder back into the river. They burn the mercury off to extract pure gold, releasing it into the air from whence it rains back down over the landscape. Since mercury poisoning progresses very slowly over the course of a lifetime (resulting in cancers) or across generations (resulting in birth defects), doctors have a very hard time convincing miners that mercury is harmful to their health. Many workers handle it with their bare hands. Peggy, a researcher at CICRA, is studying levels of mercury in the birds of prey here. Since raptors are at the top of the food chain, environmental toxins concentrate in their bodies. She has found that the mercury levels of many raptor species in our area are off the charts.

For all of the above reasons, the next time you buy gold, in jewelry or any other form, please please stop to ask where it comes from and whether it was responsibly extracted.

Mining is backbreaking, muddy, wet, dangerous, and lonely work—miners often leave their families and friends in town to live on remote mining rigs in the river which are at least hours’, if not days’, journeys away from home. However, mining is also extremely lucrative and is one of the few ways in which poor workers and families can (sometimes) pull themselves out of poverty. The money is a powerful draw, and over half of all the people who live in the Madre de Dios region depend on mining for their living. Toribio, one of our cooks, works in mining during his monthly 10-day rest period just to make ends meet.

So, folks were rather upset when the government proposed to ban mining in 80% of the region. In response to the proposal, the miners planned to hold a strike in Puerto Maldonado, which is the capital of Madre de Dios. Strikers in Peru don’t mess around. They have been known to block roads with rocks and burning tires. In Puerto Maldonado last year, they burned down a government building; it's still a charred, graffiti-ed skeleton today. During a strike the entire city, including the air port, shuts down. It’s hard to get into or out of the city. The police use tear gas when strikers get out of hand. All of this seems extreme to those of us from the States, England, and other countries where strikes usually go no further than peaceful sign-waving and yelling. But a Peruvian friend explained to me that the Peruvian people often are not given much say in what their government does and do not have adequate legal avenues to express their needs or to effect change. Thus, when they are unhappy, they have to find other ways to make the government listen.

How all of this applies to CICRA: The miners believed that the Ministry of the Environment was using data produced at CICRA as evidence for why mining should be curtailed in Madre de Dios. This is not true, but we all know from experience that a rumor doesn’t have to be true to be powerful. Furthermore, more unfounded rumors began to circulate that ACA (The Amazon Conservation Association, which runs CICRA) was going to buy a large tract of rainforest and kick all the miners off it. The miners decided they wanted to "teach ACA a lesson" by burning down CICRA during the strike.

About 3 weeks ago, ACA learned about the miners’ plans. Not only had our staff been alerted by some of their friends in mining, but a few days before I left for Lima a priest showed up to warn us of the unrest in nearby communities. It was like something out of a movie. He was wearing an ankle-length white robe and had come to "spread the peace" between CICRA and the miners.

A day or two after that, I left for my two-week trip to Lima to take the GREs. We thought the strike was going to occur around November 5th, so I assumed that whatever happened, I would miss it entirely. Before I left the station, I packed all my valuables into one of the station’s Pelican cases (big, powerful, watertight boxes made for abuse). As I walked down the trail in the pre-dawn twilight on November 1st, I took a long look back at the palm-thatched dorms and labs that I’d come to call home, wondering whether they’d still be there in two weeks.

Being in Lima, suddenly separated from the people I’d worked and lived with so closely and continuously for two months, was a bit of a shock. Given the situation with the strike it was especially disturbing not to have constant knowledge of what was going on at the station. I was in touch with Sarah by email and instant messenging, though, and to everyone’s relief things seemed to have calmed down. Nothing happened while I was gone. I returned to Puerto Maldonado on the 10th, planning to spend a couple days in town with Sarah (who had come down for a quick vacation with me) and then return to CICRA on Friday the 13th. However, when I met up with Sarah, she told me she’d just been informed that the strike was now expected to happen on the 17th. The rest of the investigators were being mandatorily evacuated from CICRA and would arrive in Puerto Maldonado on Friday. The staff was allowed to stay if they wished, and the administration was investigating the possibility of hiring guards for the station.

Sarah and I missed the great CICRA exodus, but the staff and the rest of the researchers spent Thursday packing up field and laboratory equipment, research samples, the station’s reference library, and other valuables. When they ran out of space in the station’s huge Pelican cases, they used plastic trash bins, tupperware storage containers, and finally trash bags. They hauled everything down a trail to a small, hidden clearing in the jungle, piled it under a large screen tent, and covered it all with tarps, hoping this would provide sufficient protection against rain and animals (not to mention angry miners). Since I was gone and didn’t even know all this was happening, a few of the staff and researchers packed up my entire laboratory and hauled it out to the woods for me. Now that’s friendship.

It was wonderful to see everyone again when they arrived in town. Most of us investigators stayed at the same hotel and we had a lot of great bonding time. We went out to eat lunches and dinners together in the local restaurants and shopped together in the mercado. We bought lots of cheap, pirated DVDs (which are plentiful in Puerto Maldonado; I don’t even know how to find a genuine DVD there) and planned to stay indoors and watch movies all day if the strike actually happened. Coincidentally, the evacuation meant that we were all in town for the wedding of Peggy (the researcher who studies mercury levels in birds), to her longtime partner, Renee. It was a lovely, small service held at their house.

After the ceremony everyone danced until the wee hours of the morning. I couldn’t figure out why Marco and Yevery (Peggy’s field assistant) kept disappearing and reappearing from the festivities until I decided to call it a night. I left with Mini and Giddeon, and the three of us began what we thought would be a long, dark, dusty hike down an empty road back to our hotel. Suddenly we heard two motorcycles coming up behind us: it was Marco and Yevery coming to ferry us safely home, as they’d been doing all night for the rest of the guests.

Another highlight of the trip, for me at least, was getting to drive a motorcycle myself! They are the primary form of transportation in Puerto Maldonado and I’d mentioned to everyone several times that I wanted to try one. One day I was walking out the door of my hotel planning to go shopping in the mercado with Sarah C. and Roxana—two more researcher/volunteers whom I still need to introduce you to—when Pluma suddenly pulled up on his motorcycle. “¿Adonde van, chicas?” he asked. (“Where are you going, ladies?”) He said he’d come to take me out for a spin, if I wanted. “Oh!” I said. “Pues, entonces, ¡nos vemos luego!” I told Sarah and Roxana. (“Well in that case, see you later!”) Pluma and I found a very wide, very empty dirt road, and I must have driven at least 30 laps up and down it on the motorcycle. I certainly don’t plan to go driving out in traffic any time soon, but it was a lot of fun!

Meanwhile, official talks with the miners and representatives of the local communities were scheduled for the 21st and the miners agreed to postpone the strike at least until after the talks. Still, the ACA administration was reluctant to let us return to CICRA because there had been grumbling amongst the local communities that ACA and CICRA "only serviced gringos." The administration was worried that if angry miners did show up to the station after all and found a bunch of foreigners there, they might decide to kidnap one of us on the spur of the moment and use us as a bargaining chip. (Kidnappings are not unheard of here, though the victims tend to be government officials or other powerful authorities rather than little-known field researchers.)

We ended up staying in town for five days. Everything was quiet and all of us were losing invaluable time on our research projects, so ACA finally allowed us to return to CICRA on the 17th. We were all thrilled to be home and happily reunited with our friends on the staff who’d stayed. We spent most of the day hauling stuff back out of the woods and unpacking (that's Sarah looking for something in the pile of stuff), and then next day it was back to work, trying to catch up on lost time. I discovered that falling branches had knocked down four of my mosquito nets while I was gone, so Emeterio and I had fun hacking away with our machetes to clean up the mess and set things right again.

We didn’t hear anything about the strike for several days, so we assumed that everything had settled down. However, we just learned that the government refused to back down during the talks on the 21st. We’re still waiting to see what that means for us and CICRA, but for now, everyone is just happy to be home.

Lima, Take Two

I had to travel all the way to Lima to take my GREs—it’s the only place in all of Peru where the exams are offered. In order to catch my plane flight on Nov 2nd, I was planning to take the collectivo (public boat) from CICRA to Laberinto, and then a taxi from there to Puerto Maldonado on Nov 1st. But when I told this to the staff they seemed slightly worried. Oct 31st was not only Halloween (which is becoming an increasingly popular holiday here), but also a Peruvian holiday called El Día de la Canción Criolla (Criolla Music Day), which is a celebration of Peruvian music and folklore. The staff told me that last year the collectivo driver had had such a hangover from the festivities that the boat hadn’t shown up at all on November 1st.

With this reassuring knowledge in mind, at 4:45 in the morning on the first I descended our 250 stairs to wait at the dock. The collectivo didn’t appear. But to my surprise, about 30 minutes later Pluma, Marco, Diablo and Leo (one of boat drivers) did. Finding me still standing there, they hustled me into our boat and helped me catch a passing cargo boat on its way to Laberinto. I spent most of that ride pretending to study, but actually napping contentedly on an empty gas barrel. I took a combi (public van) from Laberinto to Puerto. It was more crowded and perhaps slightly more disheveled than the taxis which travel the same route—we loaded about 10 passengers and their luggage inside, stuffing was falling out of some of the seats, and the van had no shocks left to soften the jolts from the dusty dirt road—but hey, it was a bit cheaper, too.

I spent the night in Puerto Maldonado and caught my plane the next morning. After so much time in the field, sitting down in a cushioned, air-conditioned airplane seat felt heavenly and absolutely surreal. In Lima, the hot showers, real mattresses, and laundered, folded and DRY clothing were other luxuries I’d nearly forgotten and which I appreciated more deeply than I can adequately describe. Since I was supposed to be working I didn’t get out of the hostel much (that's the living room in the photo), but I made daily trips to the supermarket just because I was so excited to see one. During my stay, I ate a dozen mangoes and two whole pineapples all by myself. I also learned to cook rice in the hostel’s kitchen. Yes, it was in fact my first time making real (non-instant) rice, ever. I admit, I wrote to Sarah and asked her how to cook it properly. What can I say? I didn’t eat it often before Peru, but now nothing seems like a proper meal to me if it doesn’t include rice. …I am becoming a Peruana.

It was a quiet trip: I spent almost the whole time holed up in the hostel. First I wrote an NSF proposal for graduate school funding, which was due at 5:00 on Nov 6th. It took forever, as proposals always do. It was lucky I happened to be in Lima on 6th because, coincidentally, the internet at CICRA went down on the day. (Murphy’s Law, right?) Sarah was also applying for the grant and had emailed me her proposal the day before, so I submitted both of our applications in time over Lima’s lovely high-speed internet. Go team CICRA! :) Then, for the next three days, I studied for and took two GREs and worked on graduate school applications. Thank goodness Antonio also happened to be staying at the hostel—not only did he keep me sane, he kept me smiling. In the end the proposal and both GREs all seemed to go pretty well—whew.

I did still have time for a couple mini-adventures. One morning I set out to find a DHL office so that I could mail Sarah’s camera, which was broken, to the United States. When I got to the office they told me they didn’t have any packing supplies. The woman behind me in line started speaking rapidly, authoritatively, but benevolently (in Spanish, of course). The gist seemed to be that there was a packing supply stall somewhere close to her apartment, but that it was too far to walk. She said was going take a cab back to her apartment because she’d forgotten something. Then she outlined her schedule for the day, mentioned something about lunch, looked at her watch, and motioned several times that I should come with her. I was a bit confused: did she want me to wait here at the DHL office for her? Did she want me to come to lunch with her, or wait at her apartment while she picked up packing supplies? I didn’t have much time to unravel it: in her brisk, assertive, but friendly way she announced that she’d understand if I didn’t trust her, but if I did I should do what she suggested. And like that, she was off. After a moment of bewildered surprise I sprinted after her, not entirely sure whether I was even supposed to.

I was. Her name was Fannie, and she was a forceful, chatty whirlwind of a woman. She’d moved from Spain to Peru years ago and she had Lima down to an art. She hailed a cab and asked the fare. “Five soles,” the driver said. “Four,” she said, and hopped in. On the trip, she asked me what I was doing in Peru. She, like all the Peruvians I’ve met outside of Puerto Maldonado, was fascinated to learn I was living in the jungle and wanted to hear all about it. Very few Peruvians ever actually see it—a situation I find shocking, having come all the way from the States to work here in one of the world’s most pristine and species-rich rainforests.

We arrived at the packing supply stall and I bought some bubble wrap and a padded envelope. They cost 12 soles, but in three seconds Fannie had bargained them down to 10. Then we returned to the curb and Fannie helped me hail a cab back to the DHL office. A taxi pulled up but she waved it away. “That one’s too small; you’d be crushed like a tin can in an accident,” she explained loudly enough that the driver could hear through his open window. Two more pulled up, but she waved them both away because they were dirty inside. Finally a cab arrived that was up to her standards. She put me in the back seat and asked the driver the fare. “Five soles,” he said. “Four,” she answered. “Five if you drop her off right at the door.” She turned to me: “Five soles, and no more. Good luck!” She waved goodbye with a smile as the cab pulled away. I gave her my email address before we parted ways; I hope I hear from my feisty Limenaen guide again some day.

Mrinalini and Giddeon

Nicknames: Mini and Gid
Ages: 20s

Mini is a PhD student who recently arrived from Washington University in St. Louis. (When she first arrived we got to swap lots of St. Louis stories!) Giddeon is her boyfriend and the second-in-command of her research project. They’ll soon be joined by a small army of five field assistants, and their project should last as long as Sarah and I are here. We’re excited to have so many long-term visitors on the way!

It’s generally agreed that Mini has the coolest research project ever. She is investigating chimerism in saddle-back tamarin monkeys. Saddle-back tamarins have a remarkably high occurrence of twinning: about 85% of pregnancies result in twins. While in the womb, twins often swap stem cells, resulting in chimeric individuals whose skin cells may have a different genetic code than, say, their liver cells. It gets even stranger: sometimes twins swap germ-line cells. In these cases, a twin’s offspring actually belong, genetically speaking, to it’s sibling. Mini and Giddeon are investigating how this genetic mix-up affects the social behavior of tamarin troupes. Their goal is to capture 80 tamarins, take samples (including the hair, blood, and semen), collar them, release them, and observe their social behavior.

I could go on, but Mini and Giddeon have already set up an amazing website about their project. Check it out here: http://www.primatesperu.com/home Be sure to read their blog if you want more frequent updates about CICRA than yours truly sometimes provides. ;)

Random facts:
Mini uses a device which we've fondly termed the “electro-ejaculator” to get sperm samples from her male monkeys. (Imagine trying to explain that one to Peruvian customs officials.) She is also teaching us some traditional Indian dance steps!

Giddeon also likes to dance. At parties, he always ends up leading everyone in new steps he’s invented, such as the “Thousands of Mosquitoes are Biting Me!” and the “I Have No Sense of Balance!” Don’t let the titles of his more inventive numbers fool you, though; he’s actually a great dancer. He may also be responsible for introducing an entire generation of Peruvians to the Electric Slide.

Emeterio

Nickname: Ñahui. (Pronounced “Nyawi.” The Quechua word for “eyes.”) He acquired it because once, when he was drunk, he requested that they play a Quechua song called “Ñahui” over and over again.
Age: 50
(Portrait by Gabe.)

Ñahui is the caretaker of Oso, our Short-Eared Dog. Oso was confiscated as a puppy from a local’s illegal collection of wild animals. Short-eared dogs are a very rare species, so the chance to see and study one at CICRA is an amazing opportunity. Ñahui loves Oso like a four-legged child. At several dinners, I’ve caught him covertly rolling up half of his own portion of meat in a napkin as a treat for Oso.

Emeterio is forever young and he dances until the bitter end of every fiesta he comes to, outlasting many a younger reveler. He is also always willing to help out in any way he can. On various occasions, he has carried gas tanks and suitcases up CICRA’s 250 stairs for me (against my protests), and he recently hiked all the way out to my experimental site to help me clear a treefall with our machetes… a task that certainly was NOT in his job description as a mammal researcher.

When he was younger, Emeterio used to be an illegal logger and he can tell amazing stories about it. Once he and three friends went out into the rainforest for a four-month logging run. They were often very hungry and low on food; they ran across an (empty) encampment of an uncontacted tribe; once they slept on a beach and saw jaguars pace past during the night. At the end of their trip they floated their logs all the way down the river to Puerto Maldonado, but when they arrived, officials confiscated all of their wood because it was illegally harvested. He says larger-scale illegal operations get away with it all the time by bribing the authorities, but he and his friends were poor and therefore lost all of their four-months' work.

Random fact: Emeterio is now playing for the opposite team. Not only is he working to conserve rainforest mammals, but he also travels in his boat to local communities to try and persuade the miners to stop using mercury to extract their gold. (I think he’s paying for that work out of his own pocket.)

Jesus

Nickname: Diablo (“Devil”)
Age: 30s?
(Portrait brought to you by Gabe.)

Jesus is the operations manager of CICRA. He sets the boat schedule, orders the food, and oversees all the other myriad tasks that keep the station running smoothly. He’s also an extremely competitive volleyball player. If you’re on his team and you miss the ball (which I do frequently), he’ll give you a glare that could melt ice… but then he’ll break into a big grin, and no matter how bad a player you are, he still always wants you to come out and play.

Random fact: Diablo’s favorite drink is cachaca (a Brazilian liquor made from fermented sugarcane). Once, on the night before he left for a trip, I was walking back to my cabin and I found him, Marco and Pluma sitting in the dark on the bleachers next to the soccer field. They were throwing Jesus a mini-farewell. They invited me, Sarah and Adrian (who were also passing by) to join them. We shared a bottle of cachaca under the stars.