Hi all,
A few friends and coworkers asked me to let them know how I am doing while conducting my PhD field work in Monteverde, Costa Rica, and I thought it was a great reason to finally get this blog started-- even though I have three draft blog posts that I never published.... I will update with new posts as often as I can!
I arrived in Monteverde late in the evening on April 3rd after a long day of travel from Salt Lake City. It is pretty amazing that after only a day of travel you can arrive in a completely different country thousands of miles away. My friend, Emily Diblasi, said this to me on our way to the airport in Salt Lake, and it's true! It's pretty amazing.
After taking a day to settle unpack, I started work today! My goal for the next few weeks it to collect data to aid in my understanding of the presence or absence of two species of epiphytic bromeliad. Today, I worked in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve with very talented tree climber Keylor Munoz. We successfully climbed two large fig trees!
After a long hike in with our climbing ropes, harnesses, gear, and lunches, we stopped at our first tree. We found this tree because it looked like it would be a great and safe tree to climb, but it also had some older looking line in the tree, which made us think someone had climbed it before. Upon further examination, we saw some worn and sun damaged webbing (a kind of strap-like material used by some climbers). I immediately thought of Nalini, as this is something she commonly uses when tree climbing. It is kind of cool to be studying in an area so important in Nalini's research, and it was cool to find this relict of her past climbs. It is common to give a tree a name once you have climbed it, so I decided to name this tree "Nalini's tree". It took us about an hour to rig the tree. Using a giant sling shot we shoot a line with a weight on it into the tree. Once our line is over two branches, we tie the line to our climbing rope and pull the rope over those branches. This whole process took about an hour. Then we were ready to climb. Keylor zipped right up the tree, but I took a while. It is a pretty exhausting process especially when you spend most of the year sitting at your computer....haha. We climbed about 15 up into the canopy of the tree. I found one individual of the epiphytic bromeliad species Werauhia tonduziana.
Our second tree was also a fig. As soon as we arrived at the tree, I immediately saw a number of Werauhia tonduziana, so that was very exciting! As a result, I decided to name this tree "The W"...kind of like the hotel chain, but way better because it is a tree with lots of epiphytes, of course! See below for some pictures of the trees from today. Stay tuned for more, if you are interested! I'll have better tree climbing pix soon!
A few friends and coworkers asked me to let them know how I am doing while conducting my PhD field work in Monteverde, Costa Rica, and I thought it was a great reason to finally get this blog started-- even though I have three draft blog posts that I never published.... I will update with new posts as often as I can!
I arrived in Monteverde late in the evening on April 3rd after a long day of travel from Salt Lake City. It is pretty amazing that after only a day of travel you can arrive in a completely different country thousands of miles away. My friend, Emily Diblasi, said this to me on our way to the airport in Salt Lake, and it's true! It's pretty amazing.
After taking a day to settle unpack, I started work today! My goal for the next few weeks it to collect data to aid in my understanding of the presence or absence of two species of epiphytic bromeliad. Today, I worked in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve with very talented tree climber Keylor Munoz. We successfully climbed two large fig trees!
After a long hike in with our climbing ropes, harnesses, gear, and lunches, we stopped at our first tree. We found this tree because it looked like it would be a great and safe tree to climb, but it also had some older looking line in the tree, which made us think someone had climbed it before. Upon further examination, we saw some worn and sun damaged webbing (a kind of strap-like material used by some climbers). I immediately thought of Nalini, as this is something she commonly uses when tree climbing. It is kind of cool to be studying in an area so important in Nalini's research, and it was cool to find this relict of her past climbs. It is common to give a tree a name once you have climbed it, so I decided to name this tree "Nalini's tree". It took us about an hour to rig the tree. Using a giant sling shot we shoot a line with a weight on it into the tree. Once our line is over two branches, we tie the line to our climbing rope and pull the rope over those branches. This whole process took about an hour. Then we were ready to climb. Keylor zipped right up the tree, but I took a while. It is a pretty exhausting process especially when you spend most of the year sitting at your computer....haha. We climbed about 15 up into the canopy of the tree. I found one individual of the epiphytic bromeliad species Werauhia tonduziana.
Our second tree was also a fig. As soon as we arrived at the tree, I immediately saw a number of Werauhia tonduziana, so that was very exciting! As a result, I decided to name this tree "The W"...kind of like the hotel chain, but way better because it is a tree with lots of epiphytes, of course! See below for some pictures of the trees from today. Stay tuned for more, if you are interested! I'll have better tree climbing pix soon!