May 28- Wildlife Sightings

One of my favorite things about being in the tropics so far has been the wildlife.  BCI has an amazing variety of species, many of which you can find around the dorms.  3 of my room's walls are primarily screens, and I can usually hear a variety of birds and insects calling in the forest.  Howler monkeys are very recognizable- their calls can carry for 5 kilometers, and I have learned that they're quite noisy during storms and at 5 in the morning.  I had known to expect them, but it still scared me more than I care to admit when they woke me up the first morning.  (Hey, you try waking up alone in a pitch-black room to the sound of screaming howls).  There are also tons of agouti around the dorm- I can often hear them crashing through the jungle outside of my window.

As soon as you go into the forest, there is life everywhere.  I was out there for 4 hours this morning- the projects I'm involved with study Azteca ants, and we were identifying good nests for study sites. We saw howler monkeys almost as soon as we got into the forest, and could hear them making noise all morning (they were too high up to get a good picture, but I'll try again in the future).  We have also seen lots of capuchin monkeys.  Our most exciting encounter today was with a 6-foot-long snake lying across the trail that we didn't spot until we almost stepped on it!

The island is surrounded by the gorgeous water of Lake Gatun.  However, swimming is strictly forbidden due to crocodiles!  I went looking for them during a break yesterday afternoon, and sure enough, I saw one within five minutes (the dark line towards the center of the picture- an anti-crocodile fence kept me from getting close enough to get a better picture on my phone)

May 26- First Day

After a long day of travel yesterday, I am officially on Barro Colorado Island!  I got a few glimpses of the jungle as I drove from Panama City to Gamboa last night, but the sun had long since gone down by the time I arrived.  This close to the equator, there are around 12 hours of sunlight year round- the sun rises around 6 in the morning and sets at 6:30 in the evening.  Since I arrived in the dark after a storm, this morning was my first real glimpse of Panama's beautiful tropical forests and abundant wildlife.  It was actually fairly cool when I woke up (surprising, since the temperatures are regularly in the high 80's and the humidity takes the "real feel" up to 100), so everything was shrouded in fog.  It made for some truly stunning scenery as I took a boat across the canal to Barro Colorado (better known a BCI).

The Smithsonian has a very nice research base on BCI- two buildings of labs, a cafeteria, a visitor's center, and several dorm buildings.  The labs are air conditioned, while everything else is not.  This will definitely take some adjustment (see aforementioned temperatures).  I spent the morning hiking through BCI's incredible forests with Dr. Kaspari (who supervises my summer project), his wife (a wildlife artist), and his grad student Jane (who will be running the project on the island and working directly with me this summer).  We saw several Capuchin monkeys, lizards, agouti, and countless birds.  Since BCI was a mountaintop before the canal flooded around it, it is incredibly hilly.  Most of the steepest slopes on the trails have steps installed, but I will definitely be getting quite the workouts this summer.  My wildlife sightings continued back at my dorm, where there are several bats living in the rafters just outside of my window.  

Today was mostly an introductory day for me- I'll start the real work on my projects tomorrow (most of which examine invertebrates and the brown food web on the forest floor).  At the moment, a tremendous storm has me stuck in the lab until the rain eases up- this is definitely the tropics!

May 24- Preparing for Departure

Image: National Geographic

Tomorrow morning I depart for Panama!  As part of the NSF's REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) program, I will be spending the summer on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.  The island is located in the Gatun Lake in the Panama Canal.  The Smithsonian has conducted research on the island since the early 20th century- you can learn more about their work here.  The island hosts a few hundred scientists from around the world every year.  There are hundreds of types of animals, including five types of monkeys and 225 species of ants!

Getting to the island is fairly simple (for anyone who followed my adventures in Honduras last summer, it's a lot less complex than that).  I fly to Panama City, and then drive to Gamboa.  From there, it's  half hour boat ride across the canal to Barro Colorado Island.  I'm hoping to be able to update this blog fairly regularly this summer.  Ideally, I will have lots of cool pictures and videos of wildlife on the island.  In reality, there will probably be lots of photos of ants.  Stay tuned!

Image: Nativatours