La Selva

In the world of tropical herpetology, even tropical biology as a whole, there is one station famous for producing much of the foundational research: La Selva. Run by the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), La Selva continues to be one of the world leaders in tropical research, with over 100 researchers using its facilities every year. At any given time there are at least 20 researchers working at La Selva. Their facilities are very impressive, and over the years they have become almost like a mini university in the rainforest. It was awesome to get to go to a place with such a legacy and prestige.

To make it even better, our day at La Selva was our Herpetology Diversity Day! Unfortunately, we only had one night to be there, but it was all about herps :) Before we arrived, Yimen (one of our TA's) and I decided to have a contest to see who could find more herps in 24 hours. Within the first five minutes I saw a striped basilisk (Basiliscus vittatus), which is the third species of basilisk in Costa Rica :) We had a lecture in the morning when we arrived, then went on hikes around the station. We saw two vipers on the walk; an Eyelash Pit Viper (Bothriechis schlegelii) and another Hog-Nosed Pit Viper (Porthidium nasutum)! The Eyelash Viper was a yellow color morph that is common on the Atlantic Coast, which was awesome to get to see :) We had another lecture before dinner, then we went on a night hike as a group.

 On the night hike we saw tons of herps! We saw a Smoky Jungle Frog (Leptodactylus pentadactylus), which was almost Cane Toad size. We also saw a Fer de Lance (Bothrops asper) and a Coral Snake (Micrurus alleni)! I had never seen a coral snake before, so that was pretty awesome to see. We went down to the “Cantarrana” (Singing frog) pond, which La Selva is famous for. We saw a few species of tree frog there, and eyeshine from a caiman :)

At the end of the hike, everyone else went back, but I stayed out. I decided that since it was my only night in La Selva, I was going to hike all night :) I went around through some of the trails and found a ton of frogs. It was raining a lot, so I had to stand under palm trees for a while to avoid the downpour. It was an amazing experience to turn of my headlamp and just stand there in the middle of the forest hearing the rain fall down through the trees and all of the frogs singing around me...I'll never forget that :) I got startled by some peccaries a few times, and I saw an armadillo, which was cool.

 I was going along a trail that led back towards the station and I came to some bridges. Unfortunately, because of the heavy rain the bridges were underwater! Some of them I was able to walk across, but one had water well above the top of my boots. I decided to climb across on the railing, and as I got almost to the other side, I felt something sting my hand. I looked down and saw a bullet ant stinging my palm! Bullet ants get their name because of the strength of their sting, and it certainly lived up to it :( It wasn't too horrible though, so I kept on walking. Around 2 am I found another snake! This one was a Coral Snake mimic like we saw in Penas Blancas (Urotheca euryzona). It was pretty cool to get to see it better this time, since I only saw the tail of the last one.

At about 3 am I headed back to the station to get a little sleep. I ended up with 23 species in less than 24 hours! I was pretty amazed at the amount of herps that I saw, and I totally dominated Yimen :) The next day we left after lunch to head to Parismina after having a short class period in the morning. I greatly appreciated the long bus ride so that I could catch up on my lost sleep...La Selva definitely didn't disappoint!

This was when my camera broke, so I have no pictures from La Selva or later...I'll do my best to get some from other people though :)