Catching Up

I have to apologize for the lack of updates recently, but the combination of massive amounts of work and no new adventures has made life fairly uninteresting lately...Here's a recap of the last couple of weeks.

We left homestays last Sunday and had our Tropical Diversity final the following day. Our first drafts of our project reports were due on Thursday, and we gave our presentations on Saturday. Most of last week consisted of statistical analysis, interpreting results, and writing. Presenting the results was fun, and I really enjoyed hearing about other students' projects.

As far as my project went, here is a short synopsis of the results:

It is well documented that Norops  lizards perch at different heights during the day depending on their sex and species. According to my results, this stratification is maintained at night, since species and sexes showed significantly different average sleeping site heights. Also, they showed a preference for protected sites, which is different than common observations (which is what made me want to study this in the first place!). The results were very interesting, and if you would like to read about it in more detail, just post a comment with your email and I'll send you the paper :)

We have very little left in terms of school work...A final for our Humans in the Tropics class tomorrow, and a final draft of our paper due on Thursday. We hike to Arenal Volcano on Friday, then head back to San Jose. I'll be back in the States on week from tonight! I'll miss Costa Rica, but I can't wait to be home. Hopefully I'll have a couple more adventures before we leave :)

Lluvia (Rain)

Let the wet season begin! As I am writing this I can barely even hear the music in m headphones over the pounding of rain on the metal roof of my house. Tropical rain is pretty intense! It has rained quite a bit lately, and at least once a day for the past 4 days. Today, while I was out searching for lizards, the ominous gray clouds above me must have decided that I was dehydrated, so they shared some of their water with me. I came home quite drenched, but I managed to find one lizard before the downpour began :) My new method of applying the powder I use to track the lizards at night has proven very successful, and I have found all seven lizards I have used it on so far. Even with all the rain, the powder works great!

I am hoping to find more amphibians now that it is getting wetter. I hear more frogs every night and I saw a salamander (Bolitoglossa robusta) D.O.R. yesterday, which means they're becoming active again. I don't even know what I can find around here, but there has to be something!

Only four days of data collection left and I am at 38 lizards. Hopefully the weather will cooperate enough for me to reach my goal of 50, but I am happy with the amount I have been able to find so far. Last day of lecture and Spanish is Friday, then we are back to the station and have to do a lot of work writing up our projects. Three weeks left, but they are going to fly by! But I'm soaking up as much Pura Vida as I can until then :)

Gallegos

I have had a lot of requests to update my blog lately, so here is a quick recap of the past 3 weeks or so...

I started a homestay the week we got back to Monteverde and have been working on my independent research project. I am staying on a farm in the San Luis Valley, which is a little lower in elevation than the rest of Monteverde. It is about a 1.5 hour walk to the Biological Station, but I only have class once or twice a week. My family is very nice and I am loving Costa Rican food :) We watch a lot of TV, so I am learning a lot of Spanish comprehension! I will be here for another week and a half, until we return to the Station on 5/2.

My project is studying the sleeping site selection of Norops lizards ("gallegos" in Spanish) around the farm and surrounding areas. So far I have caught 31 lizards, and my homestay brother, Eduardo (13), has helped me a lot. I use fluorescent powder to track the lizards using UV light at night. My success rate at tracking them has not been phenomenal, but I am getting better. I have also developed some new strategies that seem to help make the process easier. My goal is 50 lizards, so we'll see if I can get that many by next Sunday.

There were fiestas in Monteverde over the past weekend, with food, carnival rides, and bull riding. I learned that here in Costa Rica, bull riding is not a spectator sport...In fact, after the rider is launched from the bull, it is customary for the spectators to run around inside the ring, taunting the bull, somewhat like a tame version of the "Running of the Bulls" in Spain. In an effort to fully immerse myself in the culture, I couldn't not participate! Although as some of the bulls were over 1600 pounds, I decided that my position by the wall was the best place to be :) It was quite an experience!

That's about all that has been going on for the last 3 weeks. It is crazy to think that I will be home in 25 days! The time is going to fly by...