Costa Rican ramblings...

It's been a while since I updated this, but I've been fairly busy lately...I took an unexpected trip down to Dominical with the QERC students, led by Dr. Cossel. We spent two days looking for all the herps we could find, and ended up seeing 18 species! It was fairly dry where we were hiking, but we still saw a decent amount. The highlight for me was catching a baby caiman, which got its tiny jaws around my thumb while I was handing it off to one of the students. I only got a few scrapes, but I was impressed by how strong his jaws were!

I have been hard at work on my project since we got back. I am now up to eight lizards, and am on a good pace. We should at least be able to reach our goal of 12. Dr. Cossel left yesterday, and Dr. Mooring arrived the night before that. It was really fun getting to hang out with Dr. Cossel, who has far more experience in tropical herpetology than me. He has been invaluable to the formulation and execution of the project, and I owe him a lot. Dr. Mooring is teaching a mammal unit this week, and he has also been helping with the project. I am glad all three of my Honors Committee members will be able to participate in the project.

I can't believe I have already been here for over a week! In just 4.5 days, Genieva arrives, which I am really excited for! It will be great to be able to show her this place I have spent so much time in and have grown to love. Let's just hope she can handle the night hikes ;)

The project begins!

I made it to QERC this afternoon after a bus ride up the mountain and hitch hiking a ride down into the valley with four old Canadian women :) One of them lives in Costa Rica half the year and owns a sustainable farm (www.orcharddelsol.com). I was so thankful that I didn't have to hike down!

When I got to QERC, I got settled in, then Dr. Cossel and I began setting up the testing arena for our experiments (pictures to come...). As we were setting up, two of the students brought in a lizard they caught, which happened to be one of the species I am studying! What luck :) We tested out the setup with an Emerald Swift (Sceloporus malachiticus), and all seems to be functioning properly. We'll begin our first tests tomorrow on "Rufus" (named by Genieva). Now all we need to do is find more lizards!

Tomorrow I'm helping with some of the student activities, then I'll be finding lizards and testing them. I'm excited to begin this project and get back into the forest!

Rufus, our first lizard (Norops pachypus)

I'm back!

After a 9 month intermission, I'm back in Costa Rica, so I'm back to the blog! This adventure will be a little shorter, but I hope it will bring many memorable moments :) I will be here for three weeks studying a small species of montane lizard, Norops pachypus, which lives near the QERC field station. This is all a part of my senior honors project, and we hope to understand the thermal tolerances of this lizard, and how that relates to potential effects of climate change. More information to come...

Today I got into San Jose around 11:45, took the bus into the city, then took a taxi to my hostel, Pension de la Cuesta. I got some lunch, bought groceries for the trip, and have been reading/napping in my room for a while. I head up to QERC in the morning, and I can't wait to be back in the forest! I am really looking forward to the next few weeks :) I'll update more from QERC...

 My hostel

 Cool statue in a nearby park

The Costa Rican flag :)

PS-I got a DSLR camera recently, so the quality of the pictures should be better (I hope!)

The Atlantic Adventure!

This trip was FULL of exciting stories and beautiful  places! In order to simplify things, I'm just going to make entries for each place we stayed and include all of the stories from each place...Unfortunately, my camera died about halfway through the trip, so I might  not have pictures of everything like I wish I could, but I'll do the best I can to borrow pictures from other students :)

Penas ("Penyas") Blancas

The first stop on our trip was in Penas Blancas, which is basically in the middle of nowhere :) We hiked 10 miles with our packs up over the continental divide and down the Atlantic slope to about 800 meters elevation. Forests of this elevation on the Atlantic side get the highest amount of rain here in Costa Rica, and some even get over 9 METERS of rain per year! That's a bit more than the 8 inches I'm used to in San Diego :) As you can imagine, this was a great trip for herps!

The place we stayed used to be owned by a man named Eladio. He used to have a farm there, and the whole valley around there used to be full of farms. About 40 years ago, most of the valley was purchased through a conservation effort by some international organizations. A large amount of the money was raised by groups of children in Europe, so it was given the name the Children's Eternal Rainforest (or Bosque Eterno de lon Ninos-BEN). It is now the largest private reserve in all of Central America at almost 30,000 hectares! We are one of only 3 groups that gets to stay at Penas Blancas, so it was quite a privilege. Eladio has woked for the Biological Reserve in Monteverde for many years, and he knew so much about the plants around the station. Dan and I walked around with him one afternoon and he told us about all the orchids. He even has a species of orchid named after him! It was awesome to get to meet him :)

Though the accommodations were fairly primitive, it was a beautiful place, and the river nearby was great for swimming in. You could even ride down some of the rapids, which was quite exciting :) We used the river as a shower substitute every day, and it worked pretty well!

Well, I'm sure you're dying to know about all of the herps! :) I decided before the trip started that I was going to go on a night hike every night, and Penas was no exception...We saw lots of leaf litter frogs and Brilliant Forest Frogs (Rana warszewitschii) every time we went out. We also saw a "Halloween Snake" (Urotheca euryzona), which was a red and black coral snake mimic. The coolest frog by far was the Masked Tree Frog (Smilisca phaeota) that Dan found when it jumped onto his foot at the station! We went out as a group on the last night and near the start of the hike we saw another Fer de Lance (Bothrops asper)! During the day, we also saw one of the largest species of anoles here in Costa Rica (Norops biporcatus). I used some of my florescent powder to track it with my UV flashlight. (I am using this for my research later in the semester, so I'll explain more later...)

Overall, Penas Blancas was a beautiful place and a great start to the trip :) Here are some pictures from our time there:

Orchid! Each flower only lasts for one day on these.

The river rapids :)

Enjoying the river!

Leaf litter frog...Possibly Eleutherodactylus 

crassidigitus?

Masked Tree Frog (Smilisca phaeota)

I love their face...It looks like they have such

personality :)

Cocodrilos

We left the Osa Peninsula yesterday and have been driving up the coast to Santa Rosa National Park, which is where we will be camping for the next week. On the bus ride today we stopped at a bridge that crosses the Tarcoles River. For some reason, there is a huge group of massive crocodiles (Crocodylus acutus) that congregates underneath this bridge, so we walked across and got to look at them. They were so big! We were very high up, but they were still very impressive. The big ones were only around 10-12 feet long, but incredibly wide! (I say “only" 10-12 feet because some other species can grow over 20 feet…Imagine that!) Someday I’ll be good enough to catch one of these giants, but for now I’ll stick to the little guys ;)

The tiny ones at the top are about

the same size as the one I caught :)

This guy was MASSIVE!

So many big crocs...I counted 37

just right around the bridge!

So it begins...

We leave San Jose in the morning for a 2 week trip along the Pacific Coast! It should be an amazing time for seeing some incredible animals. Camping on the beach, hiking through the rainforest, swimming in the ocean...I can't wait for all the adventures ahead! Lots of stories to come...

Viajando (Traveling)

I am currently on a bus on my way to QERC, the field station run by Southern Nazarene University. We are heading up into the mountains, and I was just able to see the Pacific and Atlantic at the same time! So cool :) I’ll head over to the farm from QERC, and I’ll be out of internet for a week or so…I’m sure I’ll have plenty of stories when I get back from the farm! Check back then :)