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Monday, we headed North to La Selva, a field station of the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), world-renowned for tropical biology research. This was and will be the “stickiest” part of the trip, the hot, humid rainforest that makes up the Northeastern part of the country on the Caribbean side.Some are uncomfortable from the typical stuff: heat, bugs, boots, food, but overall, they're holding up well. It's great that nature provided excitement, even on the first day, to turn them on. They saw peccaries, toucans, monkeys, and even a baby sloth! The part they like the least (and me too), is squeezing in classroom time for an hour each day of conceptual stuff, in between all the field work. But it's a necessary part of the class, to give them sufficient background knowledge. The general routine is: they get a guided nature walk the first day, sort of an overview of the habitat. The next day they're out in the forest doing their preliminary project observations, developing their hypotheses and methods, collect field data, then spending a day or so working up their analysis and conclusions, and developing a Powerpoint which they present to the class. In between there are night walks, boat trips, visits to various butterfly gardens, museums, and brief trips into town for various sundries, phone cards, etc. The main conceptual focus for them is to study in La Selva was the ecological and evolutionary adaptations and relationships of the tropical rainforest species.

We’re now in the Northwest part of the country, at another OTS field station in “Palo Verde National Park. This environment is a “dry forest habitat” in the Guanacaste region of the Nicoya Peninsula. Between the rainshadow effect of the Continental Divide down the middle of the country, and winds blowing West to East, the area is gets virtually no rain from about December-May, so we’re in the wet season right now. This means the weather, though rainy in the later afternoon and evening, provides warm sunny mornings to do field work and sightseeing. The students are enjoying the less humid climate here, though sleeping and eating accommodations are more primitive (we’re more isolated than La Selva) and there are a LOT more mosquitoes (we’re right next to a huge marsh, great for birding though!), so there’s more whining here. I just keep reminding them to “Be Here Now”, it’s all part of the experience! They will have more luxurious accommodations and cooler climate the last week in Monteverde.

The focus of study here is to look at adaptations to the drier climate, and to discuss the fact that about 95% of this original habitat has been burned, farmed, grazed and more recently developed for tourism. The little bit left is preserved in areas like Palo Verde, but efforts here for saving “scrubby” forests don’t get the same attention and resources as the more “glamorous” tropical rainforests. It’s great to talk about these conservation issues and relate them to similar problems locally, such as saving the West Eugene wetlands vs. Redwoods, for example.

Here are some links to places where the group stayed:

Week One: Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) Field Station in La Selva

Week Two: OTS Field Station in Palo Verde

Week Three: Ecolodge Field Station in San Luis, Monteverde

(All photographs on this page copyrighted by Joe Russin. Please e-mail him for permission to use them).