Panamá: ¡Qué guay! (1)

Watsup everybody! After a January hiatus, the update blog is back, but this time it's Panama-style.. I probably won't be posting as frequently this spring as I did last semester, but I'll shoot for at least biweekly blurbs. You'll notice that the box w/ Barca's Liga standings (on the right) has been replaced by a growing "Cool Animals Spotted" list, but otherwise the blog's layout is pretty similar.

Cool, so let's get to it: our group of 18 Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (EEB) majors got here a little over a weeek ago. We'll be moving around to different parts of Panama throughout the next few months, but currently we're in Gamboa. Gamboa is located in both the middle of the country and the middle of the Panama Canal (directly next to us), and it's also known as the world record-holder for most bird species counted in a single day: 385! While it's a quiet town, Gamboa also boasts a new resort, a cool church right next door to us, and a friendly population of local people. (I knew I was outside the U.S. when I found a pick-up soccer game within my first 3 hours here.) Our home base is affectionately called the "schoolhouse," which is actually a historic building operated by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (or STRI). We're lucky to have (mostly) hot showers, (mostly) decent internet, and an awesome Panamanian lady named Frances who cooks for us.

For our first class, Tropical Biology, we have a French professor, two Panamanian TAs, and a Panamanian student who's studying with us. Class is a lot of fun: the first three days we just had a few hours of lecture and then went hiking through various rain forests. Now, however, we've started our research projects, so we're in the field most days and then come back for dinner and a 1-hr lecture in the evening. In my project, I'm using ant pitfall traps to see how the diversity of ants changes between forest edge and interior habitat. Basically my partner and I place these cups in the ground and bait them with tuna surrounded by a moat of soapy water. The ants fall into the water on their way to the tuna and drown. A bit morbid, I know, but it's kinda fun to see all the different ants that end up in our traps.


looks like a pair of lips, right?


da rainforest!

The other thing about my project is that it requires walking 150 meters into the rainforest, over and over. I quickly experienced first-hand just how ultra-adapted tropical plants are for protecting themselves.. Evolution has blessed some of the plants here with huge thorns, fearsome spines, super-sticky seeds, ant armies that protect their hosts like it's nobody's business, and a variety of other ingenious characteristics that are no fun for humans. The flora seem to take great delight in deploying their defenses at the expense of the rainforest explorer, as my cuts, scrapes, bruises, and other assorted wounds (physical and psychological) can attest to.. As for animals, I've noticed that my initial impression of rain-forest fauna was incorrect: it's not like there are snakes dripping off every tree or frogs jumping over your boots non-stop. The biodiversity is absolutely present, but many animals are nocturnal, or come out more when it rains (it's the dry season now), or hide when they hear people coming. I keep waiting to step on a poisonous snake or get bit by one hanging overhead.. the possibility is always kicking around in the back of my head as I stomp clumsily through the forest.


gecko guy


one of a number of wonderful & beautiful flowers in the forest

Ok to wrap up I will tell a story. We had a rest day today, so we went to a beach on the Pacific side of Panama. The beach was over 2 hrs away, but when we had finally almost arrived, we were stopped in front of a police station by five Panamanian rifle-wielding officers. After our driver spoke with the policemen for a few minutes, we were told something about how a law passed "moments ago" would prevent us from driving the remaining 6 miles to the beach in our bus. Now, Panama isn't exactly known for enforcing its laws perfectly, AND it was a Sunday, so the idea of a law passed just an hour ago or whatever seemed absurd. (I suspect something was lost in the translation we were given by our TA..) Then our TA told us that the law had to do with whales, walls, or waves, but we couldn't understand which he was talking about since he had problems with that particular word. As you might imagine, our whole group was very confused by this point. Eventually, a $100 bribe from our driver seemed to satisfy the officers, and after a passport check (no idea why) and a second, unexplained stop, we finally hit the beach. I'm not sure what the moral of this story is.. but where logic fails, money seems to speak.