{"id":40,"date":"2004-12-17T20:56:48","date_gmt":"2004-12-18T00:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/2004\/12\/17\/what-the-winds-blew-in-2\/"},"modified":"2012-05-04T10:16:28","modified_gmt":"2012-05-04T14:16:28","slug":"what-the-winds-blew-in-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/2004\/12\/17\/what-the-winds-blew-in-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What the winds blew in"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/span>The winds
\nhave arrived in the Canal Zone, bringing with them the
\ndry season.  <\/span>After months of gray skies,
\nglassy water, daily downpours and chiggers, the sun is now shining every day,
\nconditions in Lake Gatun are perfect for small boat
\nsailing, and the ticks are starting to multiply.  <\/span>It is hotter during the day, cooler at night,
\nand the forest has stopped smelling like rotting carcasses and acquired a new,
\nmore pleasant scent.  <\/span> <\/span>New flowers are blooming, and the Dipteryx
\nfruits are starting to mature, relieving the extreme food shortage that has
\nbeen afflicting the frugivores for the last few months.  <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The start of the dry season means
\nsomething different for each island resident. <\/p>\n

For Andrea, the winds bring a sense of panic because the
\nseedlings she has been growing for one of her experiments will now die if she
\ntransplants them to the forest<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After spending weeks hunting down
\n800 Quararibea asterolepis<\/i> seeds,
\nplanting them and watering the 400 seedlings that germinated and grew, she is
\nfaced with difficult decision:  <\/span>should
\nshe transplant them into the forest, even though their chances of surviving the
\ndry season are miniscule, or should she try to keep them alive in a shade-house
\nuntil the beginning of the next rainy season, 5 months from now?  <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The decision to not transplant
\nmeans that all the seedlings have to be transplanted into larger pots, and
\nbecause Andrea is interested in the micorrhizae associated with plant roots,
\nall the pots, and the soil has to sterilized before the seedlings can be
\ntransplanted.  <\/span>She and her assistant Alex
\nhave been spending the last week scrubbing planting pots, cloroxing them to
\nmake sure no fungal spores are hanging around, and running soil through a very
\nfrightening looking machine that makes sure the dirt is sterile.   <\/span>On top of this all, they have also been
\nharvesting and peeling Coussarea
\ncurvigemmia<\/i> seeds, which they are planting tonight for their next
\nexperiment.   <\/span><\/p>\n

Coussarea<\/i>
\nhas been a major player in my life recently as well.  <\/span>Because it is just about the only fruit
\navailable in the forest right now, the capuchins have been spending huge
\namounts of time eating this little white berry. 
\n<\/span>In addition to watching monkeys eat it, I have also been spending huge amounts
\nof time (say 12-15 hours in the past 5 days) peeling Coussarea<\/i>, and scraping the pulp off the seed. I’m doing this
\nbecause I want to know about the nutritional content of the most important
\nfoods in the capuchin diet.  <\/span>This
\ninformation will be really helpful for understanding why they make the foraging
\ndecisions they do, and will also help me determine the quality of each capuchin
\nsocial group’s home range.  <\/span>I only needed
\nten grams of dry Coussarea<\/i> pulp, but
\nthat translated into more than 50 grams of wet pulp, and over 400 whole
\nfruits.  <\/span>Luckily, my new research
\nassistant, Vilma, was here last week to help me with all of this!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Vilma has been working on BCI on and off for a few years,
\nand was tracking ocelots when I first arrived. 
\n<\/span>I’m really excited to have her helping me with my project!<\/p>\n

Along with the sunny weather, a large number of the
\nnon-residents ARTS team members also descended on the island in December.  <\/span>In addition to Tony, the software designer,
\nKarl, the database guy, Kevin, our spatial statistics consultant, and Dan, of
\nNYARTS (pronounces neeeeyarts), Roland, one of the PIs on the project also was
\non the island for a couple of weeks.  <\/span>The
\nlab was bursting with people, and meetings had to be held on the balcony<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The outcome of all these people’s efforts is
\nsomewhat mixed for me.  The system is still being tinkered with,
\nand I’m still not exactly sure what kind of data I will get from it,
\nand what I will be able to do with that data.  It’s a little bit
\nstressful, not really knowing what shape the project is going to
\ntake.  However, that stress has been somewhat mitigated by the
\namount of time I’m spending in the field.  When you are physically
\nexhausted, there is a whole lot less energy left over to spend worrying
\nabout things.<\/p>\n

Some bad news for me is that two of the radio collars I put
\non monkeys have malfunctioned, so I have lost two social groups from my sample.
\nThis is partially compensated for by the lucky fact that one of the
\nradio-collared males has immigrated into another group, so the net loss from my
\nstudy is only one group.  <\/span>However, this
\nall means that I will have to dart again in February—something I am not really
\nlooking forward to at all.  <\/span><\/p>\n

There has also been a lot to celebrate on the island
\nrecently.   <\/span>Marta
\njust heard that she has
\nbeen awarded a Fulbright to do her PhD work in the US.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It also looks like Raff will finally be escaping from BCI,
\nas he has job offers to go work for a bush dog project in Peru or tracking
\ncoyotes in Illinois.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I am headed home in a few days to spend Christmas with my
\nfamily.  <\/span>It’s a weird period of
\ntransition on the island, because when I get back, a lot of my friends here
\nwill have finished their research and left. 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Titoche—leaving us to go back to Belgium
\nbecause his beetles aren’t producing larvae right now.<\/p>\n

The constant flux of people makes island life interesting,
\nbut also emotionally tiring.  <\/span>I’m glad to
\nbe going home for a while, and I’m hoping for snow and good sledding
\nconditions!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Rainbow over the dredging division docks.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"\n<\/p>\n

Christophe mending the holes the bats chewed in his mist
\nnets.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"\n<\/p>\n

An assassin bug caught in a spider web\n<\/p>\n


\nMerry Christmas!<\/span>  I hope you all have a great holiday!\n<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 The winds have arrived in the Canal Zone, bringing with them the dry season.  After months of gray skies, glassy water, daily downpours and chiggers, the sun is now shining every day, conditions in Lake Gatun are perfect for small boat sailing, and the ticks are starting to multiply.  It is hotter during the day, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1163,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1454],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crofootstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/crofoot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}