Day 5 – The best laid plans..

So here we are on Day 5 out of 9 and knee-deep in our herbivory research. We started the day ready to tackle the remaining 19 out of 30 sets of Piper kelleyi that we needed to collect data on. After two days of this work, we were all pretty hopeful that getting this done before lunch would be no problem. After breakfast, we all got into the land cruiser and headed to the forest. Once we got out, we saw a caravan of caterpillars! It’s the most amazing thing that they move together like this to travel.

Due to some work being done further down the road, Jim allowed us to go through his home/territory and into the forest. Once we went past the area that had somewhat of a path (thanks to Jim and the cows that used to roam there), the rest of the forest was pretty dense. It’s a good thing that Santiago and Brian are skilled at using a machete! We got a few sets going and were determined to finish our job in a couple hours. There were some times that I just took a moment to look around and was once again reminded at how breathtaking the forest is. It’s such an incredible experience looking all around you and seeing nothing but green.

After about 10 sets, we had to go deeper into the forest to locate more Piper kelleyi. We trudged through some damp and mucky forest floor, ducked under vines, stepped cautiously over branches, and even got our boots stuck in some thick goopy mud a couple times. But alas, we couldn’t find any more of that Piper. We decided to go back for lunch and come back out later and search in a different part of the forest. After waiting.. and waiting.. for our ride to pick us up, we got word that Jose and the truck made its way to Tena! When we thought we were stranded, the very gracious man doing wood work nearby gave us a lift back to Yanayacu. But without a car, and the rain that started, we definitely weren’t going to go back out today. I guess we didn’t get all 30 sets done today…

After lunch, Santiago gave a really informative and interesting lecture on entomofauna. Although he spoke about a variety of things, the most interesting to me was the dung beetle! I learned so much today about the dung beetle that I never knew before. They are great pollinators, and without dung beetles to take care of animal waste, we would be swimming in feces and our atmosphere would be full of methane. Hooray for the dung beetle! In the remainder of the afternoon, we also did more herbivore photography and our 3rd teacher workshop. We started a good brainstorm with a variety of cool ideas for our individual TeachEarth projects.

The night ended with a relaxing dinner and some much needed down time. But before dinner could start, a beetle decided to join us for the meal! This not-so-little-guy fell from the ceiling right onto my shoulder! Guess he just wanted to be my dinner date 🙂