Flight of the Hummingbirds: Welcome home, San Diegans.

We're baaaack... in the States that is. But first, the conclusion to the Epic of the Birds and the Bees.


After a day of trial and tribulation, we started fresh at a new research site near Posada Tacubaya.

In our gorgeous and lush new environment, we set about to putting up our experimental rig for the hummingbirds. Our resident tree-climbing expert, Beth, lended her expertise to tying off a line to hang our feeders from.

Helen tied a few knots...

And Nick gave us a hand in reinforcing the tree. (No trees were harmed in the set-up of this project)

Meanwhile, I continued to photo-document the process.

Our test for hummingbird feeder height preference concluded that hummingbirds will prefer to visit feeders at higher places than lower ones, though in the absence of higher sources of food, beggers can't be choosers. We also discovered that a 4:1 sugar-to-water ratio is the most ideal to use for attracting hummingbirds (as well as bees). We had a great time out here with our project and look forward to the day when we become legitimate field researchers and educators, setting out on a new adventure. (Maybe even together?)

Today happens to be Mexico's bicentennial celebration of their independence, as well was the centennial of their revolution. So, I hope my fellow travel mates won't mind that I make some closing remarks on the trip in the same breath as my congratulations...

We arrived safe and sound back in San Diego at 1:00PM on Sunday. Saying goodbye to new friends was difficult, but given the nature of our shared major and interests, I'm sure we'll be seeing each other again very soon... well. We'll have to be seeing each other again soon-- there is still a research paper to be written by each student for full completion of this field course, so I look forward to seeing everyone again in the process. :-)

This trip helped us grow and learn, both as researchers and as citizens of a global community. Our tiny town of Los Alamos was a wonderful home for 8 days and we all enjoyed every minute of it. The food, the culture, and the immense ecological opportunities that we were presented with were a once-in-a-lifetime chance for college students. I'm confident that there will be at least a few of us who will continue in this manner of research later on and go on to explore new areas and new studies. Myself, I plan to go into education and spread the word on how simple it can be to reduce our negative anthropogenic impacts on the environment. And why not, if only to help preserve a place as gorgeous and diverse as the Sonoran Desert?

I think it is safe to say that this trip satisfied us beyond our expectations-- to be placed in a area where so much diversity exists is the true application of everything we have learned in our classrooms. We learned to analyze, to speculate, to express our wonderment and to appreciate what nature has to offer us. Who ever could have thought that so many creatures could live in such a harsh environment as a desert, or that a lush, green forest full of life and color would be so near the very same dry, arid conditions?

Thank you to all of the amazing people who helped make this trip possible-- Dr. Teri Markow, Dr. Steve Hubbel, Dr. Patty Gowaty, Dr. Edward Pfeiler, Dr. Maxi Polihrohanakis, Joel Schumacher, Jen and Dave MacKay of El Pedregal... and of course, the lovely staff of Posada Tacubaya.

México, tienes nuestros corazones. ¡Adiós!  (And Happy 200th Anniversary!)

-AN

Back Across the Border

Hi from UCSD,

Just wanted to put a little closure to our blog here. We are all back across the border, some have flown home to their respective homes & others are sticking around SD getting ready for the quarter. Our trip home was very quick and smooth. We were all really sad to say goodbye to beautiful Los Alamos.

I know I speak for everyone on the trip when I say this was one of the best ways to take a class. It was filled with hands on experience, real in the field work, and very interesting discussions. We hope you enjoyed all of our stories and pictures!

Last rendezvous in the pool

'Class of Fall 2010

Los Alamos, Senora, Mexico

Thanks for following us on our little adventure!

How's it going fly people?

Hola! Elizabeth, Kayla, and Gio here again with an update on our project!

Hiking to the rural site at 6:00 AM (hence the long shadows). 

After dusting and re-releasing our flies yesterday morning, we went back to our sites to re-collect. If anyone was skeptical about the dusting technique, you can see that the recaptured flies did really glow underneath the black light!

Urban (Green) Recapture under the microscope.

We stayed up late into the night collecting flies from both sites. We were visited by some of the same critters that visited the moth group, so that kept our energy up as we aspirated and sorted our samples.

Kayla with the frog (he was there three nights in row!).

After having nightmares about losing fly samples, Kayla woke up at 5:23 AM to get back to work this morning, Gio and Elizabeth woke up at 6:00 AM--guess Kayla was just too eager to get back to her fly-killing ways. When we made it to the site, there were so many flies there! We were sucking them up like crazy.

Elizabeth sorting one of our samples.

The grand total for our recapture was 2,548 flies... And we identified and sexed them all! It took us all day (we didn't even take a siesta!)--needless to say my brain is mush, but alas! We must analyze! We will let you know how the sex ratios turn out!
-Kayla, Gio, and Elizabeth

So many critters!

After a disappointing, mothless night, we came back to the same site armed with a blacklight. And we definitely got what we wanted:

As you can see, we had our work cut out for us. There were swarms of moths! It was such an exciting find after having so much trouble with our setup. There were too many moths to count!

Before this trip, all moths looked the same to me, so I was skeptical when starting this diversity project. But when you look a little closer, it's amazing how many species you can find at one little light bulb, even amongst species that look similar. We cataloged 65 species so far, but it's probably a huge underestimate considering the huge variety we found at the blacklight that we couldn't even count. It blew my mind. I will never question the power of insects again!

We also found a lot of other critters that were just as cool as the moths: 

I wonder why they glow like that?

This gecko wasn't very happy when I caught him off the wall (good thing they have little teeth).

This praying mantis came out of no where and landed on Elizabeth's laptop! Clearly he took advantage of our blacklight.

This froggie was soo cool!

And friendly too!

Finally, we found this tarantula hiding under a rock (I'll let him stay under there).

Hopefully we have more awesome nights like this!

Liz, Christine, and Ellen

The Wonderful World of Arthropods

Arthropod diversity in the state of Sonora is endless.  Our task is to sample the diversity of arthropods found in patches of decaying fruit.  Using bowls of rotting banana and tuna (no, not the fish; tuna is the local name for cactus fruit), we set about to collect as many specimen as possible.

Our multitude of traps.  Notice how the moths tend to prefer banana over tuna.

Look at all those moths!

Over the course of two days, we have been able to compare banana vs. tuna diversity, night vs. daytime diversity, and diversity in human-disturbed areas vs. non-human disturbed areas.  So far, we have been able to report 38 different species (mostly beetles and moths)! 

Emmanuel & Shannon counting and identifying their catches.  What could be better than hands-on learning like this in such a  beautiful place as Alamos during a rainstorm?!?

Vanessa is having a blast collecting those arthropods.

Soon we will run analysis on our collected data, which will hopefully reveal trends in diversity based on the different variables we tested.  Yay for biodiversity!  Hasta luego - Emmanuel, Shannon, & Vanessa

Moth Encounters at the Light

Christine, Liz and Ellen are studying the diversity of moths in Alamos. The first night we sampled at a white light in the courtyard and this is one of the moths we saw along with 29 other different species. It was fascinating to see so much diversity in just an hour.

This is Liz on the second night waiting for our moths to come greet us. We set the lights 30 minutes prior to recording moth diversity and then sat and waited patiently.

Unfortunately, as science sometimes goes, we didn't see as many moths as we had expected at that site. We did however come across some cool little critters such as this little frog and the katydid below.

Day 4 cntd: Drosophila Group

Hola! Elizabeth, Kayla, and Gio here!



Our project involves examining the sex ratios of the Drosophila (fruit fly) species found here in Alamos. We were expecting the majority of our flies to be of the D. arizonae and D. melanogaster species. But SURPRISE! A large portion of our sample from the rural area was an invasive species of Drosophila-Zaprionus indianus. You never know where science will take you!

Top: Zaprionus indianus, Middle: D. melanogaster, Bottom: D. arizonae

We caught all of our flies with aspirators-some of us are better at it than others, but in total we had about 1,000 flies! If you don't know what aspirating is, we suck the flies up through tubes and then blow them back out into vials. It's pretty fun, but definitely takes some practice. After we had our flies, we dusted them with neon dust so that when we release them and recapture new sample populations we can see which ones we already captured. It's pretty cool, because they will clean themselves off so that you can't see the dust anymore unless you look at them underneath a black light.

That's all for now! We will let you know how our project turns out, and maybe get a picture of what the flies look like under the black light! In the meantime we will be hanging out in Mexico, doing science and having fun!

Elizabeth, Kayla, and Gio.

Day 4, 9/7/10

My group's day began early Tuesday morning - awaking before the sun with hopes to dodge its rays throughout our day. We left the Posada Tacuyaba at 5AM for the hour-and-a-half journey southwest towards the Pacific slope of the Sonoran Desert. Our project involves examining the rib count variation within and between three different species of columnar cacti present in the Sonoran Desert. These species include:

Organ Pipe (Stenocereus thurberi)

Etcho (Pachycereus pectin-aboriginum)

Senita (Lophocereus schottii) with another Organ pipe in the background

We spent the morning recording the rib count of the above species. We also noted the cactus height and number of arms per cactus in order to examine any possible relationships between these variables and rib count.

Anthony jotting down field notes.

Data collection did not come easy, however, as we all came away with our fair share of unwanted souvenirs (read: cactus spines!).

 

One of the many cactus spines found stuck in our clothing.

Don’t get me wrong, though. Getting tickled by cacti was a small price to pay considering the sheer beauty of the desert. The area was truly a visual playground – towering cacti of various species, cracked dirt paths, curious cows peeking through the vegetation (as well as some bones of some not-so-lucky cows). Check out the pics below!

Organ pipe cactus can grow up to 8 meters high.

  

We saw huge piles of shells scattered across the desert. This segment of the Sonoran Desert is near the ocean, so locals commonly dump the shells after consuming the meat within them.

Another species of cactus found in the Sonoran Desert: Sina (Stenocereus alamosensis)

Day 3: The (Humming)birds and the Bees

My group has been observing the feeding habits of hummingbirds in the area. Early this morning we set up an experiment with 5 feeders containing 3 different concentrations of sugar water. From this set up, we were expecting to be able to synthesize a testable hypothesis based on what we saw.  After about an hour and a half of observations on which feeders were visited the most often, we went back to the Posada Tacubaya for an afternoon to re-cooperate and brainstorm potential hypothesis. The perk to being an ecologist—you can brainstorm and discuss your work anywhere, anytime… even in the pool.

Refreshed and ready with hypothesis and an awesome experimental design, we returned to our observation site, ready to put things into motion. Much to our dismay, one of the hummingbird feeders had become infested with very large, very eager bees. Carefully, we removed the surrounding feeders and dejectedly stared at the infested feeder. Our hopes on conducting observations on hummingbird behavior almost completely dashed, we were suddenly surprised and delighted to see three hummingbirds still daring to feed from the lone feeder. Our staring now turned to earnest gawking, we sat down and marveled over this competitive interaction between hummingbirds and bees—we noticed that the hummingbirds, though earlier this morning had been spending their energy on chasing each other away from “their” territory, were diverting 100% of their attention to trying to get past the bees, daring to take a long a drink as possible without being noticed by the busy intruders.

An afternoon of possible observation for our own experiment now no longer an option, we set down to observe the birds and the bees. It was a fascinating attempt of valor on the part of the hummingbirds and a fierce display of defense (or was it offense?) from the bees. After a while, the hummingbirds grew tired of avoiding the bees and called it a night. Taking from their lead, we turned back to tuning the fine details of our experiment. But wow, what an amazing show!

A valuable lesson in conducting research was learned today-- there is no such thing as an experiment that “didn’t work”… we must take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves to us. And that’s what the point of this trip is, I feel—learning to improvise when your “plans” unfold in unexpected but sometimes, even more intriguing ways. Tonight after dinner (and after the bees have left) we will return to continue our original experiment, but this event was definitely an important, memorable, and invaluable part of our scientific process.

Nature has her own special way of rewarding inquisitive ecologists, starving for novel discoveries. Stay hungry, my friends!

-AN.

Day 3

A moth feeding on some rotten fruit-you can see it's proboscis dipping into the bowl!

Collecting Drosophila with aspirators, only experts like us can pluck them out of the air!

Our hummingbird group; they are intrigued.