Mangroves = Yes, Snakes = No

I'll begin this blog post with a few photos that really should have been in my last blog post. Unfortunately it appeared the day after I posted the last blog post, but whatever.

Yes. That is a boa constrictor.

I happened upon this lovely specimen because I almost sat down right next to its hidey hole. If you know me at all, snakes are not my jam. Maybe I watched one too many nature documentaries where the snake eats some cute fluffy mammal as a child, but whatever. I just find them to be creepy. Later, I found out that my professor went out with one of the workers here at the station and caught it. We had "Show-And-Tell" that night where I spent most of my time on top of a chair.

I did get over my sissiness about snakes for about 2 seconds to pet it. But that was enough adventure for me for the rest of the night. But now every time someone finds a snake, my professor gets really excited and then tries to shove it in my unwilling face. I acknowledge that snakes are cool organisms, but from a healthy distance.

There weren't too many other surprises in the field, so my independent research project went fairly smoothly. The independent project proved to be a pretty fun experience (until the presentation and the paper for it were due on the same day). In the end, we discovered that the presence of a predator had no effect on the visitation of the pollinators or insects, but we did find that the spiders were taking as many bee species as we saw visiting. So, our data suggest that a predator avoidance strategy for insects isn't present in this system concerning Peucetia viridans and Ruellia inundata, but that the presence of P. viridans may be affecting pollinator populations. Nerdiness aside, I did actually have a lot of fun working on this project and it definitely gave me some new ideas for my own research back home.

Today was our first day in a week in which we haven't been working on our independent projects. It actually was a blast. We hopped on a river boat and were taken on a tour of the Tempisque River, which feeds a large portion of the marshland here. The sights from the river boat were beautiful, and it was nice to simply spend some time relaxing on the river.

View from the river.

Look how safe I was on the boat, ma!

The boat eventually took us to a mangrove forest which was also a super cool experience (albeit super muddy). Costa Rica only has six species of mangroves, and we saw four today. Mangroves are also just really interesting plants in general considering their adaptations for salt water. One of the really cool things that we found out today is that mangroves actually secrete salt from their leaves where it later crystalizes (so if you lick the leaves, you can taste the salt on them). And they also have a wide array of root adaptations, as evidenced in the picture below:

In addition, mangroves host a lot of diverse species from fish to mammals. One of my favorite sights today was the wide range of crabs that I was able to see. They were all pretty cute.

Aren't you just an adorable little detritivore?

The other almost success of the day was that I was able to tromp around in deep mud all day and managed not to fall on my face. Key word is almost. Instead, I fell on my butt when I was attempting to trudge down a very slick slope of mud to go back to the boat. It was labeled as one of my more graceful falls by the group, but my friend put it best: "You were doing so well today. And then that happened." I may have been covered in mud, but I still had a lot of fun today and learned a lot. And, on the way back to Palo Verde we managed to see at least five crocodiles which was awesome.

Crikey!

The next few days will host a few free days as well as a midterm. I'm sure another snake will pop out at me somewhere, so I'll update about that terror sometime soon.