A skeletochronological analysis of Caretta caretta

Greetings from Butler Library! I probably should have written this while I was still out in the "field", but how I feel it is at least a little appropriate to be doing it from Butler. Anyway, I'll give a brief description of my activities this summer. I left NYC on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend to begin my 12 hour journey down to the small town of Beaufort, NC (pop. 4,189 according to wikipedia). I sublet a house near the Beaufort waterfront from a Duke Marine Lab student for roughly a quarter of my NYC rent. This was very exciting.

I had a couple days to settle in due to the long holiday weekend, and then my work began immediately. I reported to NOAA (which has a very nice building on its own little island across a drawbridge) early on Tuesday morning, filled out some necessary government paperwork, and was in the lab by noon. Security around there was tight, the need for me to send fingerprints before even heading down there gave me the opportunity to go to a real NYC police station.

I won't bore people with a detailed description of my lab work, but the techniques I was using

are in the field of skeletochronology. Long story short, everyone knows how trees get rings in the their trunks because tree growth is cyclic (sidenote: the study of this is called dendrochronology). These rings can be used to determine age, as well as growth rates. So, it was discovered that some animals deposit rings in their bones the same way, specifically: loggerhead sea turtles. I had a large sample size (around 120) of humeri from stranded Pacific loggerheads from the years 2003-2008 and I was processing these bones in order to get a good idea of how old each individual was, as well as how the growth rates compared to each other. A standard bone (medium sized) would take around 2 weeks to fully process to a stage where growth rings were visible and able to be counted. If you want a full description of the methods, please read my paper in the spring of 2011.

Living in Beaufort was great. Groceries were cheap, it was always sunny and hot, and I got to live right by the ocean. Blackbeard the pirate lived in Beaufort for a bit, and it used to be quite the pirate hot spot. And there were palm trees! Not to mention all the sweet tea one could want. I was lucky in that I had a few visitors come see me and I got to play the tourist on weekends after working 45 hours a week in the lab. The people in the lab next door let me go out on the boat with them a few times to catch live loggerheads for sample-taking and satellite tagging, which more than made up for all my hours in the lab.

I did have one mishap with the lab equipment that required five stitches, but I was lucky enough to know where the hospital was and the scar is very minimal. All in all, it was a very busy summer that has yielded lots and lots of data for me to process this year. As I write this, we only have about a week and a half left before classes begin. I look forward to seeing you all and hearing about your summers!

One last note: sweet tea vodka was a fun southern thing I had to try. But I think it's out of my system now.

Lewa is amazing

Hey all.

Mambo? I am doing "very fine" here in Kenya. I love it. The wildlife is completely amazing and the people are all super friendly and helpful. It seems everyone wants me to learn as much as possible and is very willing to teach me about things. So far, I have seen a long list of incredible animals, including black and white rhinos, giraffes, hyenas, wild dogs, dik diks, tons of impalas and gazelles, gerenuks, waterbucks, elephants, lions, warthogs (one of my favorite animals, seriously), hartebeests, oryx, baboons, buffaloes, plains zebras, and of course... the best of all: Grevy's zebras. I am having an incredible time here and hope to add a few more things to my list of animal sightings, including the famous "three brothers" (cheetahs) and some sitatunga that supposedly hang out by the swamp. Vervet monkeys are like pigeons here, but I like them anyway and enjoy coming out of my room to find them lounging on the porch furniture or licking the table. As I was typing this, one of them just came into the office, sat on my desk, and looked at me curiously. They are gutsy and I dig it.

I am going to try to learn as much as possible about everything while I'm here because I definitely want to come back. So far, I'm doing well with dung identification, but in every other category my skills are still lacking. I have too much to learn and too little time here!

My research is going well. I have been collecting grass samples with a ranger named Mike, who is super knowledgeable about Lewa and the wildlife here. He doesn't speak much English though so our communication is pretty funny sometimes. We get by quite well with a few words, hand gestures, and a lot of laughing. I even laughed like crazy when we were stuck in the middle of nowhere with a broken car and I stepped into a giant aardvark hole and fell over. My luck got much better after that because my leg was surprisingly fine and the car was fixed quickly and for very little money by the chillest Kenyan (mechanic) I have ever met.

I am going out to look for Grevy's foals tomorrow, which I'm excited about. I've already seen about 5 or so spread across Lewa, and I'm looking forward to seeing more.

Here are some pictures and captions, I have a lot more but I think this blog is only letting me put this many up. I will try to add some more later, but my digital camera battery is shot so it might not happen.

EB

Giraffe in the morning.

Male Grevy's standing his ground.
This is where I live! It's fancy.
A monkey I played hide-and-seek with....

A bunch of beautiful Grevy's! Check out those goofy ears. I didn't realize how impressive and dynamic those ears were until I saw them in person. They move in all different directions.

An elephant approaching the area where Mike and I were collecting grass.

Giraffe and some plains zebra. There is an awesome warthog somewhere in this group too but I don't think he made it into this picture.

A bunch of buffaloes and elephants in the background at the top of the hill - it's probably hard to see them but there was a group of about 14 walking in a line toward the water.

Elvis the subadult black rhino eating right near my porch at dawn. The story I got was that he was hand-raised because his mom was blind and kept losing him (and his sister too, who was moved because she was getting attacked by other rhinos). He is nice enough to humans now but the rangers think he is going to start charging. I've heard him referred to as a "big boy" which I think suits his personality for now.

Amazing Helpers

You might be sick of hearing about my summer green roof research, but I finished my second round of sampling and need to give a shout out. Climbing ladders and sitting in the sun all day when you are 8 months pregnant is hard and I really needed a helper/chaperone every day.

When I was in a bind a few fantastic E3B-ers helped out. Here are a few mug shots:

Nancy. This was a really long, hot day.

Mia. Came out twice and was really patient while I was freaking out about the two times it rained this summer and how it was ruining my schedule.

Laura. She graduated from the program Spring 2009 and did her thesis on green roof education.

I really appreciate the help, couldn't have done it without you three and know that you had much better things to do with your time--like your own thesis and job research.

Thanks!!!

Melanie

Vietnamese Monkeys

Hi all,

I've been a bit slow in contributing to the blog, but better late than never right? I just arrived back in Vancouver last week after 8 weeks in Vietnam, so I'll give a recap now of what I was up to during my time there. I worked on two separate projects, both focusing on the critically endangered grey-shanked douc langur: first, a survey of a wild population in an unprotected forest, and second, a behavioural study of mother-infant relationships in captivity.

I arrived in Hanoi, the largest city in northern Vietnam, in early June. There I met with Eleanor, and we flew southwards to Hue, which is in the middle of the country. We split time over the next few days between Hue and a nearby town called Tam Ky, discussing the methods of our survey with WWF researchers and training members of the Forest Protection Department. We then traveled by car, boat, and foot into Que Phuoc forest, in Quang Nam province. So began our 8 day sojourn in the forest...

While in the forest, we would wake up at dawn, eat breakfast, conduct surveys, eat dinner at dusk, and be in bed shortly after the sun went down. The rangers made a make-shift camp out of logs and tarp, under which we strung our hammocks and stored our belongings. We also brought in 5 chicken friends and 2 ducks, all of whom were unceremoniously sacrificed in the evenings for our dinners! Eleanor, who is vegetarian, had to make do with some tofu-based meat-substitutes, which I reluctantly sampled and can now confirm are not a highlight of Vietnamese cuisine.

After the survey, I parted with Eleanor and took an overnight train back up to the northern region of the country. I arrived at the Endangered Primate Rescue Center, located in Cuc Phuong National Park, early in the morning. The EPRC is home to 15 species and subspecies of Vietnamese primates, and is the only facility in the world that holds captive grey-shanked douc langurs. There I was introduced to the monkeys by Tilo Nadler, who runs the center, and three German volunteers--Denny, Sebastian, and Jonas. The center is located between the entrance gates to the park and the tiny village of Cuc Phuong. For the rest of my stay in Vietnam, I spent my mornings and early afternoons observing the grey-shanked doucs, while the late afternoons and evenings were dedicated to relaxing, eating, and exploring the adjacent areas with Jonas and Sebastian. There were also some heated and emotional World Cup soccer matches to be watched--often late at night, in front of a small outdoor TV at the park entrance gate, and relying on the back-up generator for electricity while the rest of the town slept in complete darkness.

I would be the first person in the center in the mornings, which was actually quite peaceful for the first hour or so (until the gibbons got impatient for breakfast and made a ruckus). Each morning I biked down a quiet, forest-covered lane as the sun began to rise, and was greeted by Tilo's 10 year old dog Henry at the center's gates. I then sat in front of the monkeys cages and observed them; Henry meanwhile lay down beside me and kept watch for the king cobra, which had been spotted in one of the monkey's cages shortly after I arrived at the EPRC.

I really enjoyed my time at the center, Not only did I make some new friends (human and monkey, and dog too), but I was able to simply appreciate the beauty of the animals. I guess it's biased for me to say this, but I think the douc langurs were the most intriguing animals at the center, and certainly the most visually striking. I was also a bit taken aback by the variation in their individual personalities. The unnamed one year-old female (left, above), for example, was a little trouble-maker, relentlessly pulling her mother's tail or grabbing at her face. She was a bit of a daddy's girl, and would cling to him and bury her face in his chest whenever she was startled or frightened. Two year-old Ben (left, below), meanwhile, was a bit more shy, but had a penchant for sucking his finger and gazing at me intently whenever I approached the cage. I am thankful that I had the opportunity to watch these monkeys, and the fact that they're critically endangered was not lost on me during my stay--it was, in fact, a constant thought in the back of my mind. While habitat loss is a contributing factor, I was told by several people who live in the area that poaching is the primary threat to the doucs. It's somewhat depressing to think about what's being done to them, and I found it difficult to reconcile my feelings with the counter-argument that local people need to eat. There was a group of local tourists, who, after walking through the center and learning about the monkeys, asked which ones would be available to eat at the park restaurant that evening. There were also, however, many people working hard to save Vietnam's endangered wildlife, and I was truly impressed by their sincerity and dedication.

After leaving the center, I then underwent the 48 hour, 3 stop-over trek back to North American soil. We won't go into the details of that... So I think that's it. I'll be returning to NYC in less than 2 weeks now, and can't wait to see you all again!

Nolan

Hola from Peru

Pucallpa is great! I'm currently about 2 hours away from the city, staying with a host family to be closer to the forest for the first half of my study. With me is my assistant Juan, a recently graduated biologist from the University of Arequipa. I was really lucky to find him - he's really cool and knows tons about Peruvian birds.

Our daily schedule is crazy and exhausting:

4:00am - wake up and get ready

4:30am - hike out to the forest

6:00am-12pm - mist netting

12:00-12:15 - lunch in the forest

12:15-5pm - taking down 18 nets, moving them, re-setting them up in a new location in the forest

6:30pm - arrive at home and take a "shower" in the nearby creek (once we saw a river otter!)

At first, we didn't realize how far the forest was from the house, or the fact that there are no trails, so we lost at least a week bushwacking our way into the forest, then making paths for the nets. We also had another setback when our local field assistant abandoned us without saying anything (or collecting his pay!) to go help the loggers...Loggers, one; Conservationists, zero.

Some of the stuff you see here is a bit depressing...there are fallen trees everywhere, most of them bigger in diameter than I am in height, and every day that we are in the forest we hear the constant sound of a chainsaw in the background...then every 2 hours or so, the sound of a massive tree falling. It sounds like thunder or dynamite going off.

I suffered a nasty leg injury (stepping into a giant hole then landing on a spike - I'll spare you the picture) and I have chigger bites from head to toe, but working with the birds more than makes up for it. This forest is totally understudied, if at all (I have yet to find a published study in this particular area), and everything we are finding is fascinating! We have already found two species with new distributions, and a foliage gleaner with blue eyes that is not in the field guide.

Here are some pictures...

Adorable birdie

AWESOME insect!

My sleeping arrangements (using bags of fertilizer as my dresser)

The view of the forest from my house at sunrise

Me with a motmot...awesome luck! We caught it the first day!

Señora of the house feeding the chickens

I'm glad to hear everyone else is having a great time with their research as well. Keep posting!

Alicia (Srinivas)