Biography
    My name is Nancy Allen. I am part of a team from The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. I am a geologist by degree (BS and MS) and have been an Earth Science teacher in North Carolina. My present position with NCSSM is Professional Development Specialist with the NOW Project. I live in Knightdale, NC. My husband is Perry Allen and our two daughters are Amy, 13, and Lindsay, 9. We have two Javanese cats, Belle and Vanilla.
I appreciate the following organizations that made this trip possible for me:

• WWNFF
• OTS
• NSF

    We were at La Selva from July 17 to July 22, 1999. The biodiversity there was astounding. At La Selva, I saw 4 species of bats, two howling monkeys, a sloth, an iguana, blue morph butterflies, leaf cutter ants, katydids, huge termite nests, centipedes, millipedes, bromeliads, heliconias, many varietties of ginger plants, butressed trees that a person could live in, beautiful fungi too numerous to name, and many others. La Selva is truly a gem that should be preserved.
    At La Selva, I worked on a bat project. The first morning was spent looking for bat tents. This is not such an easy task, so our group decided to go out at night to net bats. On two separate nets, we set up three mist nests in two different areas of the forest, near successional plots and secondary forest. We went back after dark and observed "our catch". Over the course of 2 nights we netted twenty bats. Two of these were vampire bats (Desmodus rotudus), and fifteen frugavores (3 Cariolla castanea and 5 Cariolla brevicauda), and 3 others (Artibius watsoni and Artibius tolteca . We collected data such as mass, length of forearms and hind legs, gender, and collected feces and parasites from the organisms. It was a new process for me as I am not a biologist, but I had a great time except for the swarms of mosquitos around our faces. Here is one of the bats we netted:

    While at La Selva, we visited a banana plantation, local schools and took an ariel tram ride over the canopy. What an experience!

Las Cruces

    After La Selva, we took a long bus ride to the southwestern part of Costa Rica to the OTS station at the Wilson Botanical Gardens. What a difference between here and La Selva. Las Cruces was a beautiful garden with hundreds of imported species of tropical plants. The OTS station director presented a lecture on plants and their medicinal benefits. Our project at Las Cruces dealt with what attracts pollinators - color or odor. From our brief study, we concluded that it was both - depending on the species of the pollinator. From my own perspective, now I am fairly sure why most flowers are shades of red.

Passion Flower from Wilson Botanical Garden

Palo Verde

    Palo Verde is by far my favorite of the three stations. There is something about the steep limestone hills overlooking the very flat wetlands in between. The geologic events in the past few million years are responsible for the the grandeur of the landscape. On the biological side of things, I observed a troop of howler monkeys one morning and probably used up an entire roll of film - they came to eat off of a tree not 20 feet away from my friends and me. They didnot seem to be afraid - rather they were putting on a show for us. Later in the day, we went out to the rice fields to start our project and observed 12 roseate spoonbills, 20 woodstorks and 2 jabirus. We also went on a boat ride and saw some monstrous crocodiles. Awesome!!
    At Palo Verde, my fabulous group did a project on the differences in biodiversity between the rice fields and Quebrada Mula, a local stream. We found some rather interesting things in Quebrada Mula - 1" black leaches!!!
And to think, I got in the water to take the sample. Here are Kathy and me processing our samples:

Other great photos of my trip:
Volcano Poas
Shampoo Ginger from Las Cruces

If you would like to contact me about my trip to Costa Rica, please email me.
 
 

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The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
CN 5281, Princeton NJ 08543-5281 - Tel:(609)452-7007 - Fax:(609)452-0066
Technical contact: lpt@woodrow.org