As a third year teacher of science at Central Middle School in Dover, Delaware,  I was greeted one morning with a flyer describing the opportunity of a lifetime.  WWNFF (The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation) was offering a trip to Costa Rica to study the biodiversity of a neotropical region. I had always wanted to visit a rain forest, and I have always loved to do field work.   Along with being an amazing trip, it promised to teach me something that would benefit my students.  This page is a testimony to all of the wonderful things I experienced thanks to WWNFF, OTS (Organization of Tropical Studies), and NSF (the National Science Foundation).

Palo Verde:      Began our first group projects today.  Choices covered wetland management, dry forest management, and plant/herbivore interactions.  I'm so familiar with management projects that I'd prefer to do the plant-herbivore interactions.  Why go  to learn something new and stick to old knowledge.  I hope that I do not wind up changing groups to even up the numbers.  I'm so excited to be doing this field work I can hardly stand it!!!      I did get to do the plant-herbivore project.  I am in a group with Jheri Womack, Millie Chamblee, Rebecca Marks and myself.  We are all truly interested in what our supervisor, Ted Stiles, has noticed about the leaf miner predation on Erythroxynol havanense.  Jheri and I will be hiking (at quite a steep gradient) a 400 ft limestone cliff five times in all to measure temperature, humidity, and sun penetration at four test sites.  I plan to be quite sore within the next week or so.  You can't possibly imagine how excited I am to be here doing this type of work.  Even though there are tarantulas, scorpions, killer bees, snakes and of course mosquitos to deal with, I am happy, full of spirit, and totally psyched.  I LOVE THIS!      At 4:25, Jheri and I headed out for our fourth hike up the mountain.  Manuel, the bus driver, was nowhere around, so we walked from camp to the OTS station then up the hill.  In the end, we were extremely glad to have chosen this study.  We saw howler monkeys, collard peccaries , deer, and other wildlife not seen by the others in the group.  The solitary hikes up the cliff may have been laborious, but they were wonderful as well.  Being alone with only one other person on a trail leading to the proverbial top of the world was/is an amazing opportunity.              If you would like to see the results of our study, click here.

La Selva:      As soon as we got here, I missed Palo Verde.  The cafeteria was full of activity and there were people all around.  I miss the solitude and even the primitive living quarters.  Even at Palo Verde we were given luxuries I had not expected.  Now that we have arrived at La Selva I realize how Americanized it is and how "luxury" can make nature seem almost artificial.  There are sidewalks through the rain forest and steps leading from here to there.  It makes it very nice when trying to watch for Fer de Lance snakes and other dangerous fauna, but in all it changes your image drastically.       It is very beautiful here once you get over the preconceptions.  There are green parrots squawking outside of my window every day.  We have a birder in our group who tabulated 105 species of birds in less than five hours, and that was only next to the cafeteria.  I have seen snakes, bats, birds, pigs, raccoon type animals, and countless bugs (I'm sorry Hal....I mean arthropods).  I have never seen this much biodiversity in one place in my life.  I have wanted to visit the rain forest all my life, and now that I have....I am not disappointed on any level.       Our project at this site focused on fruit eating bats with a scientific name of Carollia brevicauda.  We tested to see if the bats chose which fruit to eat off of a Piper auritum tree based on the position of the fruit.  We found out that the bats don't care how the fruit hangs as long as it's ripe.  If you want to read about it, click here.  If you look at the attached pictures, you'll see us setting up the bat nets to catch our specimens, and you'll see the shade house.

After we were given an orientation lecture and hike throughout the Las Cruces Biological Station and Botanical Garden it was time to begin our third and final project.  The nuclear group that I had worked with from day one decided to stay together since we understood each other's personalities and talents.  After having done two projects together already we've come to know how to work together and who is good at doing which job.  I have learned that allowing my students to choose their role in group projects will lead to a better end result. Having worked on a project where we walked to the top of the limestone cliffs five times, and watching bat behavior well into the morning hours, we again chose a project that would push our physical limits.  To study the possible affect of the Wilson Botanical Gardens on nearby tributaries, we were required to hike down a steep hill of at least  3 km and of course, what goes down must eventually climb back up.  We survived, and now sit in the computer room typing our papers while masking our aches and pains.  This has been a magnificent experience. If you'd like to read our findings, click here.