Expect the Unexpected

By Rowan Etzel

Sometimes, scientific work doesn’t always go quite the way you expect. Last week, we were getting ready to go into the field for the morning to look for lizards as part of a research project led by visiting faculty members. We packed our backpacks and readied our measuring equipment, anticipating to spend hours in the forest. Our plan was to collect data to test for a plastic response of anoles to changes in habitat – to capture these lizards in both secondary forest and old growth forest, and measure their bodies for differences in morphological features across the change in habitat. We were going to collect the anoles’ body measurements, as well as take data on the habitats in which we found the lizards. A good plan, but tropical storm Nate got in our way.

            A few minutes after hiking into the forest, it started pouring rain, and we were drenched within minutes. We scoured the undergrowth and ground for lizards, but didn’t find a single anole in over an hour. Turns out, the lizards were smarter than we were, and decided to hide away and stay dry. We then made the executive decision to change our project, switching our focus from forest anoles to instead study aquatic anoles, Norops aquaticus, that live in and around water and might be less fazed by the drenched conditions. We still needed to take morphological measurements and habitat data, only now we would compare our data to previous data collected by our faculty leader, Michelle, on a different species of aquatic anole in northeastern Costa Rica. Our new plan was to compare the two species’ morphologies and habitats for signs of convergent evolution, which occurs when two species evolve similar traits in response to living in similar habitats.

           We hiked up and down the slippery, muddy slopes of Quebrada Culebra, a small stream that intersects the trail several times, bubbling up and over lots of large rocks. Half of us went upstream and the other half down, all the while it continued to pour cats and dogs on us. We looked all over the streambanks, checking for anoles on rocks, roots, and tree trunks, and among the leaf litter on the banks. It took a while, but we found them. While finding them was challenging, catching them was just as difficult. They move fast, and will jump into the flowing water to escape capture. And the terrain was less than simple to navigate, with lots of slippery rocks and rushing water impeding us. When we started out, the stream was still at a somewhat normal height, but by the time we started to head back it had turned into a raging torrent of brown floodwater. All of us had fallen or almost fallen while struggling through the stream, and we were covered in water and dirt. There was nothing as satisfying as jumping over a rock into a deep hole of water after a lizard, to surface with it in your hands. The whole experience sounds miserable, but in actuality, it was purely enjoyable. I was late to lunch and my body was covered in bruises and scratches, but my dirt-covered face was stretched into a wide grin.

            Part of the joy of science lies in rolling with the punches and being willing to adapt to whatever unexpected situation comes up along the way. It’s rare that things will go precisely as planned, and that’s part of what makes things fun. Keeping an open mind and being prepared to switch tactics at any point is something that has served me well, both in scientific pursuits and in life in general. If I had known I would spend the morning falling up and down a rainy, roaring stream after lizards, I don’t know how excited I would have been – but it the most fun I’ve had in ages.