By Karen Weinstock
At La Selva, we have been working
on our independent projects. Laura and I decided to work together because we
both agreed that we want to avoid circumstances that would expose us to snakes
and bullet ants. Therefore, we decided to work with aquatic communities. Since
the river is dangerous and incredibly difficult to work with, we chose
phytotelmata aquatic communities. Phytotelmata are water communities enclosed
by plants, such as pitcher plants or tree holes, and are very common in
rainforests. We decided to talk to Carlos, the resident aquatic invertebrate
expert, who was excited about the possibility of us working with heliconia
plants that have phytotelmata. From there, Laura and I came up with a question.
The question needed to be feasible to do in 5 days and have ecological
significance, so we decided to see how invertebrate communities in heliconias
respond to increased light due to edge effects. The question seemed simple
enough, but along the way we realized we were very wrong.
First, we needed a heliconia species
that existed inside the forest and on the edge of the forest in high light.
Unfortunately, heliconias are very particular about their habitats and there
would not be a species that grows inside the forest and in open fields. Thus,
Laura and I decided to talk to Orlando, the resident plant expert. He took us
through the list of heliconia species present at La Selva, and introduced us to
Heliconia imbricata, which grows
inside the forest and on trail edges. Ok,
we thought, we’ll change the question
to inside the forest and on trail edges. In practice, however, it was not
that easy. Many heliconias weren’t in bloom, and the ones we found were left
over from last season, so they were few and far between. Besides, finding them
deep in the forest off trail edges was trickier than we originally anticipated.
In fact, we didn’t find any off trail at all. We changed the question once more:
how do aquatic communities in heliconias change along a light gradient? That
way, we could sample from all of the imbricatas that we foundand not worry
about finding enough in two distinct conditions.
With this figured out, we collected
our samples and took them back to the lab. As we started counting the
microinvertebrates, we came upon a problem of macro magnitude. In approximately
10 mL of water collected from a heliconia, we were looking at thousands of
microscopic organisms swimming around, and as you increase the magnification,
more and more micro-creatures appear. We realized counting these creatures
would be impossible, so we decided to count from 1 mL. 1 mL was also too much
to observe at once, so we counted microinvertebrates in 20 sets of 50
microliters, and only what we could see with a maximum of 4x zoom. We found 4
differently shaped creatures, which we didn’t know how to identify, so we
nick-named them until we could ask Carlos for help with identification.
In the end, we were able to gather all of our data and put it together in a spreadsheet. More problems arose with statistical analysis, but we managed to figure those out as well. I learned from this 5 day research project that things never go as planned, and nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Creativity and problem solving are incredibly important in science, and not every roadblock signifies the end of the journey. Without creativity and persistence, we would have never found solutions to our unforeseeable problems. Although, next time, I will be sure to run a pilot for my project!
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