May 13

Last Monday was my first night of netting bats. We went to a site near a big hollow tree that was being used as a roost for many species, including Trachops, the ones we work with. However, this site was not on a trail. Instead, we canoed across the bay and trekked through the jungle. The is a German guy here who used to be a biologist who worked a lot on the island, however, he has switched to photography, and is working on an article on bat biodiversity for National Geographic. He’s Christian Ziegler, if you’ve heard of him…. He has a book out called The Magic Web. The article is trying to address how there can be 74 species of bat on this one tiny island! Christian set up a camera track at the base (entrance) of this roost tree to get motion activated photos of bats leaving in the evening. We set up our nets just downstream to this. The trouble was that this little jungle stream in the beginning of the rainy season was unbelievably slippery! The nets we use are 18 feet long, and perhaps 7 or 8 feet high (same ones used for birds), and we had three of them. Quite a challenge! Once we had them set, we played a recording of the Túngara frog breeding chorus at the base of the net. Trachops are known to listen for this call, in fact they have a much lower hearing range than do most bats, precisely so that they can find these frogs. Hence one of their common names: the frog eating bat. The other common name is the fringe-lipped bat, because they have incredibly warty chins. The Túngara breeding chorus sounds quite like a video game! And I’ve come to know it well! Call it entrapment, call it focal netting, it usually results in Trachops in the nets. Well, after this, we sat and waited. Chiggers are a huge nuisance here, so we keep our bags on tarps, and sit on little field stools. We also tuck our pants into out socks and tape the junction shut. They still get us. And their bites are a lot like poison ivy, little oozy itchy bumps that last a long time! Luckily, unlike poison ivy, they don’t spread!

We netted from roughly 6:30 until after 9pm. Sitting in the jungle at night is quite a fun experience. There are amazing luminescent insects here, much better than the fireflies at home! We heard owls, and ever so often a bat would buzz by. Indeed, it never got really dark, because of the bright moon, and since we were near to the camera trap, the flash went of very frequently. We checked the nets every 5-10 minutes, I only managed to get one bat (probably Artibeus jamaicensis, or AJ for short, a very common fruit bat). Kate got 8, of which I got some more bat removal practice. However, none of these bats were Trachops, and therefore useless to us…. As those of you who have worked with mist nets know, it’s a very tricky and delicate procedure, whether with bats or birds! The nets are very fine, with small holes, and yet the bats/birds always get themselves very much entangles, wings heads, legs are going through many holes. You want to get them out quickly, obviously, but also without damaging the net (they are very expensive) or getting bitten! Yay rabies shots! In my brief experience so far with both, I prefer removing bats to birds. Birds’ feathers get very much entangled, and frequently their tongues also get caught in the net. However, bats are at night, so therefore the whole operation must be done with only the light of your headlamp. Also, the stressful, difficult procedure is worsened by bug flying to the light on your forehead and biting all over, and the sweat that is pouring off of you (sorry Granny!!) as is the norm when working in a tropical forest! The flies that were biting are called sand flies, though they are tiny little white flies (almost like the black flies of Maine) and are carriers of leshmaniasis, and really nasty bacteria that eats at your flesh around the bite. Christian assured us that this was only an issue if there were sloth in the area, as they are the reservoir, and the only large mammal he’d seen were peccary. Ok. Oh wait, peccary! But their nasty! Luckily, they seemed to not be interested in us that night.

After netting, we had to find our way back to the canoe…. Interesting, and definitely involved a lot of: “Is it this way??” We made it, and canoeing back was saw two sets of croc eye shine (which is orange). We finally arrived back home very dirty and tired. When I looked in a mirror, I discovered I was covered in red dots from the flies all over my face. It was like I had terrible acne! Luckily, they’d faded by the next day, and I certainly gave everyone a good chuckle for the rest of the evening, Christian in particular! ;)

So, the project involves netting like this, but only infrequently, as we can’t handle many bats at once. Rachel teaches the bats to accept fish from us directly (held up to them with little forceps). They don’t normally eat fish, but like quite happily on it. 20 years ago, when her advisor (Mike Ryan) was doing the initial work studying the relationship between this bat and the Túngara frog, he smuggled two Trachops home on the plane, feeding them some fish every so often, and they survived on fish for many months after that. My, how times have changed!!! We then do behavioral experiments with them, evaluating the flexibility of their response to prey cues, i.e. can they learn new cues. So, we hide speakers under a screen mesh hidden with leaf litter, and play novel sounds. Rachel has found that there is enormous flexibility, and that bats can learn new cues by watching other bats. It’s pretty cool, and suggests how this behavior of listening for frogs could have evolved in the first place. Trials are not every night however, so most night we just have to go feed them 3-4 times (the most labor intensive animals I’ve ever cared for!!).

The next day, after netting, and thankfully after my “acne” had faded, we set off for Panamá City. We gave two of the guardabosques (park rangers) rides to the city, and I was able to practice my Spanish with them. Our first stop upon arriving was the fruit juice shop, they had a board listing every tropical fruit imaginable, at least I think so since I don’t know all the Spanish names. But, I do know maracuya is passion fruit, and as that is the greatest flavor in the world, I was all set! We also visited an artisan market, where you could buy Tegua nut carvings, Panamá hats, Kuna fabrics (very colorful, stylistic animals, really quite nice), and other kitschy stuff. I really hate markets like this were everyone wants you to buy their junk. Perhaps this was a more authentic one than usual, but my time in Fiji seems to have turned me off them forever!

We then visited Tupper, the STRI headquarters in the city, and got me registered. I am now official! We then headed to La Avenida Central, a very Latin American type pedestrian mall, complete with many discount shops (and I mean discount! I got a cute skirt for $3, and there were lots of jeans, etc., for the same!), and just about everything sold on the street, from fruit, to lottery tickets, to pedicures. It was great, we were super gringa, but it was awesome all the same. We had super cheap lunch of corvina (sea bass) sandwhiches, and then had to rush ourselves back to Tupper to meet up with other BCI folks. These other folks included some of the “monkey girls”: one woman who’s working on a PhD on Howler Monkeys, and her four assistants. The assistants head out into the field (to the 50 hectare plot, for those of you familiar with BCI) every day, where they radio track the collared monkeys in the troop, and then spend the rest of the day recording their behaviors and getting pooped on. Lots of hard work! Anyways, there are seminar’s every Tuesday at Tupper, which I was interested in being smart and going to, but the monkey girls were dead set on going to see Mission Impossible 3 (who can blame them?! They’ve been living on the island for four months!). So, we headed over to just about the fanciest mall I’ve ever seen (also the most outrageously air-conditioned, around here you have to bring along a sweatshirt for any time spent indoors!), to see the movie, which was awesome! We then went to a Lebanese restaurant for dinner, which was really good. It’s a little too bad that my first time in Panamá City was spent watching American movies and eating Lebanese food, but then again the taxi rides were a great sightseeing tour (including a naked man on a bench on the road that passes down the beach (this is the Pacific side). Yuck!). Panamá City is quite developed, with lots of high rises (seem to be mostly apartments). We drove back to the island in the STRI truck, with three people riding in the bed of the truck. It turns out we have diplomatic immunity when in the STRI vehicles! Something to do with tax avoidance issues when STRI was established. Some of the top STRI employees have diplomat passports. Amazing, huh?!

Social life on the island is fun, and also bizarre! It really is summer camp for biology nerds; everyone seems to work hard, either in the field, or on computers, during the day, with social breaks at meal times. Evenings, for everyone but the bat folks, involve sitting on the balcony drinking beer (just 75 cents) or watching TV shows on DVD that people have brought or stolen from the internet. Tonight is Lost, but I think I spend too much time by myself in the forest at night to watch Lost!! Gray’s Anatomy tomorrow will be better!

Yesterday I went for a hike since I hadn’t gotten into the forest much, yet. Most of the trails go along the ridges of the peninsulas of the island, with several criss-crossing in the middle. I went down the closest trail that would take me to the end of a peninsula: Fairchild (all trails are named for important people in BCI’s history). It was really pretty and really nice. A little too hot for good birds, but I did see a red-capped manakin, an antibird, and some tanager, I think, that I have not yet ID’d with a bright red back and a red lower mandible. I also upset a troop of Howler’s who tried to pee on me. I saw a Capuchin as well,\ but none of the other (more interesting) mammals. The end of this trail is right on the shipping lane, we see the ships going by from the cafeteria, but as we are in a bay, they are quite far away. Here they pass right by the this peninsula, and I arrived just in time for an enormous one!

After that “strenuous” trip out, I figured I could take it easy for the evening, leisurely feed Gorilla, the only Trachops we have here on the island, and watch some TV with the monkey girls. However, as I came back from dinner, and very damp and dirty Sergio (a Columbian who also studies bats, and who has tireless enthusiasm, and a great knowledge of natural history and scientific names) shouting that he had several bats in a net just up Donato trail. Well, I grabbed my headlamp, boots, tucked my pants into my socks, fed Gorilla a huge fish, and headed off there. He and Christian were working on setting up a shoot for the National Geographic article that showed bat researchers at work. I plunged off into the dark woods all by myself… It’s really reassuring how safe BCI is! The trails are easy to follow, no poisonous snakes on the island, no big carnivores (though lots of ocelots). When I arrived, there was a mist net full of 15 or so bats, all “AJ’s” and Vampyrodes, a fruit eating bat that’s a great example of how so many bats are given vampire names when they are no such thing! These are especially cute with white stripes down their back and faces. Although they scream and scream, and so their friends come to save them and also get trapped. Christian was taking photos of the bats in the nets and of Sergio removing them, I was quickly enlisted at a flash holder! J It was really neat getting to see what actually happens on a Nat Geo shoot! I can’t wait to see the article… We also got lots of photos of releases and close ups of the bats faces (these guys were all leaf-nosed). While we were working, a Potoo (like a frogmouth, or a nightjar) was calling at us almost constantly with his deep Bwaaaahhhh. We called back, and certainly excited or upset him, but didn’t manage to see him. The photo shoot took hours! The bats were in the nets or in bags much longer than would be desired, so I dashed back to get sugar water to revive them. Amazing how a very bad looking bat immediately starts lapping up the sugar water, and then flies happily away. I finally tore myself away to shower, for I believe the 4^th time that day!, and go to bed! Working with bats is hard! I feel so guilty sleeping past 7 here, and it is so bright and noisy and hot, but you really have to to get enough sleep!

Well, I’m getting a little carried away. Suffice to say, everything is great!!! Even around the lab clearing we see great wildlife: agouti everywhere, morpho butterflies, spectacled owls, a pair of kiskadees constantly catching bugs, a great big huge iguana who likes the cleared grass, and a couple big crocodiles in the water, which are the reason we are not allowed to swim… It is bueníssimo!