Introduction to the Island Ecology 2015 Field Course: Part of the Ecology of Bird Loss (EBL) Project

12.28.2014

Tonight was the first night that the students of the Island Ecology Course (IEC) finally met their PI’s, TA’s, and each other at the Spicy Thai Noodle restaurant for dinner and introductions. As first impressions went, it was great! We have a really diverse group and hopefully that bodes well for everyone. Because the dining room we sat in was arranged in a long table and we chose where to sit, naturally everyone was sitting near the people they knew or people from the same school, effectively segregating us, but I’m excited to see what groups will be sitting together at the end of this journey!

12.29.2014

Today marked the start of the Island Ecology 2015 Field Course. This course, as the blog title indicates, is a part of the Ecology of Bird Loss project which is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Although this is a walk on the wild side for me as a marine bio person, as soon as I saw the flyer for the course posted at The University of Guam science building I thought it would be a great quick and easy opportunity to develop my terrestrial ecology skills, which were nearly nonexistent before this course began. Although I have some experience with undergraduate research summer fellowships and internships, my reasoning for taking the course other than to develop skills is at the very least, to reassure myself that I am a marine bio person. After all, it is a big step to make without anything confirming that I want to do it other than the fact that I’ve loved the ocean and everything in it since I was a child. This was my way to do that.

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As field ecology courses go, IEC was created to mimic, in part, the summer field ecology course called the Advanced Tropical Ecology Course offered by the Organization of Tropical Studies (OTS) (through Duke University) in Costa Rica, which one of our main PI’s, Dr. Haldre Rogers, had been a part of in the past and which our other PI, Dr. Ross Miller, was a part of in 2014 and continues to be a part of.

All background aside, we began another short introduction the course syllabus and schedule. The goals of the course (simplified) are

1) to learn about the biodiversity of the native karst limestone forest of the Marianas and its threats,

2) give students experience with the scientific method all the way from start to finish

3) explore and advise students on their educational and career options

4) give the students an informal network of peers, advisers, and mentors and

5) conduct new research

This seems pretty attainable. With hard work, these goals are definitely attainable.

At the end of today my brain was hurting from all the information it had to process. Presentations on the geology of the Marianas, introduction to bugs and creepy crawly things, and the ecology of bird loss project as well as a field trip to the limestone forest grid (a study site for one of the projects involving seedling studies and gaps in the forest canopy) all filled our first day completely. My head hurts. This is a good sign.

12.30.2014

Today marked day 2 of the IEC. The morning was filled with more talk of potential projects. I had prepared a few questions initially after I applied for the course, in case I needed to have an idea or two. Some of my questions were almost laughably impossible to do in the space of a few weeks, but there were a few hopefuls. I kept in mind that Guam has been lacking birds for 28 years (and counting), but the list I came up with was a good start.

• Would freshwater runoff from karst forests with birds be different from freshwater runoff from karst forests with no birds? Or more specifically, would lacking birds upset the balance of the ecosystem down to affecting soil and runoff? Or would the forest make up for it in some way? (Thinking along the lines of comparing Lau Lau Bay and Pago Bay watersheds)
• Would insect abundances in karst forests where birds are and have been absent for the most part be lower or different from insect abundances in karst forests where birds are present?
• Would the lack of birds or predation from brown tree snake affect anything in related to the ocean? Mangrove forests at least? (the mermaid in me was asking this)
• Are bird-pollinated flowers on Guam responding to the lack of birds? Are they evolving at all in comparison to those same species on Saipan?
• Are lizards and/or skinks on Saipan behaving the same way in response to a bird stressor as the lizards/skinks of Guam?

Yes. I have been known to ask many questions. Also, trying to find a solid link between the land and sea is hard.

After writing down our ideas for our potential projects and ranking them in order of how much we wanted to do them, we were put into the groups we would be in for the rest of the course. I was paired with an acquaintance from my highschool days (perks of being from Saipan but going to college on Guam!) and we happily wrote out our potential project methods and proposals.

2015 Island Ecology Field Course

01.01.2015

Now that we know what to do for our methods and we have a “big picture” view of what our PI’s expect, my groupmate and I have a new spring in our step. The past few days have felt like an information overload because of all the background we’ve had to cover to bring everyone up to speed. It feels nice to have a day to ourselves, even if it’s only until 3:30 p.m., when we have to return back from the field for presentations on writing a scientific paper and data analysis. Because it’s New Year’s Day and we had a late start at 10 a.m., we wanted to first travel to the sites that we didn’t know so that we could get the difficult sites out of the way. Dr. Rogers showed us on google maps how to  recognize the site we were looking for–a ridge in Southern Saipan where native karst limestone forest would most likely be. The ridge was near Naftan Point, which is also near Obyan Beach and a quarry, so it wouldn’t be too difficult.  It turns out it was actually fun trying to locate.

Once we got to the site after a bumpy ride that felt like we just went off-roading, we found a safe spot to park off the road and went in about 50 m. We recognized the limestone cliffs of the ridge immediately, and followed it to a nice spot further into the forest, where we laid our transect lines down. Because we had prepped our materials, we found that we had cut our time from 1 hour+ for surveying to a mere 45 minutes. Awesome!

After doing bug sweeps and foliage beats galore, we ended up with some nice samples of critters. The other group who carpooled with us also caught a few skinks for their behavioral experiment. Even more awesome!

The next site we hoped to find was not as easy to get to. In trying to find the Laderan Tånke’ trail for surveying, we instead wound up at the Last Command Post monument in Marpi, Northern Saipan. Apparently we went too far. We still found limestone forest though! Since it was getting a bit dark we surveyed a spot right above the monument around 50 m up and found more spiders than we knew what to do with! I think I wouldn’t have freaked out so much if I had something to protect my hand from touching the bugs while trying to empty them into our sample bags. Next time we’ll try using a glove on one hand for protection perhaps. Once we were finished, we met up with the other group and made our way to the lab for more presentations.

Side note: because my new year’s resolution was to learn a new skill to add to my CV, I was so glad that I took a course in something other than my normal marine biology field. I still have so many skills to learn for my project!

2015 Island Ecology Field Course

12.31.2014

Oh. My. God.

Today was not my day. Do you remember how hard it was for you to ride a bike? I’m sure many people who know how to ride one scoff, but rewind back to the day and think. Remember how apprehensive/scared/exhilarated you were as soon as you wobbled out of your driveway (maybe with your dad or someone holding the back of your seat guiding you)?

Now think of something else. Do you know how to use Microsoft excel? Can you recall how hard it was the first few days for you to learn what all those tabs and options and settings meant? Making a simple bar graph suddenly became 10x harder. Should I make my title centered and overlayed above my graph? Should I rotate my axis titles or leave them be? Or even add them at all?

That first moment or day seemed like the worst huh? That was my day today.

I came into the IEFC having experience in research, however it’s been a good long while since I’ve had a real research experience. I was rusty today, and it showed. I forgot how steep the learning curve of the beginning stages of a research project can be. I was reminded today, in the gentlest way possible.

Now on to my actual day, I had my heart set on a certain method without really thinking it through and my groupmate and I went all over the island of Saipan trying to find materials, asking the poor guys at Ace Hardware to do odd things for us, and basically making a mess out of a half-formed project. Note to self: look before you leap, or at least explore every aspect of your potential methods with your PI before going on a spending spree. We ended up with a bunch of odds and ends–fishing net, 111 feet of thin rope, and some wooden dowels cut into 1 and 2-foot stakes.

Because we submitted our proposals the previous night they were corrected with comments and submitted to us in the morning. I love seeing red all over my project proposal. Just kidding.

Needless to say, when we were grilled about our methods I had had enough about hearing about the project and wanted some time alone to think. I was so frustrated. After coming back from my lunch to the classroom where we were for the day my brain felt fried. I was unaccustomed to being given the freedom to decide on the project, and yet when I do decide it’s criticized until I nearly lose hope that it could even be a viable project. Although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, the lazy person in me was screaming trying to find the easy way out, an easy project that would both please my PI’s and be low-cost as well as low-energy. If only science were that easy!

I didn’t give up hope. When I went into the classroom again I gave it another shot, and Dr. Haldre calmly walked us through the “big picture” for what we were trying to test. After mulling it over for a few minutes my groupmate and I began to understand where she was going and what she expected, and once that epiphany came we were so relieved we nearly melted. At my last fellowship where I conducted a research experience, I remembered doing the same thing. The frustration, initial refusal, slow understanding, then the epiphany moment. That aha! moment where you can actually see where your research is leading and its implications is a beautiful thing. We went out in the field today to test our new methods and see what we could find.

I almost forgot it was New Year’s Eve.