Bugs, Monkeys, Jaguars oh my! My journey to the most biodiverse place on the planet

Buttress of a ficus tree

I spent the last two weeks in the Amazon Rainforest of Ecuador at Tiputini Biodiversity Station.  The rainforest is truly an amazing place and all of the mammals, insects, and plants there are more numerous and much bigger than anything I have ever seen before! There are ants that sting and are the size of fingers, there are dragon flies the size of your palm, and leaves as tall as you. The Tiputini Biodiversity Station (TBS) is a biological field station established in Amazonian Ecuador by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, the university where I am currently studying. It protects 638 hectares (about 1500 acres) of primary lowland rainforest approximately 300km (200 mi) ESE of Quito. TBS is situated on the north bank of the Tiputini River, a southern tributary of the Napo River within the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve. Yasuni National Park was designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1989 and it lies within the claimed ancestral territory of the Huaorani indigenous people and two uncontacted indigenous tribes. The forest definitely deserves its name as everyday it would usually rain for a few hours and everything was always wet because it was so humid.  Within about two minutes of walking anywhere there would be sweat dripping down your face and once your clothes got wet they would not dry for the rest of the time.  By the end, each of us could probably say that while it was the worst we had ever smelled, it was some of the most amazing experiences we have ever had.

 

The Journey: Planes, boats, and automobiles

It is not surprising that Tiputini and certain parts of the Amazon have remained largely uncolonized because it is EXTREMELY difficult to travel there.  We left Quito around 4:30am and arrived in Tiputini around 4:30pm. From Quito my group met up and took a bus to the airport.  We then took a 40-minute plane ride from Quito to Coca the main city located in the Oriente region of Ecuador.  From Coca we took a two-hour boat ride to the oil station located along the Maxus road.  The Maxus Road was built in the 1990’s by American oil companies to access the oil in the Amazon, and unfortunately led to many negative consequences.  The road led to the increased production of oil in the region, which led to habitat loss for many species and also increased the amount of bush meat hunted, and destroyed much of the Huaorani culture. Following a security check at the oil station we continued on our way in a Ranchero (open bus) for two hours along the Maxus Road. Finally, we ended our journey with one last boat ride along the Tiputini River to arrive at our destination!

What we did there:

Macaws

The first few days we spent exploring our wonderful environment. Each morning we hiked with guides and learned the names and use of the many different plant families and animals and insects that live in Tiputini. We went to a lagoon and a tower to hear and see the dawn chorus of beautiful birds and monkeys in the Amazon. We saw tanagers, Cara Caras, manakins, parrots, macaws, capuchins, squirrel monkeys, wooly monkeys, and many others (before this trip, I am not sure I could even tell you the difference between many of those birds and monekys). 

Ceiba Beetle

Around 12 each day, we ate lunch cooked by native Huaorani or other indigenous people who worked there, and it was always delicious.  I think they were a bit surprised by the amount of hot sauce, peanut butter, and oreo cookies our group could consume! After lunch we always had a bit of a break where we swam or played volleyball or soccer with the guides and workers there.  The river is considered the white water of the Amazon, except everyone calls it café con leche because it is really much more like a light brown than white and you cannot see anything in it.  The current in the river was very strong and we would always try and see how long we could swim against it.  It was also interesting swimming after I saw the cook catching piranhas from the water right next to me and after our night float when we saw caimans swimming in the river!

Golden Mantled Tamarin Monkey

Bullet ant

During the first few afternoons we did mini research projects where we compared the tree densities between the areas of the forest that flood and the areas that do not. We also looked at the number of insects close versus farther away from the river, and mist netted birds, where we captured birds and then learned how to measure their characteristics.  Every day from 5-7pm we would have lecture where we learned about some differnt part of the Amazon. One night was about herpetology, another was about the monkeys living there, another about the cats of the Amazon, and others were also about the best conservation methods.  

How to best conserve the Amazon remains an extremely challenging question because oil drilling continues to occur in the Amazon, which is resulting in pollutants being released in the air and water, and is leading to the destruction of habitat for animals and the indigenous groups.  Raphael Correa, the current president of Ecuador, in 2007 proposed the Yasuni-ITT initiative, where he pledged not to drill oil in the Amazon in return for 3.6 billion dollars from the international community.  He waited until 2012 and when the money was still only slowly trickling in he cancelled the initiative and said he would drill. While the international community should have stepped up to fund this important initiative, it is clear that there were many legal problems with the initiative and the world was not sure Correa would hold true to his word. It is challenging to come up with a  solution where Ecuador can still make money from the oil, protect the biodiversity, and preserve the culture of the indigenous groups.

Viper

            

After lecture, it was always extremely dark because once the sun sets little light gets through the dense canopy layer of trees, and that is often when we would see snakes, frogs, and spiders (and they were often poisonous). We would then have dinner and have the rest of the night to relax, play cards, or go on night walks.

Biggest snail we have ever seen

Mist netting with the birds

 After about five days of getting to know the Amazon we began our research projects.  I worked with three other girls analyzing social spiders, which are groups of spiders that live in a single web to capture bigger and larger amounts of prey and we noticed that there were different morpho types of spiders in each web.  We walked through the forest to first find these different webs, which sometimes took upwards to two hours, and then sat and watched them to see how much prey the spiders captures and how they responded to web damage.  Sometimes the webs were fairly small and had 20 spiders and sometimes there were 200 spiders in a single web.  Overall it was a fun and interesting experience and a nice taste into what it would be like to actually do research in the Amazon.  This week we now have to write research papers and do presentations to present our findings. 

           

The last few days were spent preparing for our big field exam.  There was a list of about 200 terms we were expected to know and we needed to be able to recognize, name, and state the use of each thing on the list. Before I went to Tiputini, I likely could have told you only a few items that were on the list! It was probably the most exciting test I have taken because we took it in the forest where we walked around to different trees and places and were asked to identify what we were looking at.  Just for some examples, we learned about Phytelephas, a palm that has Tagwa seeds, which are vegetable ivory and is what many buttons are made out of, hylidae or tree frogs live in Bromeliads, and termites decompose wood and are in the order isoptera. 

Bull Horned Spider

            

The last full day we had a completely free day and a few friends and I hiked a 12km trail around the park and saw and smelled peccaries, which are basically big black pigs, turtles, pakas (big rodents), and blue morpho butterflies, just to name a few.  We also floated down the river and played an intense game of soccer with the staff.  I cannot believe two went by so quickly.  It was an amazing experience where I saw 10 different species of monkeys, trees with huge buttresses/roots, thousands of different species of birds, flowers, and plants, and learned a ton. As I was leaving the forest, I realized I could actually identify a large amount of what is in the forest.  While I was sad to leave the rainforest, I am excited about all of our upcoming exciting adventures. 

Wooly Monkey