Thursday, August 1, 2019

Thursday 8/1/19



Today we started our leaf cutter ant research.   We learned how to properly dig into a leaf cutter ant colony, find the fungus chamber and extract the fungus.  We were able to dig and extract a colony ourselves! Each lab group was able to extract a small, young colony from the rainforest floor and bring it back to research. Every group was very lucky and was able to retrieve the queen from each nest they extracted.  We had a scrumptious lunch of spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce and homemade garlic bread. The highlight of our day was the trip to Canopy Zip Lining!! We took a steep hike to the top of the course and made our way down on many different ropes. For some of us, this was our first time and we could finally check it off our bucket list. :) On the way back, we stopped at Mariposario Butterfly Conservancy. The room of butterflies was amazing and our favorite kind was the blue Morpho. At the end we stopped at a couple of local gift shops where we could buy jewelry and snacks before we came back to Finca La Anita.  We ate dinner and continued our research into the evening.

Success!  Fungus garden and queen



Ant Fungus 🙌

"Let's get this pan" team digging out their ant fungus


 Fungus garden and queen successfully extracted


Adrian explaining the mandibles of a soldier ant and how strong/sharp they are. Ouch!

Sterilizing the spoon for fungus garden extraction.


Carefully digging to find the chamber with the fungus garden.


Zip lining adventure begins!


Zip lining!


Zip lining!

Zip lining!


Zip lining!


Zip lining!



Zip lining!





Zip lining!


Entrance to the Mariposario


Dr. Pinto giving a tour of the Mariposario


Blue Morpho

Blue Morpho Butterfly enjoying a snack






Checking our experiments from yesterday.




Completing bacterial counts.

Nutrient Agar plates with our bacterial samples.


Checking the growth on our bacterial plates.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for the blog posts and the wonderful lifelong learning opportunities. We miss ya and love you lots, Jamie!! -Dad & Mom

    ReplyDelete
  2. Loving the blog posts. So good to see that everyone is having a wonderful time and digging (ha!) into the ant research! We really enjoyed seeing the baby pineapples and beautiful butterflies. I hope zip-lining was fun for all of you. We love you and miss you, Julia!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm so happy to see that you're having a fantastic time, Ava! Dad says the zip lining looked really fun. You seem to be learning a lot and I'm very excited to hear and learn about these leaf cutter ants. This experience is something you will never forget about, and I'm so proud that you are learning and growing from it! Be good, have fun, and be safe!

    ReplyDelete
  4. We are really enjoying the updates and the pictures are awesome! We are so intrigued by the ant colony, love the butterflies, zip lining is wow, and all of the fresh food sounds delightful. Thank you for sharing all of these experiences with us. A Costa Rica vacation is officially on our bucket list. Love you Ava! Mom & Dad Wildenborg

    ReplyDelete
  5. Does the fungus have an odor or is it like a mushroom growing in the forest? This is so cool! Thanks for sharing your adventures with us. Costa Rica is the best place to go zip lining!

    ReplyDelete