Friday, August 2

We started our day with one of our favorite breakfasts yet. Pancakes with cacao nibs straight from the farm! Today was a big science day for each lab team. In our first session, we did an experiment to determine where in the leaf cutter ant colony the most escovopsis (toxic fungus to leaf cutters) was present. We used potato dextrose agar to grow the fungus so we could answer this experimental question. Next, we began to brainstorm our main research topics for the trip! As individuals, we came up with a variety of questions that could apply to the scientific method that are attainable at Finca La Anita with our time constraints. Then as a group, we decided on our favorite topic to research and began designing our experiments. We researched topics about what types of leaves the leaf cutter ants prefer to consume, behaviors with foreign larvae, and pH levels in their environment. Putting it all together, we made proposal presentations in each group that we will follow to produce results. Dr. Pinto and our peers gave us some helpful feedback during each presentation. Hopefully we will make some cool discoveries!🐜

Outline of our tasks for the day

Group Purple Rain working on their experiment.

Extracting fungus for the agar dishes.

Group Pan working on their experiment.

Jamie working with the petri plates.

Carson sterilizing forceps to extract fungus, avoiding cross-contamination

Labeling petri plates

Moving fungus garden to petri plates for experimentation.

Planning the Google Slides presentation

Group Purple Rain presenting initial research idea for feedback.

Group Pan presenting initial research idea for feedback.

Group Nature SCAN presenting initial research idea for feedback.

Tree frog! (found napping at the finca)