Only 984 hours to remember the rest of my life, by Madison Wise (FFT Volunteer)

The Amazon region of Madre de Dios is home to a little over a hundred different species of amphibians, so for me, coming here and being a part of this program has been a life-long dream finally birthed into fruition. If there was a way of putting into words the ecstaticm I feel every day, having a chance to participate in the workings, co-habitat in the same environments, and actually witness the presence of some of the most captivating animals is a jaw dropping, awe-inspiring experience that I am hoping to remember every moment of.

My education has been primarily focused on herpetofauna with a Bachelors of Science in Biology and Chemistry, and having a strong interest in amphibians since I was seven years old motivated me strongly to come to this region with one of the highest biodiversity of amphibians and reptiles.  The FFT program gives people access to these areas and gives everyone a chance to manifest a similar love and appreciation for the fauna with or without similar interests and drives.

My interests being so strong were well met with the friendly froggy faces I so dearly adore. Even in the dry season I have been witness to some of the species I dared to dream meeting in the wild, among them, the Yellow-footed tortoise (Chelonoidis denticulate), Coral Pipesnake (Anilius scytale scytale) (shown above), Crested forest toad (Bufo margaritifer complex), Pale striped poison frog (Epipedobates hahneli), Three-stripped poison frog (Epipedobates trivittatus), Short nosed treefrog (Hyla brevifrons), Convict tree frog (Hyla calcarata), my personal favourite the Clown tree frog (Hyla leucophyllata), and a Barred monkey frog (Phyllomedusa tomopterna) (shown below), also worth mentioning, I stumbled across a never before seen red phased Atractus flammigerus and laid witness to a Common Mussurana (Clelia clelia clelia) eating an Amazon blunt headed tree snake (Imantodes lentiferus) only feet away from an on-looking Amazon egg-eating snake (Drepanoids anomalus)!

The people of Fauna Forever are equally captivating with their cooperative leadership, accommodating guidance and enthusiastic companionship. There are still 14 more days left in the phase, and I look forward to every minute that I can share this environment with these beloved creatures and will be returning with a new found enthusiasm, direction and motivation to continue making efforts of conservation and preservation because as it is possible to see firsthand, one person really can make a difference.

Keeping you up to date with FFT (Laura Wells, FFT Intern)

Well, a lot has happened here since my last blog, which was…coming up for two weeks ago now. Wow, it doesn’t feel like I’ve been here that long.

So, as I said, Kim and I went to the Jungle, just for a couple of days. That was awesome, my first time in the jungle and I think I was broken in gently! Kim took me for a walk on the afternoon that I got there, and she introduced me to some of the wildlife in the Jungle. Then I met all the volunteers and it was nice to hang out with all of them. The following day we got up early to go to Cocococha Lake, a 5km walk there and then a leisurely row around the lake to see giant otters, these guys are endangered and protected, so we were really lucky to get to see them so closely. We also saw loads of monkeys, cutter ants and some interesting tree species including wandering palms and strangler figs, which were absolutely HUGE! They’re called strangler’s because they literally strangle trees which they grow on – you might be able to see a gap in the middle of the roots in the picture below where the original tree was before the strangler took over.

The next day we travelled back to Puerto Maldonado with the whole team, everyone bought souvenirs and did their laundry and it was so nice to hang out at Anaconda lodge again, with some amazing Thai food, a welcomingly cold swimming pool and lovely little monkeys (one of them shown below). After that, we even had time for a good night out in Puerto, with memorable events including the volunteers doing the limbo with a broom in The Plaza Bar, which, may I say, serves a mean Caipiriña.

Anyway, the volunteers and all the team, save Kim and I, went back to the Jungle after we briefly celebrated Ashley’s birthday on the Friday. This time the team have gone to CICRA – a research station with some inspiring scientists carrying out research there I am told. Sounds like they’re all having a blast, the views are b-e-a-utiful and everyone’s seen loads of wildlife. Today Dave and James get back and then we’ll spend a couple of days catching each other up on everything. After that Kim and I get to take their places and go to CICRA too. I’ll let you know all about it when I can. Over and out

Reglas de transito en el monte? Escrito por Sofia Rubio (FFT Mammal Coordinator)

Reglas de transito en el monte? Hace unos día cuando trabajábamos en uno de los transectos un red-broquet deer (venado colorado) casi choca conmigo, salió a toda carrera cuando estaba a penas a unos centímetros de nosotras, ah sí!, el “mammals team” ahora es enteramente femenino.

La noche de ojos brillantes. La caminata nocturna de ayer estuvo super vimos  a un nine-banded armadillo buscar su comida entre la hojarasca, un curioso paca?? caminando por la trocha de turistas, que grandes y brillantes ojos anaranjados (cuando los alumbras con la linterna) me pregunto cómo se verán los ojos de un jaguar en la noche!!!! Finalmente cruzaron la trocha, por encima de nosotros, por los arboles,  4 ojos más pequeños pero muy brillantes, un par de ruidosos y buenos trepadores olingos.

De vuelta a esta casa. Hacía tiempo que el casillero de avistamientos de spider monkey (maquisapa) dice diciembre del 2009, y antes de eso hacía muchos años que no los veíamos por aquí, esperamos que cada vez sea más común encontrarlos  por esta zona.

Amazon Fun, by Laura Wells (FFT Intern)

Hi all!

I’m the new intern here at Fauna Forever Tambopata. My Name’s Laura Wells and I’m a 3^rd year Environmental Science student from England, doing a year in industry as part of my course.

On Friday night I left Cusco, where I’ve been learning Spanish for 2 weeks, and took an overnight bus through the mountains. It was such a long journey and so frustrating that it was dark – I could see that there would be amazing views if it had been light. The stars, however, were stunning – they were just so bright against a sky with absolutely no light pollution and I saw the southern cross. I arrived in Puerto Maldonado on Saturday at about half six in the morning and I’ve got to say waking up to see the cloud forests in the mist while the sun was rising was a perfect start to my time here. Dave picked me up and took me to the house, which is a little basic but it’s pretty cool. Here are a few observations, not complaints, about how the house may be different from what you or I are used to. There’s no hot water and we only have water for a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the evening. The internet is possibly the slowest connection I have known and there are 5 of us that fight over it. There’s no glass in the windows so the noise from the street is pretty loud and it’s so damn dusty and hot. Of course, it’s a different way of life to back home, but I’m a little used to it from some travelling I’ve been doing recently – but but BUT everyone I have met from the team so far is really cool and it should be fun living with them all. There’s Dave – Marketing Manager, Kim – Project manager, George – who runs Fotoforever (Fauna forever Tambopata’s sister project.) Finally, there’s James who doesn’t really work for Fauna Forever but he’s a mean cook and he helps us all out. Puerto Maldonado is nice too, it’s small but seems like you can get almost anything you need if you look hard enough, and there’s some awesome food here too.

My first job is to get this blog up to date and keep it that way. So watch this space for blogs from me, the team and volunteers, as well as other interesting thought leaders, organisations and local parties that are all relevant to what Fauna Forever is about and what’s going on with us. My second job is to get a Facebook fan page up and running, so please join that, and as well as being able to keep up to date with us, the first 1000 members will be entered into a very exciting competition!

So, now you know a little bit about who I am and what I’ll be doing. All in all I’m really excited about my time here with Fauna Forever Tambopata. I’m also very excited to be off to the Jungle today! Kim and I are going to Explorer’s Inn to meet up with the volunteers, some of who are from the same university as me – UEA (The University of East Anglia). So it’ll be cool to meet and catch up with all the volunteers and bring them back to Puerto Maldonado. So that’s it for now but I’ll tell you all about my jungle experiences and what’s happening here when I get back 

Mimicry, by Ashley Anne Wick (FFT Insect Team Coordinator)

(This blog entry is dedicated to former FFT volunteer Sofia Prado.  She never got to hear my mimicry talk because we were all frozen – like butterflies – during the epic friaje that signaled the end to our last phase).

I am a Lepidopterist.  And, for better or worse, I will remain one for the rest of my life.  I recall my father calling me his ‘little butterfly’ when I was 10, because of my constant flitting about. When I was a teenager I used to escape to a local river and observe the butterflies licking the salts of the banks. I began studying butterflies when I was 19 as head field assistant to 2 college professors.  When I was 21 I received NSF funding to study moth diversity in different forest types and in turn in relation to remotely sensed satellite data.   In 2011 I will relocate to Canada to help their federal parks system develop a plan to protect and ensure the viability of an endangered butterfly (Apodemia mormo, the Mormon metalmark) and its host plant (Eriogonum pauciflorum, wild buckwheat) as my graduate thesis.  With Fauna Forever Tambopata I currently study the Ithomiinae or glasswing butterflies in the Peruvian Amazon, with the help of volunteers from around the world.

Instead of writing strictly about butterflies, I would like to focus this blog entry on an ecological phenomenon that I encounter nearly daily, both in the field and in the lab.  Mimicry, in all its strange and diverse forms, is both a source of constant fascination and confusion. I’m often stressed out when examining two butterflies that appear to be the same species, but aren’t related at all, with one mimicking the other!  Mimicry is diverse in its evolution, forms, and strange beauty, and is never lacking in the insects, nor in the Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths).  For a simple working definition – mimicry is to appear to be something other that what one is.

Mimicry is everywhere in the natural world.  You just have to look: imagine a treehopper that resembles a thorn, a moth mimicking a bit of lichen on tree bark, or butterflies of the family Charaxinae resembling dead leaves. Tortoise beetles attach bits of excrement and debris to their body to blend into the earth and a praying mantis can mimic a flower and remains undetected until it pounces on its prey. These forms of mimicry are quite obvious – the mimics are blending into their environment.  Insects have mastered the art of camouflage in order to remain undetected by their prey (or in other cases – predators).

The previous examples of mimicry are all based on crypsis, or cryptic coloration. On the other hand, have you ever wondered why bees or butterflies are bright red, orange, yellow or dark black?  What protection would this bring against a predator?  Along the same lines, why do crosswalk guards wear orange?  Why are stop signs red?  We can assume that this bright coloration is beneficial, for evolution to have directed so many different species (humans among them) to the same set of defenses. This phenomenon is called warning or aposematic coloration.  In the case of many Hympenoptera (bees, ants, and wasps) this warning is of actual danger via a bite or sting.  In other species without the abdominal stingers of bees or the painful mandibles of a bullet ant, their coloration often warns predators of some other unpleasant experience, such as a poisonous or unpleasant taste.

In mimicry there is always a model, that model being the species that is legitimately dangerous, distasteful, or unpleasant.  On the flip side, there is also the mimic, the species that is attempting to gain protection by resembling the model.  In the following paragraphs I will present several types of mimicry along with examples, mostly from the insect world.

Batesian mimicry (named after naturalist Henry Walter Bates) is a classic example that college freshman often learn in BIO 101.  Batesian mimicry is utterly straightforward.  The mimic begins resembling (through natural selection) the model in order to gain protection from some unpleasant trait that the model has.  The classic example of this is the monarch and viceroy butterflies.  The monarch butterfly eats milkweed plants and stores the unpalatable toxins, making it taste extremely nasty to birds and other predators.  Then the viceroy buttefly, by so closely resembling the monarch in color and pattern, will gain protection from predators that have learned to not eat monarchs.  This also occurs with moths and wasps.  Below is a photo that a friend of mine took here in Tambopata.  Can you guess what it is?  If you said a wasp, you have been duped, like many intelligent birds before you.  This is actually a moth in the family Sesiidae!

The second most well-known type of mimicry is Mullerian mimicy (after Fritz Müller).  In this type of mimicry, multiple unpalatable or otherwise harmful unrelated species will mimic each other, with all individuals involved serve as both mimics and models at the same time.  What benefit would all individuals gain by all being distasteful or dangerous and mimicking each other?  Let’s take tiger colored butterflies for an example.  If a bird successfully eats one bright orange, yellow, and black colored butterfly and has an unpleasant experience, it is likely to avoid all similar looking butterflies in the future, in turn, all tiger butterflies would gain protection from the single fatality, magnifying the impact of a single death. This ecological phenomenon can also be described as mutualism.  (www. On mullerian france museum mimicry rings).

Now, let us examine some lesser-known types of mimicry – Wasmannian, Gilbertian, and Aggressive mimicry.

Wasmannian mimicry – which occurs when a mimic resembles a model along with which it lives.  Due to limitations of cohabitation, this usually occurs with insects that live in a social setting, like ants, termites, and wasps.  This is sometimes the case with beetles or spiders attempting to gain protection by living in the nest of ants or termites. As an additional note, many social insects have the advantage to being an excellent model, because they are known to be able to mount extensive attacks due to their social behavior – this can add an additional benefit to the mimic of ants.

Gilbertian mimicry (named after Lawrence E. Gilbert) occurs when a host or prey attempts to defend itself by mimicking its predator or parasite. The most well-known case of this is between Heliconius butterflies and plants in the genus Passiflora. The story of these two groups of species that have been interacting is incredibly interesting, but I’ll let you judge for yourself.  As a result of herbivory of the larvae of Heliconius, Passiflora have developed toxins to deter herbivory.  In response to these toxins, the larvae have evolved enzymes which break down the toxins, allowing them to continue to feast on the foliage of its host plant.  As an even more extreme response to the continued herbivory, Passiflora began to evolve stipules that mimic nearly hatched Heliconius eggs.  The adult butterflies would likely avoid plants that already have mature eggs which would eat the leaves before their young would have a chance to hatch, and even avoid the potentially cannibalistic behavior of Heliconius larvae. One must wonder: What is next in the evolutionary game for these two groups of species?

Aggressive mimicry, also called Peckhamian mimicry (named after George and Elizabeth Peckham), occurs when a predator mimics a model, but the model is not necessarily its prey.  This type of mimicry is common in many different types of fauna, and may be detrimental, negative, or positive for the model. Let’s look at a couple quick examples of this strange manifestation of mimicry.  An Australian katydid finds prey by luring in male cicadas.  It does this by using the same species-specific clicks that female cicadas use to attract males, and once the katydid has succeeded in attracting the male cicada, it will feast. The katydids are able to change their clicks to mimic different species, even those with whom they do not normally coexist.  Another example, and a shout out to the birders out there, we shall investigate an avian example of aggressive mimicry.  The zone-tailed hawk, which resembles the turkey vulture, will sometimes fly around with vultures.  Being a predator, the hawk will quickly break formation and attack an unsuspecting prey in a tree or on the ground.  What is interesting about this example of aggressive mimicry, is that the turkey vultures are neither positively nor negatively affected by the presence of the hawk.

Hopefully you have enjoyed learned about a few of the thousands of examples of mimicry in nature, and here in the rainforests of the Tambopata it is nearly impossible to not take notice of the diversity of insect size, shape, and behavior.  I hope that you too can appreciate the intricacies and beauty of insects and how these tiny creatures have evolved to compete and thrive in the natural world.

Want to know more about mimicry, butterflies, or volunteering with my research in the Amazon? Email ashley@faunaforever.org or check out www.faunaforever.org/fft

References:

Insects of Latin America

An Introduction to the Study of Insects

Bugs in the System

Brittanica Online

www.Bugguide.net “Arthropod Mimicry”

Peru 2010, by William Howell (Phase 10.4 volunteer)

The Amazon rainforest, a place shrouded in mystery and darkness.

My experience here is tale of many emotions, many strange encounters and many bitter struggles brought about by the conditions of living in such an unrelenting and unforgiving environment.

Since a young age I had learned about the Amazon, it had always seemed a fairytale-like place to me and caused much intrigue and desire to learn as much as I could about it. I had developed a vision of what it would be like in my mind and when I arrived I found it truly amazing to behold the majestic beauty of this immense forest.

The living conditions here are in stark contrast to anything I have experienced before, but are still impressive given the challenges presented in this remote location. The food is basic but for the most part sufficient and satisfying, this is often aided by the appetite worked by the labours of the day. Although there is the loss of many modern conveniences such as 24hour electricity and hot running water, these are small sacrifices to make when presented with the undeniable wonder and joy brought about by the diversity of the beautiful animals found in the forest.

Perhaps the hardest and most enduring part of my journey here was to consume rice with almost every meal, a feat I thought that I may never accomplish and would surely drive me to insanity.

As for the forest itself it is filled with many wondrous and truly agitating creatures, from beautiful frogs and snakes that captivate you with their vivid colours and transfixing eyes to relentless mosquitoes and scheming ants that seek out your belongings should you set them down for one second. None of this however compares with the shear diversity of plants and animals that can be found in this place and the tremendous noise that they together produce, it is both evocative and overwhelming to say the least.

The moment that I will remember most vividly from my time here is the night I saw the infamous bushmaster, a true leviathan, its bold black diamonds darker than the night’s sky, and its deep burning stare almost locking my mind with titanium chains. Words cannot describe the disturbing beauty this fatal creature possessed; it bore a feeling of shear malevolence I feel will remain with me for some time.

Of all the animals I have seen here, the one that holds the most awe and that I picture immediately when I think of the Amazon is the tree frog. For me it is the most striking animal to see, particularly at night when its colours are at their brightest. The finest example of this animal is the tomopterna or monkey tree frog, its name applies to the way in which it moves which is simply a joy to watch as it reveals its brilliant orange flanks broken by dark purple stripes.

 

For this remarkable experience I am truly indebted to FFT, a top group of researchers who have been a delight to volunteer for and who I have learned so much from over my time in Peru, so I would like to end by thanking them for making this a truly unique experience and certainly one I would like to repeat in the future.