Our adventure and research has come to an end but that doesn’t mean I will not continue to share. I have gathered so much from this experience that I believe this would be a great place to bring students to do field research. There were a couple of things I didn’t get to see but I was provided photographs that I just have to share, remember I didn’t take these but would like to some day.

Question: Would you like to go to the Brazilian Pantanal? Why? (Be specific)

Leaving the Pantanal

We had a late breakfast and the airplane arrived around 8am. I went on the first trip out and got to sit in the co-pilot seat. When you sit there you get additional opportunities and the views are great. I look forward to returning to the Pantanal someday soon.

Day 7 - Research

I got a bonus today in that I was able to tag along on the caiman project that is also being conducted at the research station. There has been such drastic harvesting of caiman that they are threatened and this is a research and life saving project. The project focuses on making sure there is a greater survival rate as well as providing a legal source for caiman products in order to reduce the pressure of poaching.

We went out in the boat in search of nests to gather some eggs for the project. The nests are located along the river and look like a pile of leaves but there is usually a caiman near by ready to protect her pile of leaves. These females are marked as well to determine the size of the population and to find out how after they will produce as well as additional scientific information.

Once the nest is found, we make sure it is safe to retrieve the eggs. The leaves from the top are removed and the eggs marked to know which side is up and then placed in a cooler with some of the leaves from the nest. They are counted and determined if they are alive or dead eggs in the count. The nest is covered and made to look as though it has not been manipulated. The female will hang around her nest for the time that she believes the gestation period should last, but if no babies emerge, she will leave.

The eggs are taken back to the lab and placed in a small barn that is really an incubator in disguise. There are shelves and the eggs are in bags with their nest leaves. There are lights hung to provide the proper heat and thermometers to regulate the temperature. The shelves are lined with a mess tray as when the babies hatch they are caught in and taken to the outdoor pond. The pond is lit which attracts insects (the main diet of young caiman) and the young grow quickly.

In the end 20% are sold for revenue to reduce poaching and 80% are released back into the wild. There are only 27 individuals released in any one pond at a time so there isn’t too much pressure put on them to survive. If the eggs were left in the wild there is less than 20% survival rate due to nests drowning, predation due to coati, peccary, snakes, birds and mold.

The afternoon I was back on the river again for my final canoe trip in search of the giant river otter. I have not seen it and would really like too before I leave. It was over a two-hour trip and we only spoke a couple of sentences as trying to be as quiet as possible. In the end we found no otters but did find a couple of fresh scats as well as many birds and a beautiful day. What a great way to end my experience. We did see something odd on the way back to the research base, check out the video.

Question: Do you feel the caiman project is ethical? Why or why not and support your answer.

Day 6 - Research

We had a late start today at 7:30am and were going to look for a new area to have a transect put into place for a low impact area. As we walked out to the airstrip Ellen and Mara heard a frog they had not heard before and began looking for it. We all panned out and tried to locate the animal making the noise. It was very difficult and most of us gave up while they were very determined. We did find some little frogs sitting on lily pads and spent time watching them in amazement as they hopped from one to the other without falling off. We also found a big group of tadpoles that was searching for things to eat.

In the afternoon the entire team broke up and either looked for otters by boat, canoe or went fishing for piranha. I have already been fishing for piranha in the Amazon last year so I let some other people do that to have a chance. There was no more room in the canoes, so I was once again on the boat. As long as I was on the river I didn’t really care. We were taken to a section of the river that had many nests of birds and they were making a serious racket. Still no otters…but it was beautiful!

The evening came around and I was to do another night transect; however I had a chance to go night fishing for piranha so I jumped at it. Matt and I went with a couple of the guides to try to get enough fish to make soup for lunch tomorrow. We used long metal hooks and chunks of chicken on them. You have to be quick to get them in the boat or they flip off. Of the 5 we caught I landed one of the many I hooked. All of them were the red-belied species and about the size of a saucer to small salad plate.

Question: Why would it be beneficial for tadpoles to feed in groups?

Day 5 - Research

The herpetological traps that we open and set on day 1 will be closed today so I decided to join that project in the morning in order to see what had been captured. The first set of traps was located in a high impact cattle area and was hopping with frogs and other crazy things including a few crickets and tarantulas. Most of the species had already been captured so we were able to just release them into the wild. Our job was to clean out the buckets and put the lids on so that nothing could get in until next week when the project starts up again.

We continued on to the rest of the trapping arrays to get them set up for the field season that starts next week. There are 40 buckets total and we had only opened and checked 16 so there were a few more sites to check out. The idea was to determine if there was any repair needed, do the repair and move onto the next array quickly as the heat was rising.

There were both low and high cattle impact areas that could be determined by the amount of under story vegetation. There are a lot of cattle in the Pantanal and there have been some issues around the impact on the environment. This is one of the objectives this project is looking at as well as diversity and abundance of species.

The afternoon was spent in the lab processing the new species and voucher specimens for the museums as well as some data entry for the project. We also spent some time down loading video from last night of frog calls and talked about how this research project ass designed to be considered a viable study. This included a lesson in statistics as well as a couple of mathematical demonstrations. Science does include a great deal of math and understanding significant difference and what a t-test is makes a world of difference.

Question: Why do you think it is important for a study like this to be viable?

Day 4 - Research

The day started off with rain and then it continued to rain, so much so that the herpetological trap checks were cancelled and we were told we would do a different schedule starting in the afternoon. I helped enter data that had been collected at the beginning of the month. We also took posed pictures of some of the animals that were collected yesterday. A small snake that was collected turned out to be a brand new species for the area.

In the afternoon we walked one of the transects along the river and attempted to catch everything we possibly could. We split into smaller groups and slowly explored both sides of the trail in hopes of finding some things. I caught 4 frogs but they were all species that had already been recorded for the region. I then found a toad that was sleeping in the crevice of a large palm tree. At the end I caught a mini lizard that turned out to be a gecko with eggs inside, but the entire lizard was about 4 cm long, including the tail. This was also a recorded species so I was able to release it.

We waited until the sun was going down and headed out to the second transect to do the same sort of thing. We barely made it across the airstrip when the sky started lighting up with fireflies. They were all over the place and had different flashing patterns. In addition, the frogs were going crazy and we heard at least 5 different species singing their songs. The rest of the evening was not as eventful, but we stayed out looking until after 9pm. I also saw the Southern Cross in the sky!

Question: Answer the question before watching the video. How do frogs make their songs? (Please provide a really good explanation, think about it)

Day 3 - Research

I was switched to the otter project today, which was exciting because they had success yesterday on the river with the Neotropical otter and giant river otter. The group had several different jobs that included bank observations, canoe survey, bank survey and scat location. In addition to these if there were any random sightings we were asked to identify their location with the GPS unit.

I started out with the bank observation with one other teacher. We were placed on a bank and left there with a walkie-talkie (that we forgot to turn on for the first 2 hours). After about an hour I saw the back of the head of one Neotropical otter as it swam away and drove. That was the only otter sighting for the day. My 2 seconds of fame!

The afternoon was spent surveying the bank for signs of animals. We collected several scat samples (yes, otter feces) as well as marked locations that the otters had been using. The latrines are quite clean as a majority of their diet is fish. We found no otters but did see a great number of birds as well as located a dead peccary that the black vultures were enjoying.

Question: What information about otters could a research biologist gain from just sitting on the bank of the river?
Bonus: Can you tell me the main difference between the Neotropical and giant river otters? It has nothing to do with their size or markings.