Crescent City Cuisine

I took advantage of a few opportunities to indulge my "foodie" side while in New Orleans. While at Dante's Kitchen, I savored some local grown fare, specifically their Preparation of Local Farm Vegetables (beets, rutabaga, turnips, leeks...) served with a goat cheese and caramelized onion croquette. The meal was preceded by the most amazing molasses spoon bread and accompanied by a delectable corn and crab bisque.

The fried food and copious amounts of gravy I could do without, maybe with the exception of an occasional Bignet from Cafe Du Monde. I have never seen so much powdered sugar in the air, on the floor, dusting tables and coating mouths.

Parting Stats

Hello everyone! Late last night, or perhaps I should say early this morning, tallies came in from our week of field collections. During our 7 days in the field last week, we:

-collected 513 caterpillars from 13 families in plots and general collections.

-reared 19 parasitoids (and many more are likely to be on the way!...)

-completed assessments for 10 plots, which translates to estimating 2,033,790 leaves from 785 square meters of bottomland hardwood forest and Cypress-Tupelo Swamp.

I've truly enjoyed working with such a diverse, enthusiastic, dedicated and talented group of teachers and researchers.

Up to Our Elbows in Mud

Those of you that traveled to Bilsa Biological Station in Ecuador with me (or with Rachel and Nate the subsequent year) know how the stronghold of mud suctioning your boots impedes ambulation. Every step becomes infinitely more difficult as the day goes on. The Louisiana mud we've encountered is every bit as fierce. Our days in the field are long and dirty and I love every bit of it. It is early to rise and late to turn out the lights and crawl into our bunks. Staying up until 12:00 or 1:00 flipping through guide books to identify all the plants, caterpillars, amphibians and reptiles of the day, uploading photos for blog postings, and sharing photos with teammates has become the norm.
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I still have a lot of gaps to fill in here so stay tuned for further details

The Pearl River

The Pearl River Wildlife Management Area is a 35,031 acre tract of bottom-land timber nestled between the East and West Pearl rivers. The terrain is flat with poor drainage disposing the area to annual flooding. The forest cover varies from all age hardwood stands, to cypress tupelo, to intermediate type marsh. Species composition of hardwoods include water oak, nuttall oak, cow oak, obtusa oak, overcup oak, live oak, bitter pecan, hickory, beech, magnolia, sweetgum, and elm. The overstory is variable with areas that area moderately open and contrasted by those that are closed.

Flood stage of the Pearl river is 14 feet. Over the duration of our stay, water levels ranged from 14 to 19 feet. Click here to find current water levels. The elevated water prohibited surveys of Honey Island Swamp so efforts were re-directed to traversing the stretches of the West Pearl River. Daily scouting most frequently involved shuttling crew and kayaks upstream to our launching point at Davis Landing in Slidell. From Davis Landing we paddled upstream in search of suitable sites to access land and began bushwhacking to the next plot (keeping an eye out for the abundant poison ivy and thorns of Rubus). The day of field work concluded with an hour long drift/paddle back downstream to Crawford Landing, jsut outside the fence surrounding our bunkhouse.

Adjacent to the bunkhouse commercial swamp tours departed daily loaded with tourists and school children. I am quite certain we got the best tour possible traveling via kayak without paying a dime.

Caterpillar ID Challenge

It's time to identify some caterpillars we found while out in the field. Your challenge is to go to caterpillars.org to see how many of them you can determine the scientific name for.

Give me pupation or give me death

It was exciting to be able to web-conference with those of you in my biology class today. Thanks for all the great questions.

My morning was spent in the lab/bunkhouse doing "zoo". The work that happens in the lab is just as important as what goes on in the field. All the the caterpillars we collect are put into ziplock bags and labeled with:

1. Date
2. Family.
Remember the classification system: Kindom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species in which living organisms are divided into homogenous groups by using hierarchical categories; the upper category includes all the lower ones.) For example, the classification for the stink bug Nezara viridula that you saw earlier in my blog looks like this:

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Arthropoda

Class: Insecta

Order: Heteroptera

Family: Pentatomidae

Genus: Nezara

Species: viridula

3. Site location (collected with GPS)
4. Genus and species of the vegetation the specimen was found on
5. Instar: this denotes the developmental stage of of larval or nymphal forms of holometabolous or hemometabolous insects. Insects complete different numbers of instars depending upon species and environmental conditions, with caterpillars reaching instar four or five before pupating.

During zoo all the bags are hung on a rack for storage, frass is removed daily and change in developmental stages (instar) is noted. Caterpillars are observed for signs of parasitoids. Data for all specimens is then entered into the computer for future analysis.

What do you think these ovoid objects are?

Collecting Data

Why do you think we collect all this information about plants if we are studying caterpillars and climate change?

Today, Rebecca Hazen, pHd student and lead scientist on this project further described the purpose of gathering leaf estimates. Leaf estimates are gathered at each plot by estimating the number of leaves per individual of each species present in the plot along with percent herbivory on those leaves. Leaf estimates are used in correlation with a database containing average surface area per leaf species in order to asses caterpillar plant interactions within this tritrophic study.

Metamorphosis and Predation

We observed these nymphal insects in the field. Classify them as hemimetabolists or homometabolists? Explain your decision.

nymphal lubber grasshopper in the process of molting


nymphal stinkbugs of the genus Poecilometis (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae)
adults predate upon caterpillars

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Camouflage

Camouflage works well, as you can see from watching this video and from the photo above. I was pretty excited to find this hanging out on a tree? Look closely. What do you think it is? And for an added challenge, what is it's scientific name?

Nature encourages no looseness, pardons no errors
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Research Introduction

Now that I've been here a few days, it is probably a good time to explain some of the basics of the research Dr. Dyer and his graduate students are conducting before I bring you out to join me at the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area. First to give you an idea of the geography, we are close to Slidell, Louisiana, a little north of Lake Pontchartrain, about an hour East of New Orleans. One of the places we are looking for caterpillars is called Honey Island Swamp. The habitat here is bottomland hardwood swamp. Oak, sweet gum, sycamore, maple, cypress, elm and tupelo are some of the trees found here.

Now for the specifics of the study.....
The five primary goals are to:

• Document the Diversity of caterpillars (Lepidoptera) and parasitiods. Can you tell me the difference between parasites and parasitoids?
• Understand how different caterpillar defenses function against different types of natural enemies
• Examine chemical defenses in caterpillars and their host plants
• Construct models that predict the success of biological controls based on caterpillar defenses
  
• Examine the effects of climate on caterpillar-parasitoid interactions. Some believe that climate change will impact caterpillar populations. Will rare species of butterflies and moths will become extinct? Or will parasitism go down allowing caterpillar populations to increase exponentially, approaching or even surpassing their carrying capacities?

Check out the paper titled Climatic unpredictability and parasitism of caterpillars: Implications of global warming.

Keeping the Beat

Congregating caterpillars dancing to the tune of some local musicians we saw on the street in New Orleans.

How to Dispose of Dead Bodies

After a lengthy thunderstorm related delay in Dallas my plane finally left the tarmac arrived in New Orleans two hours later than planned. The rest of my team was already checked in to the guesthouse and on their way to the rendezvous point. The cab driver that picked me up had no idea how to get me where I was going. Thankfully a few calls later we were headed in the right direction. I made it on time to join the rest of the team for dinner uptown and and an adventure wandering through downtown.
Here's a question that comes from my Saturday morning tour of the Garden District. In NOLA, cemeteries look significantly different than they do in SLC. Based on your knowledge of human biology and geography of New Orleans, what can you determine about burial methods in this region. Why are the graves built this way and how do they function?
The marble plaque on the grave to the left has been warped by the elements and undergone a process known as granulation. Earth science students, briefly describe this process, considering the properties of marble that make this possible.


Caterpillar #1
This afternoon our group heads out to our bunkhouse and field-site at the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area in Slidell, LA. Here's a sample of one type of caterpillar we'll likely see more of. This buck moth caterpillar was found outside the guesthouse we were staying in. Soon the job of identifying caterpillars will be yours. For a warm-up I'd like you to find (and record in your biology journal) this caterpillar's scientific name. Try using the caterpillars.org website. Note: search within Louisiana caterpillars.

And I'm Off

Tomorrow I leave for New Orleans to meet up with my fellow team members. Enjoy the rest of your Spring Break. Thanks everyone for your excitement and support!

Connections to the Classroom

Last month I reveled in the opportunity to leisurely peruse the National Aquarium while in Baltimore for the Expeditionary Learning National conference.

As I was going through my photos recently, I selected these as ones that touch upon subjects we've been covering in biology and also provide a springboard for some of what "we" will be studying live from the field next week.

Later this semester we will study evolution and adaptations. An adaptation is any behavioral or physical characteristic that helps an organism (animal in this case) survive. My first challenge goes out to my biology class. I want you to list and describe at least three adaptations that caterpillars have. These can be behavioral or physical traits. Think of what a caterpillar needs to survive and then examine what structures or behaviors the caterpillars have that help them meet these needs.

That's all for now. I'm busy packing to fly out at 6 AM tomorrow. You'll have to follow along to see where this goes.