Tuesday in the Lab

Today was a very busy day in the caterpillar lab at Earthwatch Expedition. A group of t eachers went out in kayaks to catch more caterpillars. It was my turn to stay at the lab and help to clean the caterpillar bags and identify the plants and caterpillars that they caught. It was lots and lots of work!! We had to look up the caterpillar in a book and then on the internet to try to figure out what kind of caterpillar each one was . We also had to identify what plant it was eating. We worked together all day long, from 8:30 in the morning to 6:30 at night. We only stopped for a little lunch and then kept going. Even with five people working, we couldn't identify all the plants and caterpillars. Some people will try again on Wednesday to find out the caterpillars names. Can anyone figure out what kind of caterpillars these are? Two pictures are of the same one. He is looking at the camera from different angles. The other picture is Dr. Lee Dyer. He is the scientist that started the research. The bags behind him are where the caterpillars are living. He could tell us the scientific name of every caterpillar we found. Tomorrow, Wednesday, I will go out again in the kayak to hunt caterpillars. We will have to get out of the kayak and climb up the bank of the river to a forest area. There we will set up a circle with a 10 meter diameter. We will mark the circle with pink tape. Then we will use a beat sheet to make the caterpillars fall from the bushes and trees onto the beat sheet. I will show you a picture of a beat sheet in my next blog. After we catch the caterpillars we have to count all the leaves on all the plants in the circle. This even means counting all the leaves on the trees. Do you think we can really do this or will we have to estimate?