Day Four

This morning we enjoyed a familiar pancake breakfast with a twist. Locally grown cacao nibs incorporated Costa Rican flavors into the traditional American dish. The recipe is definitely a keeper!


After breakfast, researchers split into two groups to conduct various experiments on bacterial and fungal growth. While one group tested the effects of different strains of the antibiotic producing bacteria Streptomycetes on various strains of native bacterial cultures, the other group was in the lab conducting experiments to test the concentration of the pathogenic fungus Escovopsis in different parts of leafcutter ant colonies collected during yesterday’s trek through the rainforest.


Hungry from a morning spent prodding petri dishes, we all dug into a tasty hamburger lunch cooked by the ladies of Finca La Anita.


After we finished lunch, we met again as groups to begin brainstorming ideas for projects. We were tasked with formulating our own question, hypothesis, predictions, and experimental design process. Working as a group to design all these elements of our experiments on our own was exciting, and our instructors provided us valuable feedback.


We then stopped for a midafternoon coffee break, and worked to design a slideshow showcasing our recent experimental design decisions to the larger group.


After dinner, we presented our designs to the entire group as well as Dr. Pinto, who helped provide valuable feedback for everyone’s designs (photo of one group missing, sorry)









Written by Teddy & Kelleah 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day Two

Image
Hey everyone, Day two in Costa Rica!! Today we had our Covid tests.... negative all around! For breakfast we had eggs, rice, beans, pineapple and papaya which was followed by some free time. We all used this to explore the pathways around Finca la Anita where we saw our first leaf cutter ants. Around 9:45 we all gathered for a chocolate tour given by Pablo, our host. We were walked through the process of making a chocolate drink that was originated from the Aztecs. After trying the cacao beans and chocolate provided we were walked through a history of chocolate in the world!! Next, Pablo took us through the cacao farm and showed us the crops. He picked one of the cacao fruits and let us try sucking on the cacao beans before they were fermented.     After a bit of rain, we ran back to lunch where Pablo gave us a demonstration of harvesting palm. He showed us how to make a delicious salad which we ate along with lunch. At lunch our instructors, Gabriel and Ibrahim, arrived. Then...
Read more

Day 3: First Field Day

Image
Started off the day with breakfast and went to our classroom area for our first field day. We met in the classroom around 8:30 in the morning to start heading out. We got a quick rundown of what the plan was and we headed out. We hiked on a gravel road to the locations of the leafcutter ants that our instructors Ibraheim and Gabriel had found early that morning.  There are two different types of leafcutter ants that we are going to be studying while we are here and they are the Atta and Acromyrmex leafcutter ants. The main difference is that the Atta have larger colonies that are in the ground and the Acromyrmex have much smaller colonies that are in the sides of hills, walls of dirt, or trees. We stopped at some colonies that were in the side of a dirt hill to get our first real look at a colony in person. Ibraheim started digging right into the colony as a quick demo to show us how its done. It took almost no time at all to get to the fungus garden that we are looking for. He qui...
Read more