by Mareli Sanchez-Julia
At some point in ones life as an ecologist, be it as a 10 year-old with nerdy, over-achieving parents, or as a first year graduate student, one is faced with the Holdridge (1947) life zones. For me, it was a mind-boggling, two-dimensional rendering of over a million years of geography, genetic drift, selection and speciation. Eyes-wide, I stared at the eight subcategories of a tropical forest and tried to imagine the properties of each one. My attempt was feeble.
My mind’s paintbrush was not skilled enough to bring each forest to life given the elevation, precipitation and temperature. After my “foundations of ecology” course was over, I tucked the Holdridge image away in my brain and dismissed it.
It took a second year of graduate school and a summer in Costa Rica for Holdridge (1947) to become three-dimensional. Before OTS, my mind’s idea of what each tropical forest looked like equated to stick figures and chicken-scratch. The lowland, the paramo, the pre-montane, the highland, the dry; each one breathes differently. I could not have pictured the lichen-covered oak trees and perched bromeliads of a tropical highland, the call of the howler monkeys announcing a downpour in the lowland forest, or the song of the tinamou in a cloud forest at dusk. No, I couldn’t do it justice.
Before I get ahead of myself, this course is much more than just beautiful forests. It's about the people you get to walk through the forests with. Yes, yes, cheesy. Permission granted to roll your eyes. But seriously, the people make it. Rieka, Bill, Janet, Gabi, Claudia, Laura, Brenna, Sarah, Pablo, Pati and Sofia. There is no one in the world whom I would rather eat bean sandwiches with and talk about poop with.
Entering this course is like finding a trail in the forest after stumbling over masses of understory shrubs, woven woody lianas and fallen tree trunks. It is an opportunity to design the shape, strength, and connectivity of our strand in the web of tropical ecologists that have come before us and that will come after us.
This course is an opportunity to set aside everything you know and re-learn it in the context of a tropical forest. To leave behind the electronic piles of primary literature and find knowledge gaps through observation, not ‘Future Research’ sections. We are encouraged to pay attention, to see an organism not as singular entity, but as a conglomerate of interactions. Only then can we begin to understand who it is, what it's doing, how it is doing it, and why.
Through workshops, independent projects, and faculty-led projects, we get to transform our observations into a question. The possibilities are endless (or, among the tools contained within 8 large equipment boxes). To a young, aspiring tropical ecologist, it’s a 6-week science slumber party in absolute paradise.
While we have asked cool questions in different forest types, each one can be a blog post on its own. Now that I have experienced 6/7 sites, here is a sip of each one:
Palo Verde- Tropical Dry Forest
While the mosquitoes challenged my career choices and tested my resilience, it was fascinating. Limestone formations reminiscent of an LOTR scene, flowering cacti, Acacia trees and their ferocious ants, endemic bromeliads and curious capuchins. Also, Romelio. You just wait.
Cabo Blanco Absolute Reserve- Coastal Forest
Birds and ocean waves sang me to sleep and daily dips in the river fueled my productivity. Also, hammock naps.
Monteverde Biological Station – 1,500m cloud forest
Life growing on life growing on life. I always wanted to go 10 meters more.
La Selva Biological Station- lowland tropical forest
The epicenter of the tropical ecology web. The legacy of past scientists was electric, and I felt the kinship the minute I arrived. I understood then that the best research questions come from languid after-dinner conversations, from wrong turns in the trail, and from walking for 5 more minutes because a new discovery may lie waiting after the trail bend.
Cuerici Biological Station- 3,000m tropical highland
Cuerici is like sympatric speciation, millennial human-edition. Don Carlos and Anita care for their land thoughtfully, and the outcome of the labor is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, felt and heard. The old growth oak and alder, the carefully-farmed trout, the cloud-hovering mountains, the moss covered existence.
Paramo of Costa Rica- 3,400m
Life here was dwarfed and alien to me. Though tough, what lives here is more beautiful because of it. Survival is key. But we still found a lizard.
Las Alturas- 1,500m tropical pre-montane forest
A harmonious combination of cloud forest, lowland species diversity, and montane forest specialties. Birds, mushrooms, oak trees, orchids, and views. Special is an understatement. The lack of electricity and infrastructure made 3 days feel like a sweet lifetime.
In the words of a wiser woman than I, the best distance between two points is never a straight line. After years of thinking that I knew what a tropical forest was, 6 weeks in Costa Rica has paved the way to new questions, life-long friends, and exciting research ideas. Though I have much more of Holdridge (1947) to see for myself, I am a better scientist and person after five weeks of exploring these wondrous forests.
The course also created a tropical forest of Rieka, Bill, Janet, Gabi, Claudia, Laura, Brenna, Sarah, and I. We were put together as a cohort to interact, to cooperate, to encourage, to compete, to collaborate; the outcome is something unique, and beautiful, and worth preserving.
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