Next Stop Fortuna

We have had a great time in Bocas del Toro.  We found a rare anteater and did a lot of surveys of marine invertebrates. We also recorded several species of bats. And in our spare time were able to do a lot of snorkeling. I’m sure someone willpost photos and more info on the anteater and the other things we saw. Thanks to Gabriel and the staff at the Bocas del Toro lab for their help and to our great boat drivers Sebastian and Eric.  Also thanks to Ray Gabriel for his great talk on tarantulas and night time hike.  And a huge hug and special thanks to Maurice Thomas, our collaborator on the bat project. We had a great time getting to see the bats up close and to help to create a library of their echo-location calls. There will be a future post about why these recordings are impoprtant. Unfortunately no fishing bats were caught this year, so that will be up to the next year’s class.

We are off to visit the cloud forest at Fortuna in the west central highlands and won’t be able to post for a few days. Mike Draney will be collecting spiders and John Katers will show us the hydro-electric facility.  We are told there are no poisonous snakes in the cloud forest, so that is good. Last time we visited we had 10 inches of rain in 1 day.  We’ll let you know if the dry season has arrived yet.

Vicki