How To Become An Amateur Biologist 104

Always when I look back at my blogposts, it surprises me how quick time goes by and how much I have done and learned. Looking at ‘How to become an amateur biologist 103’, all the stuff that I wrote about seems so far away already. Also considering the progress of my project. It feels like ages ago that I have decided to something with sounds and vibrations in ants, but actually it is not even that long ago! Anyway, I guess that’s a good sign, right? Unfortunately, my stay in Gamboa and with that at Dinalab is coming to an end. With only two weeks left I am working hard to finish up my project and enjoy as much of Gamboa, the people, nature and all of its finest things and quirks as possible. However, for now I still have to tell you about everything I have done and learned these past weeks.

A week is never the same here in Gamboa. You might have nothing planned in the night and then someone texts you: “We are leaving to go lizard seeking in five minutes, you wanna join?” And in five minutes you find yourself in your field clothes, boots and headlamp, weaponed with your bugspray , ready to seek some lizards. This actually happened. The Gamboa life, or in general the Latin-America lifestyle, with its chaoticness, leaves more room for spontaneity which I love! It has been a breath of fresh air from the lifestyle in the Netherlands, where everything is very much structured and planned weeks in advance. It is going to be hard adjusting back to these habits in September 😉

The only constants here are doing my project at Dinalab and going to APPC on Friday’s. Scrolling through my pictures, you will mostly find stuff about my project and adorable (and occasionally also scary) animals. APPC has been great, and I am still very much loving my quality one-on-one, or one-on-many time with the sloths. I really am gonna miss them when I leave. Oof, I am already becoming sentimental. I will try to save that for the last one in this series of blogposts. Anyway, new sloth fact: Sloths closest relatives are anteaters and armadillos, and they descent from this massive terresterial sloth that were as big elephants 😮

For my project I was testing out different frequencies and patterns of frequencies on the Leafcutter Ants in front of Dinalab. At one point I noticed that there was some yellow-orangish substance on the piezo disk, which I hadn’t seen before. I cleaned the disk and tried it again on a different part of the trail with the same vibration settings (100hz with a duration of 100ms). Then I saw with my own eyes that (one of) the ants was/were secreting this substance. How exciting!!! But why, what, how and when? 🐜

The vibration pattern seems to elicit some kind of ‘distress’ response in the ants. They start attacking the piezo disk like crazy and try to bite/cut it. Also, when the other ants smelled the substance, they flinched away. The entomologists I have spoken to think the substance is something like faecal matter, or in other words, ant poop. 💩 They told me that, apparently, the matter serves as a fertilizer inside of the nest and as a deterent outside the nest. Maybe when excreted in ‘fear’, an additional chemical compound is added to the excretion, which is called context-dependent chemical signaling. One of the entomologists, Alissa, wants to check what the chemical substance is in the lab, which is super exciting!! Probably it is ‘just’ poop, but it is still very interesting why they excrete this with this type of vibration.

For my end product I am making an installation where people can experience the vibrations that leafcutters make accompanied by the sound that it makes for us. It is literally going to be an experience how it is ‘to stand in someone else’s (in this case something else’s) shoes’. I will not tell you too much details yet; you can see the endresult in the last blogpost or at the exhibition 😉 I have still a lot of work to do in one week, but I hope and believe it’s going to pay off!

Furthermore, recently two new entomologists, or more specifically, myrmecologists, have arrived in Gamboa. Alissa and Stephanie are studying fungus-growing ants (but not the leafcutters) and they have taught me so much new stuff about ants! One time they took me ‘ant digging’, which was so cool and so much fun. I even got to dig up ‘my own’ colony and write my initials on the sampling cup. The species we dug up is Serciomyrmex Amabilis, a little fury fungus-growing ant. The cool thing is that some colonies are infiltrated by a certain type of ant, Megalomyrmex symmetochus. These ants are not fungus-farming ants, so they don’t help with caring for the garden and thus they are seen as parasites. Mega is a social parasite since it lives together with the host. Unfortunately for Sercio, they do eat from the garden and profit from it. At first instance this seems like parasitism (thus the name parasite as well), however, the parasites do protect the fungus by attacking other intruders. Alissa, Stephany and their research team say it may be a context-dependent mutualist since it also defends their host from other threats! Super interesting, right?

I have also starting to make two designs for the recycled plastic keychains that Kitty and Andy make and sell for the APPC. I really like the shape of the Cecropia leaves, which I see a lot around here because that’s what we get for Valencia the Taipir and the three-toeth sloths a lot, since it’s their favourite. Another design I made is, of course, of the leafcutter ant! I have spray painted them with some pretty colours and now they are almost ready to be sold! Actually I already sold my first (cecropia) design and I hope to sell more on the exhibition I am going to give at the end of my stay here 😊

Cool2 is also still in the game. We have been playing around more with Arduino and an LED strip. Slowly but steadily we are making progress and hopefully in one or two weeks we have a prototype to show and present! Besides our menstruation plant, Kitty taught Cool2 how to crochet. Kitty was an excellent teacher but crocheting is not my calling. It was nice, but I am a bit too restless for such detailed work. Serena loved it though and she made some really cool stuff, which you will probably see in one of her blogposts 😉

Serena organised a jungle crafting afternoon where we got to make something out of the materials that we found in the forest, to explain a (scientific) concept with. Although my thing didn’t fully work out as I wanted, I really did learn to get outside of my head. It was a super fun experience!

Lastly but not least, I did a bunch of fun stuff here with my amazing Gamboa friends. We went a drag contest in the city, we visited the Biomuseo, Team Dinalab (me, Serena, Andy & Kitty) had a nice beachday at Forte Sherman, we had our second ruin party, we played Capuchin Heights (Andy’s self-made Carcassonne), went on a few night hikes/walks and of course some good old sunset hangouts!

See you until my last blogpost of this series:

How to BE an amateur biologist’ 😎

Lieke

Butterfly Pullinator

One morning we helped out the butterfly lab whip up a quick working instrument to help measure the pull strength of heliconius butterfly legs (for WAYYYY cheaper than scientific devices you can buy)!

The Pullinator is a device used to determine a butterfly’s strength by measuring how much weight they can pull. Our PhD student, Jessie, uses it to study muscle deterioration in butterflies as they age. Cool, right? But the best thing about The Pullinator is how it got made!

From their lab instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CcrLzgCr_6b/
“It all started with Andrew K Davis et al paper where they measured grip strength in monarchs using a force gauge. As Jessie proceeded to search where to buy such device, her engineer Uncle asked, “why not build it yourself?”
She began this operation by consulting the amazing @digital.naturalism.labs who successfully brought it to life! Later, Ernesto Bonadies from @biologickecentrumavcr suggested using sandpaper to standardize the friction of the gripping area as it has a defined numerical scale. Finally, the name and beautiful typescript came from our PhD student, Laura Hebberecht.”


This amazing device is just one example of the incredible things we can create when we use our creativity, intellect and most importantly, our collaborative spirit.

Tapir Enrichment Tree

At the APPC https://www.appcpanama.org/ the biggest animal we work with (in fact the largest land animal south of mexico in the americas!) is the Baird’s tapir. She is HUGE and STRONG and SMART and it can be very difficult to make toys for her that will last!

when Paula Te visited though, we re-taught ourselves how to weld and got busy making a big strong enrichment feeder for her!

How To Become An Amateur Biologist 103

Hey everyone!

The time flies here. On one hand that is a positive given but on the other hand it also means that time start getting short to work and finish my project. These past few weeks have been very fruitful. While Andy and Kitty were away to Sri Lanka to organise stuff for DinaCon, Serena, Jorge and I were ‘in charge’ of the Dinalab. Besides working on our projects, we had lots of dance parties, ice cream celebrations and movie nights.

After two and a half months with a lot of researching, experimenting and seeking inspiration, I decided to do my project here at Dinalab about Leafcutter Ants. With the concept of Umwelt in mind, I try to ga in a little bit more insight in how these ants perceive the(ir) world. Right now, I am experimenting with ‘sound’, or vibrations. Ants don’t make sounds through the air (air-borne), but through surfaces (substrate-borne). With the help of Lisa Schonberg (former DinaCon participant in 2019) I started exploring this with piezo microphones, which are surface microphones. The cool thing is that you can use piezo as a microphone and as a speaker! So besides recording, I am testing whether the Leafcutter ants will react to certain frequencies and changes in frequencies. So excited to find out what is coming from this! Maybe we will even be able to communicate with ants in the future… 🐜

Serena and I started working on our collaborative project under the name ‘Cool2’. We chose three main themes where we wanted to build the project around, which are Nature, Feminism and Arduino. From these themes we started creating a mindmap and picked out four keywords which spoke to us the most. Cycle, misunderstood, meaning and ruthless. Last week we got the idea to make a plant that shows you in which fase of your menstrual cycle you are in by the colour of LED lights. The LEDs will light up when you water or touch it. This is a new way to track your period and to simultaneously learn about periods. The thought behind this was sparked by the fact that a lot of women I know use a period tracker but are not consciously aware of the fase they are in. For example, sometimes I would get quite moody and sad and then in a week or less I get my period. Afterwards I am always like: ‘Oh now I understand, I just needed to get my period!’ What a relief 😉

In the time period when Kitty and Andy I kept on volunteering at the APPC. My love for the sloths grows stronger each day. They are just the cutest things ever! Especially Ingmar, the sloth I named after my supercute cousin. Such a kind soul 💕 New sloth fun fact by the way: sloths have four stomachs, just like cows. Also Mireya taught me a lot about the different plants that the sloths and Valencia the tapir eat. I learned to recognize poro poro, indio desnudo, jobo, cecropia, mango and berignon.

For a long time Andy has been working on trying to sense ants. This has been proven to be a difficult task because they are so tiny, fast and with so many. Andy made a 3D design for a simple ant gate where leafcutters can be sensed. The gate works with a light source (in this case a laser because a laser light is the most stable) and a photoresistor. Right now, the ant gate only works for ants with leaves. If I have time, I will try to make the ant gate better by making it more sensitive to smaller ants, and ants without leaves, as well. Anyway, it was a fun (side) project that involved leafcutters and Arduino!

Serena and I also organised a small Arduino workshop for some students are doing a project with a heart rate sensor and a GPS. We taught them the basics of Arduino and they learned it very quickly. Thank you Daniel and your group for joining us and being so enthusiastic and good students! Good luck with the project 🙂

Luckily there was also enough time to explore the beautiful nature that Gamboa has to offer. I took Serena for the first time to Pipeline Road and she was very happy as you can see in the picture. Last week Andy organised a night hike. It had been a long time since I had been on one so it was very nice to go on one again. We saw so many frogs and I saw my first treefrog! Andy says that you haven’t been to Panama if you haven’t seen one. So fortunately now I can say that I have been in Panama for real!!

And last but not least there was also a lot of time to do fun stuff with my Gamboa friends. We went bowling, partying in the city, watching series and movies and playing tennis and volleyball. For the week I also went to Bocas del Toro with Josie and had a super fun time!

The upcoming weeks I will be working very hard on finishing my project. It will be a lot of recording sounds and videos, experimenting with different sounds, frequencies and other stimuli and combining this to a meaningful endproduct. Hopefully the ants will cooperate and will I be able to share something very special, a glimpse of one part of the Umwelt of a Leafcutter Ant. Can’t wait to unravel the secret life of Leafcutter ant 🕵️‍♀️ I will be back…

Lieke

My First Night Hike in the Rainforest!

I initially arrived to Panama at night; during the drive from the airport to Gamboa, I heard the sounds of the rainforest in the dark for the very first time, and I felt awe of nature wash over me.

A couple of weeks into my time here, Andy organized a night hike. Thinking back to how I felt during that first drive from the airport, I was super excited for the opportunity to explore the jungle in the dark.

And what an incredible night this was! I mean, just look at all the cool creatures we saw!!

A highlight of the hike was when the whole group took a couple of moments to turn all our lights and headlamps off, allowing our eyes to adjust to the darkness. Within a few moments, your eyes will read more details in your surroundings, and the layers of the forest start to form; slowly, you begin to see the canopy, then the stream banks, then people’s silhouettes. Eventually, fine details that you don’t expect start coming through, like stream pebbles and people’s faces!  

One of my greatest takeaways from this experience is how rejuvenating exposure to nature can be, even when the expedition seems daunting. I would be lying if I said I was not a little nervous going into the rainforest at night, but the experience was actually grounding and regenerative. Given that I grew up near the Red Sea, the closest thing I could compare this hike to is a scuba dive or snorkeling trip; you take your time to wander a novel, incredibly biodiverse environment, pointing out all the cool creatures that you spot to the rest of the group.  

I feel inspired by all the cool patterns and textures we saw – the slimy Red Eyed Tree Frog egg clutches, dark canopy silhouettes, and infinite frog color combinations. I’m looking forward to returning to the Dinalab and incorporating these elements of nature into my work.

-Serena

When Do We Choose a Disciplinary “Box”?

Serena – Research Update 1:

One of my research goals is to better understand what students in the natural sciences have to navigate when they are interested in transdisciplinary (TD*) experiences. To do so, I’ve been talking to students who have multidisciplinary interests and are curious about integrating that into their science. During some of these discussions, we’ve been drafting journey maps of our learning experiences. Some guiding questions included:  

At which points in your learning journey did you feel like you had to choose a discipline to “belong” to? When did you start learning or internalizing disciplinary demarcations between science, art, humanities, design, technology, etc…?

Below you can see some of the sketchnotes drafted from these discussions. Do any of these reflections resonate with you? Can you think of when you felt the need to pick a discipline to box yourself into?

*TD: stands for “transdisciplinary”, referring to that which is at once between the disciplines, across the different disciplines, and beyond all discipline (Nicolescu, 1970)

Serena Joury

My name is Serena, and I’m the most recent addition to the Dinalab team of resident researchers! I’m a Palestinian Jordanian student at Drexel University (USA), and I’m incredibly lucky to be able to incorporate a three-month internship at the Dinalab for part of my undergraduate degree.

I’m looking forward to working with the Dinalab on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research in environmental science. My investigations primarily address the questions:

How can we empower students with the broad knowledge types needed to tackle complex sustainability issues? How do we teach and conduct environmental science when issues of rapid environmental degradation are intimately intertwined with social injustice, political disruption, and financial inequities?

This lab’s maker space in the rainforest is the ideal place for naturalists to diversify the lenses and skillsets used to approach environmental issues. For instance, I have been learning a lot about coding and Arduinos as tools for bringing humans closer to nature, and I look forward to seeing how these new skills inform my projects on science communication in the future.

Follow along to read about my reflections and process revelations in the jungle!

Taking time to play at DiNaLab

I was invited to spend two weeks in residency at DiNaLab in February. Ahead of my visit I had begun to meld my practices as a horticulturist and fiber artist into an exploration of crochet leaf studies. I decided to spend my time at DiNaLab furthering this exploration with the hope of making something new with the leaves. Kitty and I had been discussing the possibility of collaborating on a piece during my residency, as she is also a wonderful fiber artist. I love her amigurumi creatures and decided to make a home for some of them among a crochet leafy jungle. 

Fiber work can be a slow process (as can life) and I wasn’t able to make as many leaves as I would have liked. But in the end there were enough to make a nice home for a very cute sloth and a shimmery hummingbird, both knitted by Kitty. We made a headdress that one might wear as camouflage in the jungle or while rollerblading around Gamboa.  

I also learned a new skill at DiNaLab: using a laser cutter. I was really inspired by Andy and Kitty’s plastic projects. I love their keychain and earring designs and decided to take a crack at my own. Andy helped me create a two-layer papaya design to turn into earrings. I also repurposed some of Kitty and Andy’s existing designs to make new jewelry. I was able to pull off a mini collection in my time there and then got to collaborate with DiNaLab intern Lieke on a tropical photoshoot. 

DiNaLab was the perfect place to be after a very long and stressful pandemic experience in New York City. Each morning I sat in the yard with my coffee, watching the menagerie of critters: ñekes, toucans, chachalacas, iguanas, sloths, hummingbirds, and even one blue morpho butterfly who seemed to have a regular daily commute. I spent a lot of time staring at the leaves around me, noticing the subtle changes in colors, the curves in their forms, the way the light changed them completely. After two plus years of frantically trying to keep afloat during the pandemic, slowing that far down reset the chemistry in my brain. 

It’s rare to find folks as welcoming and supportive as Andy and Kitty. It was a delight to spend time making and talking about fiber art with Kitty. And being around Andy as he tinkers and explores his various projects was exciting and inspiring. Gamboa itself is an inspiring setting with the dense tropical forest and abundant wildlife. It was hard to find the emotional space to be creative during the worst of the pandemic. At DiNaLab I felt my head once again beginning to swirl with ideas.