My class travelled to a lowland neotropical rainforest in northeastern Costa Rica. The field station we went to, La Suerte Biological Field Station, is located on the Rio Suerte which flows into the Caribbean sea. It includes a wide range of habitats and is teeming with life. The station is home to 3 different species of monkeys (howler, capuchin, and spider), toucans, macaws, poison dart frogs, iguanas, snakes, and thousands of insect and plant species.
When I look back on this trip, it starts to resemble a vacation. However, we actually did a lot of work, and I did get a grade. The school part of the experience wasn't monotonous or boring though. It required us to go out into the forest and take data on a project we got to choose for ourselves. Not too shabby. Although I secretly loved the monkeys, I decided early on in the course that sprinting through the forest (off trail) at 5 AM chasing those elusive capuchins wasn't for me. I went onto the field station website and looked at the conveniently provided species list. Probably the most difficult thing about this course was that all of our research had to be done before we even got to the station, at least for me. We had to jump right into our projects because of time constraints, so I needed to learn all about my topic of choice ahead of time.
So I end up on the website, and see a bunch of Latin words, indicating the family, species, and genus of all the different animals at the station. I start copy-and-pasting into Google, and come across the two species of poison-dart frogs. I was instantly drawn to the cute and colorful little frogs, and decided to research them.
After many frustrating editing sessions and countless hours of research, I decided to base my project on the conspicuous behavior of the frogs vs. their coloration. If you're curious, this article explains it well.
