Friday, December 13, 2019

Friday, December 13th

Today was a long, long, long day. We started out immediately after breakfast and didn’t get done until just an hour before dinner. We had to count plants in 11 transects to replicate the study done last year. We managed to do counts in 5 or 6 transects before lunch, and we were able to complete the rest of the transects after lunch! Thank goodness another mentor, Mandy, came to help us count - I don’t think we could have finished it in time without her.

Topside view of the shampoo ginger’s inflorescence.  

Today was almost entirely field work, so not a whole lot of interesting things happened. The most interesting thing to me would be how the numbers this year compare to the numbers from last year and from the original study in 2007. Overall, we’re seeing an incredible increase in plant numbers. Although, we won’t know the actual numbers or comparisons until we start compiling our data - which we should begin doing tomorrow, and continue doing throughout next week!

1 comment:

  1. Beautiful photo, Nicole! It would be interesting to do a study on herbivory and/or disease trends in Zingiber spectabile from year to year to see whether natural controls are kicking in yet.

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Thursday, December 19th

Today was a very fun day! It was our last breakfast at the station, and afterwards we started the long journey back to San Jose. We stopped ...