Azores Day 3

Our third day on the Azores was also our longest. We were off at 8 AM to travel all the way across the island to Serra da Tronqueira near Nordeste. This area is the last remaining habitat for the Azores Bullfinch, a Sao Miguel endemic. The species has suffered in the past from loss of its Laurisilva forest habitat due to the planting of Cryptomeria japonica as well as other factors. The world's population is a mere 1200–1500 pairs.  

Cryptomeria japonica was planted as a source of timber and forms thick, dark forests where the Bullfinch's native food plants cannot grow. A recent project has allowed clearing of an area of Cryptomeria and the area has been replanted with native tree species of the Laurisilva forest. Many of the plants of the Laurisilva forest are endemic to the Azores (a few examples are shown below).

We have been monitoring the vegetation of this area since 2008, and today we visited for our annual Plymouth University survey to see how the trees were growing and assess the other species present. Invasive species are a big problem in the Azores, and the team managing this area has been fighting hard to control several aggresive plants like the ginger lily, Hedychium gardnerianum. Nevertheless, native species have also been arriving over the years, including several endemic species.

Once we had completed the survey, we visited one of the few remaining bits of mature laurisilva forest. Some of the group decided to walk most of the way home along the forest track. Although not everyone saw the endemic bullfinch, quite a few people did. We estimated that at least ten bullfinches were seen today. Not bad given the number of people and the noise!

The reforestation area with Cryptomeria in the background

Paul helping students monitor their plots

Surveying plots (not standing round 'onest guv)

Who knew you could have so much fun with string and a tape measure on a mountain?

Laurisilva forest on Pico da Vara

Priôlo (Azores Bullfinch)

Laurus azorica

Juniperus brevifolia

Vaccinium cylindraceum

Ilex perado ssp. azorica

Erica azorica

Paul "Thor" Ramsay wields his mighty hammer.

Not quite Rio...

One of the survey teams, possibly the most thorough... or maybe the slowest.

Azores Day 2

Day 2 saw our trip to the town of Furnas, the most geologically active part of the island. Students took some water samples to look for Cyanobacterial blooms from the lake (which showed clear signs of a significant bloom that was probably just finishing). We also looked around some of the clear boilers and mud pots where water, heated by geothermal activity, rises to the surface. Some people use this geothermal activity to cook food in holes in the ground!

The first stop on the tour was the caldera lake in the crater. Several of the students took their water samples, and everyone had a chance to look around the boiling pools and see some of the characteristic formations produced by the water chemistry and extremophiles.

Geothermal area

Deposits of sulfur

Furnas Lake

Ferric hydroxide deposits formed by iron oxidising Bacteria

From the lake, we moved on to the town of Furnas where there are many boilers and mud pots, as well as springs that deliver waters of varying taste (some horribly sulphurous). During a tour of the town, we took more water samples and took notes on the biology of the thermal springs.

Briefing in Aunty Silvia's foot spa.

Looking at extremophile communities near the
Furnas microbiological observatory.

Sacks of maize cooking in a thermal pool, and adding
organic material to water that normally does not contain
it. This has serious consequences for some of the
organisms that live downstream.

Hillside constructed from silicate deposits produced
over many, many years by microbial action.

Caldeira grande

One of the many pools in Furnas.

     

The mineral water springs have different temperatures, water chemistry and
biological characteristics.

Then it was on to the Furnas Botanic Gardens to look at their collection of endemic plants in preparation for tomorrow's survey of a Laurisilva forest restoration scheme. There was also the opportunity for a quick swim in the thermal pool (and take a few water samples for analysis later in the lab).

Looking at endemic plants

 

  

  

Thermal swimming pool at Furnas Botanic Garden.

Azores race of Goldcrest

Finally, we returned to the university to eat, where a Lesser Yellowlegs (a vagrant American species) was frequenting the ponds in the gardens. 

Azores Field Course Day 1

Some of us are currently on the Azorean island of São Miguel with the second year BSc Biological Sciences and Environmental Biology students. The field course concentrates on various aspects of island biology with particular emphasis on anthropogenic effects as well as on the unique micobiological fauna of the area.

We will try to post some brief updates daily to show readers what kinds of things we are up to.

One of the activities on the first day is to set up a suitable sampling strategy for monitoring the caterpillars of the moth Pseudaletia unipuncta. These can be a pest on the island eating valuable pasture land. As much of the local farming economy relies on dairy cattle, grass losses to the caterpillars can influence yields.

Monitoring of Pseudaletia unipuncta caterpillars

The second activity of the day is also related (partly) to dairy farming and consists of taking water samples from the caldeira lakes Lagoa Verde and Lagoa Azul at Sete Cidades. Run off from dairy pastures can increase the possibility of eutrophication of these lakes and can contribute to cyanobacterial blooms. Water samples will be analysed later in the week for cyanobacteria and the presence of faecal bacteria.

Measuring lake pH in Lagoa Azul, Sete Cidades

Team Photo overlooking Mosteiros

Finding leopard kill sites with GPS collars

Ross baiting a tree with a wildebeest leg in an attempt to
catpure a leopard for collaring.
Photo:

Ross Tyzack Pitman has just completed  his undergraduate Conservation Biology course with us. His final-year project used a combination of GPS collars and computer analysis to identify potential leopard feeding sites, followed by painstaking fieldwork to visit the sites for confirmation. The project was submitted for marking four months early, so that work could begin on a paper for publication. This paper has just been accepted by the Journal of Zoology.

The paper was co-authored with Lourens Swanepoel (University of Pretoria) and Paul Ramsay (here in Plymouth). The paper is not yet published but should appear in the Early View section of the journal’s webpage before it finally finds its way into the journal.

OPAL South-West Gets Further Funding

The OPAL South-West team, based with Biological Sciences at Plymouth, are delighted to announce that the project has been granted further funding to continue its work engaging communities in researching their local environments.

Over the past five years OPAL South-West has worked to bring together scientists, amateur-experts, local interest groups and the public, to enable people to explore and understand their local environments. The project has engaged over 19,000 people in surveys of soil quality, air quality, freshwater quality, biodiversity and invertebrate populations, helping to develop a greater understanding about the relevance of environmental issues in people’s lives and inspiring an interest in ecology. Hundreds of schools have taken part as well as students and the general public. The additional funding from the Big Lottery was awarded to projects able to demonstrate exceptional impact on the communities engaged with their work.

Carly Benefer’s Seale-Hayne Education Trust Success



Agriotes spp: Adult click beetle and their larval "wireworms"



Carly Benefer, a post-doctoral researcher in the Biological Sciences Group, and I have just received funding from the Seale-Hayne Education Trust to develop molecular markers to study the distribution of click beetle larvae (wireworms) in agricultural land. 

Worldwide wireworms are economically important pests which live in the soil and consume crop roots, but we currently only have very poor information on their dispersal and distribution. We will use next generation sequencing technology for rapid, high coverage sequencing of DNA for three important UK species, from which microsatellite loci will be identified and optimised for use in population genetics studies. 

OPAL Celebratory Event

On Monday 23rd April from 6 to 9pm we will be holding a Celebration Evening for OPAL South West where we will be celebrating the fantastic work the project has undertaken over the last 5 years, with displays from schools and community organisations who have taken part. We would also like to thank our amazing volunteers who have made this all possible.
The evening will begin at 6:30pm in the Roland Levinsky Building with some short speeches, stands from environmental and community organisations and OPAL exhibits. There will be wine, soft drinks and nibbles, and the winners of the OPAL Wildlife & Nature Photography Competition will be announced. There will then be a special viewing of the photography exhibition for everyone attending. This will be a good opportunity to meet people working in the environmental sector too!
This event is to mark the achievements of the project in engaging communities with the natural world and to bring together those involved in continuing this work for the future. We are also very pleased to announce that OPAL will be continuing work beyond our original end date of May 30th, having received additional funding from the Lottery!
This is a public event so please feel welcome to bring friends and to attend whether you have volunteered with us or not.
Many thanks,
Maria Donkin ( OPAL Project Leader ) and Alison Smith ( OPAL Community Scientist )
OPAL, School of Biomedical & Biological Sciences, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus PL4 8AA

Prestigious Monica Cole Research Grant awarded to Biological Sciences PhD Student



John with a venomous Malabar pit viper (Trimeresurus
malabaricus) on a previous visit to India. The snake is not
deadly although we wouldn't recommend doing this at home!

 C. John Thorpe-Dixon, a PhD student within the Biological Sciences Group, has just won a  Monica Cole Research Grant from the Royal Geographical Society. Only one award is granted per year so this is quite an achievement. John started his PhD in October and is studying the Biodiversity and biogeography of the Indian Western Ghats. His PhD is supervised by Drs Mairi Knight and Dave Bilton (Plymouth University) along with Dr Aparne Watve of the Biome Conservation Foundation, Pune). John has only just returned from a highly successul initial visit to India where he met up with Dr Watve and, among others, officials from the University of Pune, and the Indian Institute of Science.  He is now back in the UK and planning his up-coming data collection trip in June 2012 which will be partly financed by the Monica Cole award.

Quito's Good Friday Penitential Procession

The Pentential Procession makes
its way down one of Quito's
colonial streets, with the famous
Virgin Mary statue on an
overlooking hilltop.

I am currently in Quito, Ecuador. I've been working at the Pontificial Catholic University of Ecuador, giving classes to a group of MSc Conservation Biology students here, and carrying out a variety of research projects in the Andes. Soon, I'm off to the mountains for some fieldwork, but right now it's Easter and I have a few days off.

Fieldwork abroad is a chance to learn a language and see something of other cultures. Good Fridays in Quito
 are famous for the "Penitential Procession". It's calmed down a bit these days, but basically thousands of people process through the streets to demonstrate publically their devotion and to give penance for their sins. Many thousands more (including me) go to watch their suffering.

Some people dress as Jesus and drag along a heavy cross. THere is usually a wide range of beards on offer (including a few recycled Santa Claus versions), and an occasional Roman soldier accompanying Jesus, whipping him from time to time. People from the crowd sometimes lend Jesus a hand, but mostly the idea is that the person does it him- or herself as penitence.

Purple robes typify the procession.

Other people strap spiny cacti to their backs, wrap themselves in barbed wire, whip themselves, drag chains behind them from their ankles. All this is quite a spectable, with the public dashing in front of the participants to take photos of their grimaces and/or blood. Film crews interview people along the way
 (like our London Marathon). The backdrop of the often steep streets of colonial Quito--a UNESCO World Heritage Site--adds to the spectacle.

TV crews broadcast the procession
to the nation.

It is also a chance to get Catholic icons out of the churches and take them through the streets. Mostly in this case, we are talking about statues of Jesus carrying the cross, but the odd virgin also makes an appearance. The whole procession ends, several hours after it starts, with the famous statue of "Jesus of Great Power"
 from the church of San Francisco.

Several times I have been to the equivalent in Mexico City. In many ways it is very similar: lots of suffering and a big crowd (in the millions, there). It has the extra attraction of a passion play, telling the story of Jesus' crucification, and acted out in the streets by people from the local community. It even ends with the real crucification of Jesus and two theives on a nearby hill. Quito's version benefits from a more intimate atmosphere.

Some participants strap
spiny cacti to their
backs, others carry
heavy crosses.

Some people need to take some air from
time to time.

Could this "thief" be doing
penitence for actual robbery?

Jesus de Gran Poder is a
famous statue, not just because
of its religious significance, but
also for its artistic merit. The
appearance of this statue marks
the end of the procession

In the past, Quito's Penitential Procession was a very bloody affair. People would genuinely cut themselves, whip the skin from their backs, and burn themselves with candles. Several of my friends in Quito refuse to go to watch because of haunting memories of previous processions.


This year, I felt things were less extreme, though still pretty hard to understand for me. But then I am not a religious person, and I go to these things for cultural tourism. It reminded me that, for all its trappings of the modern world, Quito still has a bit of the medieval about it.

This "Jesus" dragged his cross for 4-5 hours through the
steep streets of Quito. His face tells the story.

Paul Ramsay at a climate change monitoring workshop in Ecuador

I am in Quito, Ecuador, for a few weeks, combining research and teaching. Last week, I was one of a number of people working together in a workshop for the GLORIA climate change in mountains project. We were a small group from the northern and central Andes, representing monitoring efforts in Colombia, Ecuador, Perú and Bolivia. The idea of the workshop was to work through issues with data collection and to identify tricky plants that remained a mystery.

Segundo Chimbolema (Randi Randi) working
on his collection of mysterious high-altitude ferns.
Segundo will be working with two Plymouth
students on placement in Ecuador next year.

Sisimac Duchicela (CONDESAN) with her collection
of plants from the Pichincha Volcano. Sisimac is
currently applying to Plymouth to do a PhD on
high-altitude forest ecology.

Given that the Tropical Andes is the world's hottest hotspot for plant diversity, working through the difficult groups is not at all easy. But we made good progress, with the help of the keen and knowledgeable participants, and the wonderful resources at the herbarium of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador.

Rosa Isela Meneses (National Herbaium, La Paz) working through
everyone's grass speciments--and loving every minute of it!

Now, everyone has returned home, but the monitoring goes on. Of course, mountains are among the first to show signs of changes in biodiversity as a result of climate change. The Andes have lots of endemic plants living at high altitudes, so knowing what is going on with their habitats is crucial to their conservation. Time will tell...

Trip to Dartmoor Zoo

Students went on a visit to Dartmoor Zoo on the 22nd March, and became a bit star struck when they saw Ben Mee  in the zoo cafe. His life is now the subject of a film starring Matt Damon and Scarlett Johanssen: 'We Bought A Zoo'.

Here they are in front of the film poster with Ben

The whole day was brilliant, we had a dissection 'show and tell' from Andy, who enthused the students with his knowledge of the role of the Dartmoor Pony in conservation, and welfare issues and anatomy in horses (an interesting combination!).