Meeting Tuesday, September 9 at 4:45 p.m. in Cheray 301
For students interested in enrolling in BI 250: Tropical Ecology, a 2-credit study tour to Costa Rica, come to the meeting to learn more and pick up an application. The course consists of five pre-trip meetings this Fall semester and a trip to Costa Rica over the Christmas break this winter. The class is capped at 10 students who will go to Costa Rica for 12 days with Professors Peter Hope and Doug Green to study tropical ecology.
Costa Rica has a Caribbean and a Pacific coast and mountains over 12,000 feet which greatly influence its climate and helps support an incredible diversity of ecosystems which in turn support an incredible amount of biodiversity, including over 820 species of birds. The first ecosystem visited will be a lowland rain forest at Selva Verde, where on the last trip two years ago, howler monkeys were so abundant one student group did an observational study on the behavior of one troop. Also abundant at the area were two species of poison dart frogs and many colorful bird species including three species of toucans.
The second area visited will be Monteverde Cloud Forest a misty, verdant midelevation forest with over 870 species of epiphytes, plants growing on other plants. The abundant hummingbirds in the area inspired one student group on the last study tour to study the interactions of the different species at some feeders at the preserve’s edge.