Headed to Ecuador!

It's late on Thursday night (technically Friday morning) and I'm headed to the airport in about 6 hours. We've spent the last week gathering equipment for our research projects, finalizing the protocols and making sure everyone has visas and yellow fever vaccines and copies of their passport and the like. Paul, one of the other graduate students 'in charge' flew down last week to get things set up. David (a lecturer at UW) and I will be flying down with the 8 students tomorrow and staying in Quito tomorrow night. We'll buy rubber boots (everyone wears rubber boots in the tropics, they say) and last minute equipment, then head over Papallecta Pass (4000 m) to the east side of the Andes. We'll be at Yanayacu biological station (www. yanayacu.org) for about 10 days conducting our experiments on dung beetles. The students have developed the experiments themselves under the greater topic of examing species diversity along an altitudinal gradient. The literature they've read has shown human dung to be the most attractive, so they're going to use it for their traps. Yup. We'll all have to contribute to the dung supply. There'll be nothing secret about our bowel movements on this trip. Hopefully we'll attract lots of beetles and come up with some interesting results. After all this hard work, we'll have 4 days at Sani Lodge in the Amazon (near Coca, Ecuador). It's just rest and relaxation before flying back to Quito for one last night and then back to the states on August 11. I'll try to post some pictures while I'm down there, but my internet connection might be limited. More stories to come, I'm sure.... Haldre