Rearing site for Cerambycids

AGRADECIMIENTO

Mi agradecimiento a aquellos de ustedes que me contactó acerca de una pasantía o proyecto de tesis de pregrado. Sara piensa que, debido a la dificultad de identificación de las escarabajos, se trata de un mejor proyecto para un estudiante en la programa de maestría. Pero agradezco tu interés!

Introducing Sara Pinzón-Navarro:

Sara takes over the rearing cages!

Sara recently received her Ph.D. through the Natural History Museum and the Imperial College (UK). She has already published the results of pioneering studies on Neotropical weevils: she used DNA sequences to identify the immature stages of seed-feeding weevils, and she used chloroplast primers to amplify plant DNA from trap-collected weevils to provide information about their host plant associations. 

Here is Sara in Spain, showing off the exit hole made by Curculio sp. in an acorn! Now that she is in charge of the rearing, I expect to see a lot more weevils....

But I also like her snapshot of Neoclytus cf columbianus, waiting to get out of the cage...

Panama Beetle UPDATE

As soon as we got back to Amplification Site 7, towards the end of May, I knew that the trees we felled in March were full of beetle larvae. How did I know? Because they were loaded with predators:

assassin bugs

lycid and click beetles

and robber flies...

...as well as parasitic wasps!

...not to mention cerambycids like this beautiful Callipogon lemoinei (check out those furry mandibles, and thanks to Anonymous for the ID).

Basilio, who had helped his father cut down the trees, came along to relocate them and retrieve the branches. We were a skeleton crew; luckily Roman (in the white hard hat) joined us for the last few days.   

After the branch sections had been collected, we still had to wrangle them onto the boat...

...and off again, 

at the Smithsonian Pier in Gamboa. The Gamboa Lodge boat captain, who must (literally) have the coolest job in Panama, helped. Each morning, while we were in the forest, Hector Barrios picked up the previous day's branches and brought them to our rearing site.

Here is Roman building our funky little Casa de Crianza, next to the frog house:

By the time I left, on June 15, over 200 cerambycids, in 25 species, had already emerged!

STAY TUNED to hear from Dr. Sara Pinzon, a recently minted Panamanian Ph.D., who has taken on the task of monitoring all of those rearing cages... 

Preparing to Rear Beetles!

Before leaving Panama, we searched for a good spot to keep the rearing cages. We found a nice shady spot in Gamboa, right next to the STRI frog facility. According to Raineldo Urriola, the Scientific Coordinator, this area is protected from contemporary insect spraying. 

I believe it, because I looked underneath the bark of a nearby fallen tree, and found cerambycid larvae!

Joyce Fassbender, a CUNY Ph.D. student who will be collaborating with Hector on the weevils, is cutting out no-seeum netting that will be used to construct hundreds and hundreds of rearing cages! The linoleum floor at AMNH makes a great grid for measuring the netting...

Panama Canal Amplification Sites 6 & 7

Within one month of my first email communications with Hector, six of the eight sites scheduled to be inundated had already been clear-cut, but we obtained permission from the Panama Canal Authority to conduct our study at "Site 7," which would not be clear-cut until July 2010. The first time we visited our research site Hortensia Broce, from the Canal Authority, came along to show us where to work. 
The top photo shows "Site 6" after it was clear-cut. The second photo shows "Site 7," our research site, covered by secondary forest approximately 80 years old.

Amplification Work Crew

Our Amplification work crew included Chris Roddick (Brooklyn Botanic Garden), Teofilo (Master tree cutter), Andreas Hernandez (botanist from Barro Colorado Island), Basilio (Teofilo's son and assistant), Hector Barrios (University of Panama, STRI), and Amy Berkov (City College, AMNH, taking the photos).

Andreas identified trees 

and lianas representing 

36 species in 25 families.

Teofilo and Basilio 
beat the bulldozers to the punch, 

and cut down more
than 60 trees.

Chris and Hector worked together

...to suspend 60 "canopy snacks" in three nursery trees.

Plant Vouchers

We prepared plant vouchers to be deposited at the University of Panama and STRI, and collected wood samples to use for measurements of wood density and moisture content.

Amy pressed plants

Basilio collected the wood samples

But would the beetles come???

My job was to fret. I had received warnings that in Panama insects would not be active until the rainy season started. The forest was much drier than others where I've worked, and did indeed seem poor in insects-- other than ants. I remembered that when I went for my travel shots, I learned that the CDC didn't even recommend malaria prophylaxis in the Canal Zone. I wondered what had happened, because didn't many canal workers die from malaria and yellow fever? How could they have managed to eradicate the mosquitoes so efficiently without affecting other insects as well???

WHAT IF THE BEETLES DIDN'T COME TO OUR TREES???

As usual, I was fretting for naught. Three days after we started the cut we saw, among others, Zygops cf histrio (on Terminalia), Megacyllene cf nevermanni, Neoclytus cf columbianus (also on Terminalia), and Steirastoma histrionica (on Gustavia).