High school students bring electricity to our scientific stations

John Clark and his Lawrenceville School students deliver a “We Share Solar Suitcase” to me in Banos. They then took it to our Cerro Candelaria scientific station and installed it.

 

[Traduccion en espanol abajo]

My last post described the visit of a large group of Lawrenceville School students to our Cerro Candelaria Reserve to help Drs John Clark (who holds the Aldo Leopold Distinguished Teaching Chair there) and David Neill (professor at the Universidad Estatal Amazonica) do a careful tree biodiversity census of a reference plot they established in the forest. One of their other goals was to set up a solar energy system in the reserve, applying what they had learned about sustainable energy at their school. They brought down two “We Share Solar” kits for us (and one for a station run by the Universidad Estatal Amazonica), donated by the We Care Solar foundation through their Solar Education Program. They call these kits “solar suitcases”.

Student Megan Kucker wrote about her experience of Ecuador and the class gift of solar energy:

Megan Kucker (left) and Eloise White celebrating after their difficult two-day climb to the top of Cerro Candelaria.

“…It is one thing to read about living in a developing country, but actually experiencing it is entirely different…Throughout the winter term of my Honors Environmental Science course, taught by the leader of the Ecuador trip, Dr. (John L.) Clark taught us about different energy sources and the impact each source has on the environment. Through a project set up by the We Share Solar Education Program, our class constructed portable solar units called We Share Solar Suitcases, which we took with us to Ecuador. To construct these units, we split into groups of four to wire parts, screw them together, and create a working circuit that could distribute electricity from a solar panel. Each unit includes a cell phone charger, a battery charger for AAA or AA batteries, and outlets for 12V DC devices. The systems we built include 80 watt solar panels and a 12-amp-hour lithium battery. The life span for these systems is about 25 years with battery changes every few years. By learning the benefits of solar energy during class – and then later having an opportunity to build the system – I was able to understand exactly how to keep our environment clean, while supplying energy and power.”

“Dr. Clark inspired me to be a part of the trip to Ecuador. During our classes leading up to the trip, he told students numerous stories – and showed us pictures – of his past explorations in Ecuador. I had a hard time sleeping during the nights leading up to the trip because I was so excited by what Dr. Clark had told us about Ecuador. I couldn’t wait to begin my journey.”

The class delivers and begins to set up the kit at the station.

“Along with a lot of other gear for the expedition, we brought three portable solar systems that my class had constructed. We delivered the solar suitcases to three locations. The first solar suitcase was destined for the Zuñac Reserve. The second suitcase we carried and installed in Candelaria Reserve in the cabin where we stayed for most of our course. One of our guides (who I now consider a friend), Jesus Darwin, was overjoyed when he was able to charge his phone so he could take more pictures while we were in the jungle. As a side note, his full name is Jesus Darwin Recalde, but everyone calls him “Darwin” because his dad goes by “Jesus.” Our other guides were also pleased with the units because they could cook at night under lights and they had a source of electricity to charge their cameras and headlamps. [Note added by LJ: Also laptops! Scientific instruments! Remote video monitoring of the forest! Maybe internet and wildlife webcams to reveal this forest’s secrets and help guard it from poachers! It is a huge step forward for scientific and conservation work in this remote wilderness.] The third suitcase was delivered to Yankuam, a newly established reserve that will be directed by Dr. David Neil from the Universidad Estatal Amazónica.”

Darwin Recalde wires the station.

“Throughout the week at Candelaria Reserve, I was able to see the impact the solar suitcase that I helped construct had on everyone in the camp and our guides. Building the units during class in New Jersey was fun, but getting them into the hands of people who would ultimately use them on a daily basis filled me with pride. I loved being involved with a project that had a long-term impact.”

Juan Pablo Reyes, our reserve manager, helps with the installation. Electricity means many more new options for investigation and teaching!

“Travelling to Ecuador this spring was probably the best experience of my life. Not only did I bond with amazing people from a different culture, but I had the unique opportunity to contribute to the ongoing energy needs in remote rainforests of Ecuador.”

Thank you John, and the Lawrenceville School students, and the We Care Solar foundation!!! You’ve transformed our humble stations into real science laboratories. You’ve also made our work much safer, since we can now stay in good communication with the world in case of emergency.

Lou Jost
EcoMinga Foundation

John gives me the second Solar Suitcase, for our Rio Zunac Reserve. How exciting! Electricity is needed for almost any kind of advanced biological research, so this opens new horizons for us and will certainly lead to many new discoveries.

Estudiantes de escuela secundaria traen electricidad a nuestras estaciones científicas

 

IMG 01.- John Clark y sus estudiantes de la Escuela Secundaria Lawrenceville me entregan un “We Share Solar Suitcase” en Baños. Ellos después la llevan a nuestra estación científica Cerro Candelaria y la instalan.

 

Mi última publicación describió la visita de un gran grupo de la Escuela Secundaria Lawrenceville a nuestra Reserva Cerro Candelaria para ayudar a los doctores John Clark (quien ocupa la cátedra de Enseñanza Distinguida Aldo Leopold) y David Neill (profesor en la Universidad Estatal Amazónica) a realizar un cuidadoso censo de biodiversidad de árboles de una parcela de referencia que establecieron en el bosque. Uno de sus otros objetivos fue configurar un sistema de energía solar en la reserva, aplicando lo que ellos habían aprendido sobre energía sostenible en su escuela. Nos trajeron dos kits “We Share Solar” (y uno para una estación de la Universidad Estatal Amazónica), donada por la fundación We Care Solar a través de su Programa de Educación solar. Ellos llaman a estos kits “maletines solares”.

 

La estudiante Megan Kucker escribió acerca de su experiencia en Ecuador y el regalo de la energía solar por parte de la clase

 

IMG 02.- Megan Kucker (izquierda) y Eloise White celebrando después de su complicado ascenso de dos días a la cumbre de Cerro Candelaria. 

 

“… Es una cosa leer acerca de vivir en un país en vías de desarrollo, pero realmente experimentarlo es completamente diferente… durante todo el periodo invernal de mi Curso de Honores en Ciencias Ambientales, dictado por el líder del viaje a Ecuador, el Dr. (John L.) Clark nos enseñó acerca de diferentes fuentes de energía y el impacto que cada fuente tiene en el ambiente. A través de un proyecto configurado por el Programa Compartimos Educación Solar, nuestra clase construyó unidades solares portátiles llamadas “We Share Solar Suitcases”, las cuales llevamos a Ecuador. Para construir estas unidades, nos dividimos en grupos de cuatro para cablear las partes, atornillarlos juntos, y crear un circuito que funciona que podría distribuir electricidad desde un panel solar. Cada unidad incluye un cargador de celular, un cargador de baterías AAA o AA, y enchufes de 12V DC. El sistema que construimos incluye paneles solares de 80 watt y una batería de litio de 12-amp-hora. La duración de estos sistemas es de casi 25 años con cambios de batería cada pocos años. Aprendiendo los beneficios de la energía solar durante las clases – y luego teniendo la oportunidad de construir el sistema – fui capaz de entender exactamente como mantener nuestro ambiente limpio, mientras suministraba energía.”

 

El Dr. Clark me inspiró para ser parte del viaje a Ecuador. Durante nuestras clases previas al viaje, les contó a los estudiantes varias historias – y nos mostró imágenes – de sus pasadas exploraciones en Ecuador. Me costó mucho dormir durante las noches previas al viaje porque estaba muy emocionada por lo que el Dr. Clark nos había contado sobre Ecuador. No podía esperar para comenzar mi viaje.”

 

IMG 03.- La clase entrega y comienza a preparar el kit en la estación. 

 

“Junto con muchos otros equipos para la expedición, trajimos tres sistemas solares portátiles que había construido mi clase. Entregamos los maletines solares en tres localidades. El primer maletín solar fue destinada a la Reserva Zuñac. El segundo maletín solar la llevamos e instalamos en la Reserva Candelaria, en la cabaña donde nos quedamos la mayor parte de nuestro curso. Uno de nuestros guías (a quien ahora considero un amigo), Jesus Darwin, estaba lleno de alegría cuando fue capaz de cargar su teléfono celular, de modo que él podía tomar más fotografías mientras estábamos en la selva. Como nota al margen, su nombre completo es Jesús Darwin Recalde, pero todos lo llaman “Darwin” porque su padre se llama “Jesús”. Nuestros otros guías también estaban encantados con las unidades porque podrían cocinar en la noche con luces y tenían una fuente de electricidad para cargar sus cámaras y faros. [Nota añadida por Lou Jost: ¡También laptops! ¡Instrumentos científicos! ¡Monitoreo del bosque por video remoto! ¡Talvez internet y cámaras web de vida silvestre para revelar estos secretos del bosque y ayudar a protegerlo de los cazadores furtivos! Es un gran paso adelante para el trabajo científico y de conservación en esta remota área silvestre.]. El tercer maletín fue entregado a Yankuam, una reserva recientemente establecida que será dirigida por Dr. David Neil de la Universidad Estatal Amazónica.”

 

IMG 04.- Darwin Recalde cablea la estación

 

“A lo largo de la semana en la Reserva Candelaria, pude ver el impacto que tuvo el maletín solar que ayudé a construir, tuvo en todos en el campamento y en nuestros guías. Construir las unidades durante la clase en Nueva Jersey fue divertido, pero ponerlas en manos de personas que finalmente las usarían a diario me llenaba de orgullo. Me encantó estar involucrada con un proyecto que tuvo un impacto a largo plazo.” 

 

IMG 05.- Juan Pablo Reyes, nuestro gerente de la reserva, nos ayuda con la instalación. ¡La electricidad significa muchas más opciones para investigación y enseñanza!

 

“Viajar a Ecuador esta primavera, fue probablemente la mejor experiencia de mi vida. No solo me vinculé con personas increíbles de una cultura diferente, sino que tuve la oportunidad única de contribuir a las necesidades energéticas actuales en los bosques lluviosos tropicales remotos de Ecuador”

 

¡¡¡Gracias a John, y a los estudiantes de la Escuela Secundaria Lawrenceville, y a la fundación We Care Solar!!! Ustedes han transformado nuestras humildes estaciones en laboratorios de ciencia real. También han hecho que nuestro trabajo sea mucho más seguro, ya que ahora podemos mantenernos bien comunicados con el mundo en caso de emergencia. 

 

IMG 06.- John me entrega el segundo maletín solar, para nuestra Reserva Río Zuñac. ¡Qué emocionante! La electricidad se necesita para casi cualquier tipo de investigación biológica avanzada, así que esto abre nuevos horizontes para nosotros y sin duda conducirá a muchos nuevos descubrimientos. 

 

Lou Jost, Fundación EcoMinga

Traducción: Salomé Solórzano-Flores

TWO new Magnolia species discovered in our Rio Zunac Reserve!

I’m excited to announce two of the most spectacular plant discoveries made so far in our reserves: two magnificent new species of Magnolia trees!

New species, Magnolia vargasiana ined. The stamens fell off onto the petals as the flower opened. A pollinating beetle is visible near the tip of the lower-right petal. Photo: Lou Jost/EcoMinga.

New species, Magnolia llangantensis ined. Photo: Lou Jost/EcoMinga.

Everyone who knows about trees has heard of magnolias, and most people have seen the stately white-flowered Magnolia grandiflora tree, iconic symbol of the southeastern US, and widely grown around the world as an ornamental. It is hard to imagine that trees in this dramatic genus remain undiscovered. The discovery of two new magnolia species in one small area in the Rio Zunac Reserve is a testament to the very special character of the very wet Cordillera Abitagua, semi-isolated granite mountains separating the main body of the Andes from the immense flat Amazon basin. These two new magnolia species are on the same trail as the spectacular new tree Meriania aurata which was discovered here a few years ago.

The magnolia discoveries were first made by botanists John Clark (University of Alabama), David Neill (Universidad Estatal Amazonica), and their students, who came to our Rio Zunac field station in May 2014 to set up two research plots in the forest:

University of Alabama students, Universidad Estatal Amazonica students, Drs John Clark and David Neill, and our guards at our Rio Zunac field station. John is center bottom in white shirt, David is directly behind him. Photo: John Clark.

Their goal was to identify and tag every tree over 10 cm in diameter in each of these two quarter-hectare plots, one plot at 1850 m elevation and the other 2 km away at about 2000m elevation. In the process of identifying each tree in the two plots, they found a few individuals of trees that were vegetatively identifiable as magnolias. Some of them were among the biggest trees in the forest, but they were completely unknown to the local people, who did not have a name for them. Surprisingly, the magnolias in the first plot had quite different leaves from the ones in the second plot. Since there were no known magnolia species in the area at those elevations, David and John suspected these both might be new species. But flowers or fruits were needed in order to be sure.

Some of John Clark’s and David Neill’s students setting up the boundaries of their study plots in our Rio Zunac Reserve, assisted by EcoMinga’s Luis Recalde (light blue-gray shirt). Photo: John Clark.

John Clark is an expert on gesneriads (the African Violet family). While he was in our reserve with his students he discovered this new species of gesneriad, a Columnea, on the same trail as the magnolias and the Meriania aurata. Photo: John Clark.

Enter Antonio Vazquez, a Mexican scientist who is the world expert on Neotropical (New World tropical) magnolias. It just so happened that the Ecuadorian government had hired him as a visiting professor for a year at David Neill’s university, the Universidad Estatal Amazonica, just a few dozen kilometers from our reserve! So of course in September when he arrived in Ecuador Dr Vazquez went to the reserve to visit these magnolias, staying in our Rio Zunac field station. The plots with the magnolias are another day’s hike up from the station. Our guards Luis, Jesus, Santiago, and Fausto Recalde went with him and climbed the magnolia trees to search for flowers, fruits, and buds. They found a partially open flower on one tree, and a seed pod on another tree.

Flower pictures of the Neotropical magnolia species are always elusive, because the flowers open at night and close by morning. A given flower does this for two nights in a row, and on the third morning it remains open and the petals fall. Dr Vazquez and our crew had a stroke of luck with the flower of Magnolia vargasiana ined. They found a three-day-old flower that had been held together by insect webs, so that the petals didn’t fall off as they normally would. Here are some of their first photos of Magnolia vargasiana ined., before and after freeing the petals from the webs.

Left: The first flower ever seen of Magnolia vargasiana ined. was falling apart and held together by insect or spider webs. Right: The flower opened partially after loosening the webs. Photo: Luis Recalde/EcoMinga.

Dr Antonio Vazquez in the magnolia forest of our Rio Zunac Reserve. Photo: Luis Recalde/EcoMinga.

I was excited by these discoveries and made my own trip to the site to see them, with two students of Dr Vazquez and our forest caretakers/parabiologists Luis and Fausto Recalde. After much effort we found advanced buds of both species, which Luis and Fausto managed to collect by free-climbing these very tall trees.

To get the flower buds of these magnolias, Luis Recalde and Fausto Recalde climbed into the canopy. Here Luis climbs the hemiepiphyte root hanging from the right-hand side of the magnolia trunk; click to enlarge since he is so high he is almost invisible. Photo: Lou Jost/EcoMinga.

As evening approached we watched the buds open. The bud from Magnolia llanganatensis ined. was damaged by insects and failed to open normally, but the bud from Magnolia vargasiana ined. opened beautifully by 5:00 pm, filling the area with a wonderful fruity smell.

Opening flower of Magnolia vargasiana ined . Photo: Lou Jost/EcoMinga.

We noticed that there were already four little beetles inside it, probably trapped there from the night before. We had discovered the pollinator of this magnolia! The beetles were coated with pollen and were rather tipsy. One fell off the flower, and when I tried to pick it up it jumped away as if spring-loaded. Later, as we looked at the photos, we saw that the hind legs of these tiny beetled were modified for powerful jumping. These observations suggested that these little guys belonged to the group of chrysomelid beetles known as the”flea beetles”.

This is the chrysomelid “flea beetle” (so named because of its powerful rear jumping legs) we found inside the magnolia flower as it opened. Photo: Lou Jost/EcoMinga.

Dr. Vazquez’s papers describing these new species were recently submitted to the appropriate journals. These exciting magnolia discoveries are part of a continent-wide trend. In the 1990s there were only four species of the genus Magnolia known from all of South America. As biological exploration in the neotropics has intensified in the last few decades, small numbers of new locally endemic Magnolia species have been turning up in remote locations all over the continent, as well as in Central America (see here and here for an exciting example in Mexico, in a reserve run by my friend Roberto Pedrazo; Dr Vazquez was also the expert who described those new species). Neighboring Colombia now has about 33 described species of Magnolia, almost all very localized and rare, many in danger of imminent extinction. For example M. espinallii is known from fewer than 50 individuals, and Magnolia wolfii is known from only five trees in one remnant patch of surviving forest surrounded by coffee plantations. Our own new species might very well be endemic to the Cordillera Abitagua. The two species seem to be very fussy about where they will grow, since they did not grow together in the same plots, even though the two plots were separated by only 2 km and about 200m of elevation.

Apart from their conservation importance, these recent magnolia discoveries highlight some interesting biogeographic issues. Magnolia trees are an ancient lineage; their family goes back 100 million years, and trees that we might recognize as magnolia relatives lived alongside the dinosaurs. The South American lineage that our trees belong to Magnolia section Talauma, is the oldest lineage of the genus, diverging from the rest of the magnolias around 40 million years ago (Azuma et al 2001). The current theory is that these species got to South America via North America, which had close connections to Eurasia in the past. At that time North America would have had a tropical climate.

Phylogenetic tree of selected Magnolia species. M dodecapetala, M. ovata, M. mexicana, and M. minor represent the Neotropical species. Figure 1 from Azuma et al (2001), The molecular phylogeny of the Magnoliaceae: The biogeography of tropical and temperate disjunctions. American Journal of Botany 88(12): 2275–2285.

So when did our species, and the many other South American magnolias, diverge from each other? Are they all old species that began to diverge already in North America, or are they recent species that diverged close to their current locations? Figure 1 in Azuma et al (2001) seems to show that the South American and Lesser Antillean species of magnolia in the Talauma group diverged at least 9 million years ago. The Central American + Cuban species and South American + Lesser Antillean species they analyzed appear to have diverged about 20 million years ago. These divergences are earlier than the currently-accepted (but still somewhat uncertain) date when North America became connected to South America. So it might be that our species are very old, and last shared a common ancestor somewhere in North America, not in South America. This is a very different situation from most other within-genus evolutionary radiations here in the Andes, which are often only 2-3 million years old.

These kinds of questions will be discussed in detail at the upcoming First International Conference on Neotropical Magnoliaceae, which will be held right here in the shadow of the Cordillera Abitagua at the Universidad Estatal Amazonica from May 27 to June 2, 2015. Please write to Antonio Vazquez, jvazquez@cucba.udg.mx, for more information.

Many thanks to John Clark, David Neill, Antonio Vazquez, and their students for choosing to work in our reserve! And thanks to Luis, Fausto, Santiago, and Jesus Recalde for their enthusiasm in the field.

Lou Jost
www.loujost.com
www.ecominga.com

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