More Nerdy Bio Stuff

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Before I get into the real entry, I want to write a quick disclaimer. Though this is probably obvious to everyone, the majority of the info I write in this blog is my opinion. It may be right, but it is still opinion and should not be taken as fact.
Now on to my weekend...

This weekend I went on another one of those ecology excursions, but this time we went as part of a group of Cuban biology students plus three professors. Half of them were in the same boat as us, earlier in their education and there to learn about butterflies and moths. The other half were in their last year of university and came to continue experiments for their respective theses. All in all, it was quite an experience, but only in a really great way. The experiment site was outside a town called Canasí, on the north coast about 45 minutes east of Habana. But we traveled by train, so it took us 2 ½ hours. The train is horrible, because it’s ancient and shakes you like bananas in a batido, but I had a great time. Trains let you see a different part of the countryside, the backside, and it was gorgeous. The strange thing is, the landscape is unnatural. Less than 100 years ago, Cuba was almost completely covered in forests, but during the reign of Batista (the president turned dictator whose last rule was interrupted by the Revolution), deforestation knocked out all but a few pieces. So this beautiful grassland is really a result of devastating destruction. Funny, because I keep on saying the countryside looks Jurassic, ie, completely untouched. To keep ourselves busy we taught each other kids’ songs from our youths. Our Cuban professors got a real kick out of “the song that never ends” and “the ants go marching” especially. They also taught us this great song that is kind of like the vowels song about apples and bananas that we have. This one is even better though, and it’s about a skeleton: “Estaba la cadavera / sentaba en una butaca / vino la muerte le dijo / porqué te has puesto tan flaca?” That’s the original, then you change it for each vowel, ie: “Estebe le cedevere / sentebe en ene beteque…” It sounds hysterical. I’ll teach it to anyone who asks when I get back! So then we got to the town and had to hike for about 45 minutes to get to our campsite. The best part of this was we had to cross a big river that went up to our chests, carrying our packs on our heads. Our campsite was just a break in the forest on a cliff that was right next to the ocean. A lot of the coastline in Cuba is rocky, and so was this one. It was really beautiful, I’ll try to add some photos of it. So once we got there, our two main missions were to run an experiment of moth id and to collect eggs, larvae, and food for butterfly experiments. We were going to also go butterfly hunting, but the weather was cold (actually, only like 70 degrees at the lowest, but we had goosebumps…yikes) and rainy, so there weren’t any butterflies out. The moth experiment was at night, and basically we just sat watching a hanging white sheet in front of a light to identify moth species and quantities. Cuba has an incredible number of species of almost everything, and a lot of endemics, so this experiment was a little more exciting then it sounds. Every now and then, a moth would appear that no one had seen before, so there was a fairly good possibility that we had discovered a new species. This happened probably 5 times in one night. Now how often does that happen in the US? One of the professors actually has a species named after him, and he’s probably no older than 35. During the day, I helped one of the older students work on his experiment. His specialty is a butterfly called “skipper” that have split off from the butterfly family. The adults are fairly well-known, but not much information exists about the eggs or larvae, which is his area of study. We just hiked around in the woods looking for the plant that skippers lay their eggs on, while getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. I might have Dengue. Just as a side note, did you know that there is a plant in Cuba that can kill you? Seriously, it is that poisonous.
Well that’s about all I have to say about camping and studying bugs. It was probably the most fun trip I’ve had here, despite the bad weather. I just really liked the company, in general they were more my style than the history/philosophy students as a whole, though I love my friends in that department too.