day 4

banana tree

hollow strangler fig

observation tower

hiking path in primary forest

river we ate lunch at

plant sample

Today all the students were paired with their mentors and we have officially started our projects. Corbin and I were paired with Mike and our project title is “Comparing Microclimates Coverage by Foliar Epiphytes and Diseases.” Our hypothesis for the project is: Going farther down the elevational gradient will increase humidity and decrease wind speed, therefore increasing coverage by foliar epiphytes and diseases. At each 3 sites and for 3 plants we visually estimated the percentage coverage of foliar epiphytes and diseases on one of the 2nd leaflets. We also set up Kestrels to collect wind speed and humidity data at each 3 sites. When we were first choosing our projects, I chose the wildlife project at first but I am glad that I ended up in this project. Our mentor Mike is nice, fun and easy to communicate with and I’m excited to see if our hypothesis is correct. We finally got to go to the top of the observation tower today and OMG it was everything I thought it would be and more. We had lunch down by the river today it was so peaceful, I just kept thinking to myself how lucky I was to be here and experience this. We hiked further today past the river it kept getting steeper and steeper but it was worth it seeing the change of the forest when you got past the river. I’m still waiting to see some monkeys :p

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