Friday, June 6th
Today was an awesome day! Instead of taking the trucks out
to the glaciers, we all got to ride on this huge tour bus out to the field
site. Once we got there, we went on yet another uphill hike (because everything
here somehow manages to be uphill both ways). Once we got up to one of the
peaks, We met with a few undergrad students who are helping a grad student
conduct his research on plants and roots. However, I found the most interesting
person there to be Michael Avery (Mike) a student at Penn State who is studying
ecology. He studies caterpillars and invertebrates, specifically the Eurois
Occulta. We learned that he spends a lot of time making them vomit, which is
one of their defense mechanisms. We found one of the caterpillars that he
studies, but apparently it wasn’t a very smart caterpillar because it never
figured out how to pupate, so it was probably going to die any day. Mike said
he could only make the caterpillar vomit if it was warm (and let me tell you,
it was not warm out there) so I sacrificed one of my hand warmers to warm it.
Once we warmed it up, Mike made it vomit for us. Haha it’s surprising how many
people with stand in a little circle just to watch a bug vomit. Then Mike told
us about a strange fungus that has been taking over the caterpillars and slowly
taking over them, and then making them climb to the top of plants, where they
die and then release the spores of the fungus. It’s called Zoophthora Radicans. After he taught us about
the caterpillars he gave us little collection vials and we walked around
collecting any bugs we could find. I even convinced Maeve to let me kill her
caterpillar so I could take it home and give it to Mr. Farr (my science
teacher). The best part was that once we put it in the alcohol it vomited and
pooped. So I now have a vial with a dead caterpillar, caterpillar vomit, and
caterpillar poop. Pretty cool, huh? After that, most of the group went with
Mike to a further hike but Dana and I stopped half way up and stayed in a
little field of flowers we found.
We made hippie flower head bands, laid in the
flowers, and took pictures. :) We were probably there for at least an hour
before the rest of the group hiked back down and we all got back on the bus.
Let me just say the best part of the bus ride was watching everybody try to
sleep because we were driving on the bumpiest road ever created. And to make an
amazing day even better, we got to eat at the airport instead of Thai food. :)
It was a good day.
Much love,
Sydney
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