Bug Soup

So we've well and truely immersed ourselves in our Directed Research Projects (DRPs from here on out). I'm working on a project comparing the effects that pest control measures have on invertebrate populations, particularly beetles (Coleoptera) and Weta (Orthoptera, aka cricket type things). We collected samples from one mountain, Maungatautari, which has eraticated nearly all the invasive pests -- possums, rats, yada yada -- by putting up a big fence around the reserve and dropping poison, and from another mountian, Pirongia, which has only minimal pest control measures. Maungatautari reserve is incredible... walking though the gate of the Pest proof fence is like walking through a time machine. Pests have been excluded since 2004, so the forest has had the chance to really regenerate. It is so fully of life! Birds and bugs and plants and vines... it was very cretatious period. Oh, and also:

So yeah. There were kiwi birds. Our field leader, Jillana, used to work for the reserve as a kiwi bird monitoring person, so she took us on a night walk to look for them. They're hard to spot, but not that hard to hear... its like a mini elephant crashing through the underbrush. We didn't actually SEE a kiwi bird, but we heard a couple rustling around in the plants just a few feet from us! And we heard them calling. And since plenty of kiwis haven't actually seen or heard a kiwi bird at all, I feel pretty lucky about that (here, you have kiwi birds, kiwi fruit, and kiwi (New Zealanders)... kiwi always look at us funny when we say "eat a kiwi". anyways).
   So to get the invertebrate samples, we collected 96 pitfall traps that had been set out six weeks ago. Pitfalls are basically just cups sunk into the ground with some preservative in them and a cover to keep debris out. Ground-dwelling inverts fall in and can't get back out, and we have our samples. The pitfalls were in transects along walking paths on the mountains, so each day we'd hike up a mountain and go bushwacking to find the transects. And by bushwacking I mean crawling under vines, scrambling over treefalls, and clambering up nearly vertical slopes. It was fun.

John fighting the supplejack vines. And this was on the trail.

Cara collecting a pitfall.

The "trail" head.

 

 

 

 

Climbing back up to the trail. It doesn't look it, but that is one steep slope.

So after we collected all the bugs, we had to sort, measure and identify them. That took a while. As in three 12 hour days, sitting in a lab breathing ethynol fumes. And listening to music and learning all the weird latin names for all the bugs. It figures, however, that just as I was getting comfortable spitting out words like "leamostenus complenatus", "curculionidea", "leionidea" and the like, and figured out which bug went with which name, we were done. It only took me 1200 bugs to get the hang of it. I actually kind of enjoyed it. Now comes the even more fun part of writing the report. Which I'm going to go do now. yay!