LC Australia Program 2011: Excuse Me? Did You Just Say Pooter?

By Rebecca Snow

Hello again family and friends. It's Rebecca once again to tell you about some more of our adventures. Lamington Plateau has been treating us wonderfully so far and we've had miraculously sunny skies all week. Wednesday morning we woke up to do presentations of our forest surveys. We compared the rainforest and the Eucalypt forest both quantitatively and qualitatively and discovered some fascinating comparisons. For instance, we learned that the difference between the environments necessary for the two different types of forest to grow have a couple of very distinct features. Here at Lamington, we sit on the remnants of a stratovolcano. By definition, these volcanoes alternate eruptions of basalt and rhyolite. Basalt is softer, erodes faster, and is more nutrient rich, while rhyolite lasts longer and contains very little nutrient. Because of these properties and the properties of the plants in each type of forest, rainforest is only found on the basalt soils, and Eucalypts can be found on the rhyolite or on basalt where rainforest doesn't out-compete it. Also, the rainforests are found at higher altitudes here because that is where the majority of the rain falls. This leads to two very different kinds of forests. In the Eucalypt forest, because it is drier and the soil is nutrient poor, the trees which can grow in that environment are much more limited, leading to a forest with one or two dominant species. This contrasts starkly with the rainforest, which has such a diversity of species that only an expert can identify them, and none of them are dominant. The canopy in the rainforest is much thicker than in the Eucalypt forest, as well. This is because light is a limiting factor in the rainforest but not in the Eucalypt forest. Therefore, the rainforest trees have to spread out their leaves to catch as much sunlight as possible, while the Eucalypt leaves dangle downward, trying to deflect sunlight so as not to overheat. We learned about all these contrasts and more during our presentations.

After lunch the four small groups headed out to collect data for their final science projects. As we learned in the presentations the next day, the projects were all very different. One group went out looking at epiphytes, the plants that grow on the sides of other plants, and investigating their size and where in the forest they were located. Another group looked at birds, and specifically at whether they prefer to feed in open areas or in the rainforest canopy. The next group looked at fungus, lichen, algae and moss (which they affectionately termed “FLAM”) and whether certain species grow on different sides of rocks in the rainforest, while the final group looked at plant growth under large and small trees to see if the large trees draw nutrients from the soil and stop other plants from growing directly around them (which they don't; turns out bigger trees actually facilitate growth beneath them). All these projects were getting at resource partitioning, which limits competition and increases likelihood at survival. The entire afternoon was spent collecting and collating our data for these presentations.

After dinner we went spotlighting, which is, as the name implies, when you go for a walk in the dark with a spotlight, looking for animals. We headed out along the road, down a boardwalk through the rainforest, and up to the tree top walk through the canopy. We learned the proper techniques for animal spotting: hold the spotlight up next to your eyes and look for the red eye reflection of a mammal. It's easy to be fooled by lichen and fungus on tree top branches, which often can look like the fur of an animal in the dark, so the reflections are extra important. Along the way we saw a ton of nocturnal mammals, including three kinds of possum: the ring-tailed possum, the brush-tailed possum, and the very rare mountain brush-tailed possum. Seeing this third variety of possum was particularly special because of its rarity, and because we saw quite a few of them. Also, there was a brush-tailed possum mother with its nearly grown child, walking along a branch. It was very interesting to see the maternal behavior of the marsupial. We also saw a sugar glider. Philip, always the animal whisperer, even got to see a sugar glider glide, which none of the rest of us got to see. It was a very special evening.

The next morning we woke up and went out with our newest tutor, Susan, to study invertebrates. She showed us a myriad of techniques to collect insects and other invertebrates from the bush. First was the spray technique, which entails placing a tarp under a tree, spraying the trunk with insect spray, and collecting all the dead bugs. It sounds archaic but it really worked. Drew sprayed a strangler fig that dropped several really interesting beetles and even a juvenile cockroach. We then collected leaf litter, put it in a pan, and searched through it for insects. The best part about this technique (and several of the others) was the collection method we used once we located an insect. We used a device called – and no, this is not a joke or an innuendo – a pooter. The pooter has 2 tubes attached to a glass vial. You place a tube directly over the insect you want to collect, and with the other tube, which has gauze on the end, you suck up the specimen with your mouth. It's a pretty good way of getting at a lot of the smaller insects you find in leaf litter. Everything you collect (in the pooter or from any other method) goes into ethanol to be preserved until it can be examined in the lab. A few other techniques were beating (you literally beat branches and collect what falls from them), sweeping (you sweep over branches to catch any insects on them which can fly), and the yellow pan method (when left out overnight, the pan will catch flying insects which are attracted to flowers, particularly if the flowers they feed on are yellow). After setting our overnight traps, including pitfall traps, which are vials of ethanol put in pits to let the insects fall right in, and collecting from the more immediate methods, we headed back to camp.

After lunch, our project presentations, and dinner, we headed out for another magical night walk. This one, however, was not to spot mammals (although we did see a ring-tailed possum on the way to the gully) but to go see glow worms. The glow worms are actually not worms at all but the larvae of a fly. They are predatious, and catch their prey by attracting them with their glowing bodies. They excrete sticky threads that the prey get stuck on when drawn to the light. They then turn their body lights off and eat the prey, before turning their lights on again to wait for more prey to fall into their trap. The glow worms are unique to this part of the world and generally live in gullies such as the one we hiked to because it is constantly moist there, which they need to stay alive. Scientific facts aside, seeing the glow worms is a magical experience. We hiked down to the gully, sat down facing the opposite wall, turned off our flashlights, and hundreds of fairy lights were revealed to us. The lights were strewn all across the wall. It looked like a starry sky right in front of our eyes. After having our fill we took our flashlights to get a close up view, then hiked home, tired but satisfied, to get a good night's sleep.

And on that lovely note, that's all for me. I leave you in the capable hands of my fellow students to tell you all about our final days in Lamington Plateau and in Australia. Don't worry, we'll all be home in less than a week.

--Rebecca

All photos taken by Kathryn