try2seeitall

Sorry for bouncing from place to place, but this post puts me back at Ol Pejeta. I have at least a couple more posts to write before I leave the continent of Africa for the remainder of this adventure.

The picture above is one of us getting work done that needs to happen for the Big-Headed Ant project. While there, I stayed with three of the primary investigators of the project, and a few other people, in a rather large house in a lion free (though you can hear them off in the distance at night) area within the conservancy. 

One of the scientists, Dr. Jayne Belnap, is a world-renowned soil scientist with the USGS. Many, many hours went into the work to get the soil samples to the point they were at when I first saw them at Scott’s apartment. It was time to weigh and repackage them for export to the U.S., where sophisticated chemical analysis could be done. The export permit required that each soil sample (currently held in large containers in cardboard boxes) be subdivided into 30 gram (about two tablespoons, depending on the makeup of the sample) portions and sealed in small ziplock bags and then 7 of the small sample bags were placed into larger labeled plastic ziplock bags. These larger bags of samples were to be boxed later and then be transported to Nairobi for shipment. Since there was a lot of dirt in the many boxes collected at various locations, it was a tedious and time consuming job that evidently was necessary because of some compliance rule that the scientist I spoke to thought wasn’t necessary.  Rather than complain about the rule, Dr. Jayne’s suggestion was to have a soil “party.” I can say now after the experience, it was not a lot of fun sitting around a table with dirt samples and scientific scales, but I was happy to volunteer and do my part. It was not hard, but it took many hours. The “party” allowed all of us to chip in, shortening what would have been a boring task for one person. I am sure we all felt good about it in the end. Some of us even seemed to get a thrill out of occasionally nailing the precise 30 gram weight with the measuring spoon (one of which can be seen in the photo above) with one heaping scoop. You had to be careful to keep the integrity of the sample; no spilling allowed and you had to be sure not to mix samples from different sites. The event was a good example of the idiom, “Many hands make light work.” I think we did our job well as a team.

I hope the resulting analysis reveals useful scientific information. Dr. Jayne is one of those people who can bring people together and give everyone a “can do” attitude. It is obvious she loves her work and the places in the world it has taken her. I hope to meet her again sometime.

I am sitting in my hotel room in Mumbai listening to festival music through the window as I write this next post; though I did not finish posting about Kenya yet, I wanted to take this opportunity to say Happy Republic day (which is also my youngest son, Jonathan’s birthday). I got the guys above to give their best Happy Birthday pose .

I am a pretty happy camper. Someone responded to my invitation to say something about what they are doing. So this blog is going in the right direction. It is not just about what I have to say. I introduced Shailee Shah a few days ago and this is what she has to say in her own words:

My name is Shailee and I’m a PhD student at Columbia University. I’m interested in social behavior in animals. As an undergraduate at Cornell University, I got really interested in birds and now, for my PhD, I’m working on superb starlings – these beautiful, iridescent birds found all over East Africa that are cooperative breeders. Cooperative breeding is when individuals help feed and protect  offspring of other individuals of the same species – so it’s mom, dad, and one or more “helpers” bringing food and guarding the nest! Generally, the helpers are closely related individuals — they could be cousins or siblings from a previous brood — and by helping raise these offspring with whom they share a lot of genes they are effectively helping propagate their own genes into future generations. In superb starlings, however, the helpers are not always closely related. This is really intriguing and we don’t yet know what other benefits these unrelated helpers might be getting. It could be protection from predators or access to food or even access to future breeding opportunities. And that’s what I’m interested in figuring out. One of the ways I plan to do that is by looking at these birds’ genes. When I catch the birds I take a blood sample that I can then use to sequence their DNA. How diverse the genes of birds from a certain social group are will give me an idea of how connected the group is to the rest of the population — i.e. do a lot of birds immigrate into the group or not. Relating that to the habitat quality at their site will help me understand what sort of habitat these birds prefer, and thus give me an idea of what benefits they are chasing by living in and joining these social groups!

Thanks Shailee. She has her own blog and if you want to check it out click here, but please come back, I need all the readers I can get!

In Africa there are two species of Rhinos; the Black and the White. Neither color properly describes them because they are both gray, but both are found within the boundary of Ol Pejeta. Both species are critically endangered. Some people think Rhino horn is somehow good for them and pay thousands of dollars for it. It is composed of the same protein as hair and fingernails. The only thing rhino horn is good for is rhinos, but because people pay so much for it, poachers are willing to illegally kill these marvelous and strange-looking creatures to try and make money. On Ol Pejeta armed guards are constantly patrolling the property to try and make it safe for both species.

The white rhino is composed of two subspecies and Ol Pejeta has the last two surviving Northern White Rhinos on the planet and they are both females and they are both getting old. We tried to see them in their penned enclosure but we were unsuccessful. The last surviving male was named Sudan and he died in March of 2018. For an article on Sudan by the BBC, click here.

There are both Black and Southern White Rhinos on the rest of the property that are free to move about the conservancy, but guards keep watch on them 24/7; even so, some calves have been killed by resident lions. In 2016, I was able to see a black rhino in Ngorongoro Crater National Park in Tanzania, but we could not get very close. This is the first time I was able to get close enough to any type of rhino in the wild, to get a decent photograph.

I am fortunate to have met some truly wonderful people during my time in Kenya. My nephew Scott is also extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to have worked with these people. Sometimes things don’t go as planned and sometimes good results from a tragic event. For Scott, this happened and is a lesson in how to keep moving forward. He was all set to go to Puerto Rico to work on a study of introduced monkeys when a terrible hurricane started to bear down on the island. Flights into the island were canceled and he waited. A few days passed and there was no word. The damage that happened in Puerto Rico was devastating and still the island has not fully recovered. His project site was destroyed and he was forced to look for another job. He needed field experience to have a better chance of being admitted into a doctoral program. 

It is here that fate, connections, and work ethic pointed him back to Kenya. A job opening that would give him considerable experience opened near where he had done his undergraduate research in Mpala. A group of four primary investigators: Dr. Todd Palmer, Dr. Corinna Riginos, Dr. Jayne Belnap, and Dr. Jake Goheen were looking for a project manager for an important project. The project’s official title is: Landscape Consequences of Mutualism Disruption by an Invasive Ant, also known as: the Big-Headed Ant project. The project is funded by the National Science Foundation and is slated to last four years and is nearing completion. I learned about the ant and the native species that normally inhabit a keystone species in the savanna landscape while I was at Mpala, which I wrote about in the post “All Things Great and Small.” Scott’s adviser at Princeton, Dr. Rob Pringle, is good friends with all of the primary investigators on the project, and this gave Scott a considerable advantage. Some people say, it is not what you know but who you know, but it is really both. They are linked together. If you are able to impress people with what you know, and they are able to vouch for your character, you are more likely to go places. It will be interesting to see where Scott winds up. The lead picture is of Dr. Belnap and Jackson Ekadeli, a Kenyan research assistant, having fun while driving from one research plot to another on the property of Ol Pejeta Conservancy.

For more pictures on the property click here.

Update from 2024 -Disruption of an ant-plant mutualism shapes interactions between lions and their primary prey. Click here for a link to a copy on ResearchGate of the article that resulted from the research spoken of above

I am not by nature a morning person. So, when Leo, a master’s-degree student at the University of Nairobi asked if I wanted to go along with him and his field assistant, Gilbert, I said yes. They are working on what is a long-term study of the small mammals at Mpala. The project is under the direction of Dr. Jake Goheen, who works out of the University of Wyoming. Then I asked what time. Leo said, “We are leaving at 4:30 a.m., so bring your head torch.” When he saw the look on my face, he said something like it is a good thing we are traveling to one of the closer study sites; otherwise, we would have to leave at 3:30.

The two of them had baited and set the traps just after dark a few hours before I received the invitation. All the animals had to be weighed and released back in the same area they were caught before the sun caused them to overheat or the ants got the smallest of them. It is not the animals caught in the traps that made this a scary experience, but the potential to run into a cape buffalo or even a lion in the dark. Fortunately, I did not see either, but I did get stuck plenty of times by the long thorns of the numerous acacia trees. I noted after it started getting light that both of them were wearing clothes that were well torn. 

They moved quickly and nimbly through the study plots. I did my best to keep up. One time I tried to follow Leo under a dense thicket that he passed under easily, only to find myself stuck. In my attempt to free myself I must have shaken the canopy, and I started to hear the sound of many large beating wings and feel the wind as they passed over and around my head. My light was pointing down, and I could not see what was making the noise. When I finally caught up with Leo, I asked what was that, and he said I woke up the Guinea Fowl from their roost. He then started a story about Gilbert when he was checking traps. When he bent to grab one of the foot-long metal boxes he noticed a baby cheetah nearby. Then, when he turned he was confronted by a snarling, hissing, momma cheetah who lunged toward him. His heart skipped a few beats. I guess it is all in the name of science.

If you want to learn more about some of these people click here.

If you want to see more pictures from this field experience click here.

Letting go is important. Most of the time in life we like to feel like we are in control. Of course, some people have more of an issue with this than others.

I can only imagine the feeling the little guy felt when Ciara had the pleasure to let it go. It did not fly very far. It landed in the first tree it came to and started preening. Will Shali ever catch it again or will it learn to recognize a trap. Most of us learn best from our mistakes and maybe it is so with birds too.

In the U.S. there is a common bird that was imported some years ago and was released in Central Park, New York. It has since spread throughout the country. It is not my favorite bird, but in east Africa it has many relatives that are splendid. One is called the Superb Starling, and you can see Shailee holding it above. Like Stephanie, she is doing research on a specific bird, and this is the one she calls hers. Shailee is working out of Columbia University on her field work in Mpala. She is quite fond of her birds but her birds are a lot harder than Stephanie’s to trap. Birds are not known for their brains, but Shailee says hers are smart. I was invited, along with a group of undergraduate students from Cornell and Ciara, out to one of her study sites where she had trapped one. For some, including Ciara, it was the first time they had handled a live wild bird.

You can see the smiles on their faces in the Feathered Friends section of my current adventure,

At dinner Ciara introduced me to a woman who was doing research at Mpala through a grant at the University of Florida on a pretty little bird called a Vitelline Masked Weaver. Her name is Stephanie Wheeler and she has a smile that can light up a room. I was delighted when she asked me to watch her doing data collection and banding the next morning after breakfast. I promised to do my best to get photographs of her doing her research. As you might have guessed from looking at this website, I like to take pictures of birds and hope to continue to go bird watching with my former colleagues, Nolan, Mark, and Kurt, back in the eastern U.S., soon after I return from this adventure in a few months. 

The birds Stephanie was working with had the convenient habit of finding their way into the temporary storage place for food waste. This space was covered and surrounded by wire mesh that was intended to keep the monkeys out. The birds could make their way into the enclosure through a small space above the door. Stephanie learned to rush the enclosure and get inside with a butterfly net, quickly stuffing the space above the door with cloth so the birds could not escape; then she could take her time and catch only the birds she needed, as they flew back and forth within the makeshift cage. The skill with which she caught and handled the birds was impressive. She was able to catch, in this manner, dozens of birds and was able to take her time with the measurements and banding without unduly stressing what she called “her birds. ” Nearly every bird she caught that day was a repeat capture, and like many of the different species of birds around Mpala they had unique colored bands around their legs, so she could identify them from a distance without having to capture them. When she did catch a bird for the first time, Stephanie would collect a tiny bit of blood from the wing so that she could have genetic testing done for her research. 

Yes the bird is upside-down but the photo is not. Even though Stephanie was an expert at handling these guys, they never seemed to appreciate how gentle she was with them. Every chance they got they would give her a bite, sometimes to the point of drawing blood. It had to hurt.

Thank you Stephanie for sharing time with me. And those of you who are interested can see the pictures by clicking here.

After settling into my room, which had a great view from the porch and was big and comfortable, I went up to the building where everyone met for lunch.  I was welcomed by a group of Harvard Entomology postgraduate students and I had a seat. One of my favorite classes in college was entomology and Scott’s duties deal with helping manage a project where ants are an important part of the system. What luck! I was about to get an education. It could be a challenge keeping up with the best and the brightest. Fortunately for me, they were among the kindest too.

I sat across from Richard Childers, a student three years into his doctoral work on the ants that live on the Whistling Thorn Acacia. He is working in Naomi Pierce’s lab and I was fortunate to meet her and her artist friend, Isabella Kirkland. As I mentioned in my last post, Mpala is a little slice of heaven and getting to meet and speak with these people was a joy. Evan, Clayton, and Anoni were also students working with Dr. Pierce and I was invited to tag along to take photographs as they went to a potential study site within the boundaries of Mpala. The picture above is of Anoni just after she collected her first queen within a specialized structure that the acacia treas make to host the ants.

There are four native species of ants that live in the hollow structures called domatia that the trees produce to allow the ants to colonize and in return protect the tree from being eaten by creatures as big as the African Elephant. If a branch is disturbed, the ants quickly scurry to the disturbance and begin biting whatever they can and if it is the inside of an elephant’s trunk, or a giraffe’s tongue the big critters are discouraged from eating the tree. In biology, this kind of relationship is a type of symbiosis called mutualism. So by providing a place for the tiny ants to live, the Whistling Thorn Acacia tree benefits because some of the animals that might otherwise eat it are driven away.

However, there is another creature that is starting to cause major problems in this ecosystem. An ant, smaller than all four of the native species and not from Kenya, called the big-headed ant (BHA) has started to invade the trees and drive out the protector species. BHA form super-colonies and these ants are not giving anything to the plants in return. This invasive species, may eventually cause the downfall of the savanna ecosystem by upsetting the delicate balance between the plants and the herbivores. This is one of problems that scientists at the conservancy down the road at Ol Pejita are currently studying.

For more pictures taken while at Mpala with Dr. Pierce’s group click here.