Research in Santa Lucía in January

Here's a brief overview on the monitoring and research activities at the beginning of 2025. We are still struggling to get the necessary funding required for continuing all our science-related activities, so we have started the year a little less intense, but yet with quite interesting findings.

Camera trapping: Fiona Mathews from the University of Sussex generously left us some camera traps, so we will be able to intensify our camera trapping activities in 2025. We will be able to equip some locations we haven't used in a long time with camera traps and might even try out some new. Currently the highest elevation monitored with camera traps within the reserve is 2.400 m, but we'll check whether we find a suitable spot at an even higher location, which is essentially the upper end of Santa Lucía. Meanwhile we are still reviewing last year's footage which is plenty.

Andean Bears (Tremarctos ornatus) in one of our camera traps.

Bird monitoring: January typically isn't the month for most intense bird monitoring, because we tend to be crowded with groups. This year - since the groups weren't coming - we had a all the best intentions to get some early-year-data which would have been interesting especially with all the migratory birds around, but because of the uncertain financial forecast we could not do it as intense as we would have like to. But still - combining this with the plant and fungus phenology investigation - we were able to monitor about 8% of the observation points in January.

Toucan Barbet (Semnornis ramphastinus)

Plant phenology: This keeps running in its pilot status for the time being as - again - there is no stable financial support for it. But since we love plants and would love to understand the dynamics of flowering and fruiting in our forest. And - of course - it orchid season ... so here reason, curiosity and appreciation of beauty go hand-in-hand and we monitored especially some upper-elevation parts of our forest.

Stelis nutans - one of more than 200 orchid species of the Santa Lucía Cloud Forest Reserve

Fungus phenology: It's not only best season for orchids, but also mushrooms seem to have their peak-season or are starting it - we don't know yet. This started as a pilot study - similar to the plant phenology and we continue it - albeit with a low intensity. In case of fungus our internal knowlege level is really low, so the monitoring is currently "limited" to visit monitoring sites, registering fruiting bodies and taking a lot of pictures of them. We try to get some ID attached through iNaturalist. If you are interested in helping with ID'ing - here's a link:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?project_id=santa-lucia-cloud-forest-reserve-ecuador&subview=table&taxon_id=47170&verifiable=any

Random wood decaying fungus from the upper part of the reserve.

Of course you are also invited if you want to visit us and get to know our forest. If you are interested in helping with our research project there are several ways to do that. We are happy - of course - about any financial help, but you can also visit us as volunteer and help with all the observations and countings. We'd also be happy about any idea on other projects and research questions we can plunge into. :)