Research | Santa Lucia Ecolodge

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RESEARCH PROJECTS

by Santa Lucia Ecolodge

Scientific researches in Santa Lucía Reserve

With its unique location in the cloud forest, Santa Lucía has always been a hotspot for scientists and students. The lodge is located at around 1.950m, but the reserve stretches from 1.300m to 2.500m and while 80% of it is covered with pristine montane rain forest the existing trails allow for access to forest in all elevations.

Santa Lucía is the perfect place to study not only the primary forest but also successional vegetation (pastures, reforested areas, and naturally-grown secondary forest). We have hosted and run dozens of projects over the last 15 years. Long-time relations with universities and researchers from all over the world enabled us to learn about the (wild)life in our reserve. We have also gained profound experience in hosting scientists and student groups.

Below you find a selection of projects that our reserve has seen over the last years.

Birds

Every summer we run an extensive bird monitoring in our reserve. For this reason, we have more than 160 observation points in all elevation and forest types.

The project is also financed by Mika Peck, University of Sussex.

We have been running this for 8 years and all the data is showing interesting changes in the composition of our avian species.

Thank this project our local guides received good extra training and information on birding which we use to improve our tourist services.

Medium and Big Mammals

More than 20 species of mammals have been observed over the last 12 years and many of them, such as the Andean Bear (Tremarctos ornatus) or the Oncilla (Leopardus tigrinus), are considered vulnerable or endangered in the IUCN list and have found refuge in our reserve.

Amphibians

Soon more Information

Orchids

Soon more information.

Butterflies

Soon more information

Cameras

The camera trapping project was started by Mika Peck, University of Sussex, in 2008. The intention is monitoring medium-sized and large mammals in the Santa Lucia reserve.

Since 2016 we are running the project on our own, and thanks to the financial aid of Condesan we were able to purchase cameras and get our own staff working to the field as well as to the data analysis.

Hummingbirds

During 2013 Santa Lucia was selected as a research site for a hummingbird investigation. The purpose is finding out about the interactions between these birds and flowers (feeding and pollination), and how they change during the different seasons.

The project started by Dr. Ben Weinstein and, in 2016, was taken over and is currently being extended by Catherine Graham.

Over the years we have learned a lot about hummingbird behavior and their seasonal tendencies as well as about flowering periods for the different hummingbird-related plants.