Tapachula, Mexico

Made it to Mexico safely! Lots of news since my last update but internet is no longer free... so it may be a while until I can catch up on the details.

Other than more or less biweekly trips to Tapachula, I'm living at a small research station at a coffee farm called Finca Irlanda. My days consist of: wake up at 6, capture beetles till 11, eat and relax the rest of the day. Here and there, we do other research and later in the summer I may start my own project.

Here's what the research is about:
There are ant colonies of the genus Azteca living in trees throughout the plantation. The ants tend a common coffee scale which has risen to pest in some areas but not in others. As you probably know, the ant fight off predators of the scales they tend, but in this case there is a species of beetle whose larva has developed a waxy coating making it almost completely immune to ant attack, thus allowing it to successfully predate the scale insect. The theory is that the presence of ants creates a competitor-free environment for the beetle larva, which helps keep the scale below pest status. To test this hypothesis we are doing mark and recapture samplings of the adult in areas with ant nests, general samplings in 50 square meter plots around the entire plot, and doing tests in the lab to find out just how many scales a beetle larva is capable of eating.

Coffee is the most important economic crop of much of Latin America so there is a large opportunity to apply the results of this study. Ideally, we will gather evidence that organic, shade grown coffee farms allow greater biodiversity and self controlling insect communities (in this case the ants, scales, beetles) that eliminate the need for pesticides. Compare this to conventional coffee plantations with no trees, less biodiversity, and plenty of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. And that only touches the surface of the benefits of organic agriculture.

I will be out of regular email contact until July 31...