DR, DR, DR!

The day after we came back to the center from break we began thinking about our directed research projects (DRs). This is what we will be doing until the program ends. We previously chose which professor we would like to work with, and now it was up to us to come up with a research question to start tackling. I was so lost for this! I felt like everyone else had squared away their ideas, and were all set on choosing a question, while I was still in the process of deciding what it was that I was even interested in looking at. There were restrictions as to what I could research, too, because we couldn’t have too many people on one given topic. It ended up being that I chose to look at herbivory (the act of eating leaves, for those who don’t know) in relation to leaf pH and leaf thickness among 13 tree species. Soon after deciding this, my group headed off to Undara Volcanic National Park and the 40-Mile Scrub National Park to begin our leaf sample collection and to take notes on herbivory.

Undara and 40-Mile Scrub
10-11 November 2010


Undara was a lot of fun! Eleven of us squished into the van for a 3-hour drive into the dry rain forest. Along the way we collected firewood, which we later used for a bon fire that we roasted marshmallows over and told stories about ourselves and our past experiences. It was great to sit next to the warmth of the fire and breathe in the smells of summer, hear the crackling of the wood and see the smoke from the fire be swept into the sky and consumed by the stars. While collecting wood we found a skull of an animal, which we were pretty sure was a pig because it had tusks. That was neat… it was just like what I imagined to see when I think of dry, desert-like areas.


When we pulled into the camp site we saw a group of wallabies foraging in the grass. There were small ones, bigger ones and even some with little babies in their pouches! They were very watchful. The stopped and looked at us, waiting, and then continued eating the grass. There arms are so short, which I guess is an adaptation that suits them well. They lick their forearms to obtain subcutaneous evaporation to cool themselves down. That’s pretty neat if you ask me!


After checking in, we headed out to our sampling site, where we walked quite a bit off of the path to begin our research. We did this so that people wouldn’t see us conducting research. It’s a typical permit regulation thing that has to happen… we don’t want to bother others by sampling within a National Park. When we arrived, we were in a section of semi-deciduous dry rainforest. We broke up into our groups and started collecting data! I paired up with AJ, because we are both looking at herbivory, and started going around to all of the trees that we needed data for, including the python tree, lantana and brachychiton, among others. I had fun getting to know the trees and being outdoors doing actual research. It became a lot easier to identify the different trees from a distance and with ease by the end of the day!


After the 40-mile scrub we went to another site to find the same species. This place was more difficult to sample because the ground was covered in rocks, which made it difficult to walk without rolling our ankles. We had to be very careful of that and also had to be especially careful and mindful of snakes.


We then took a nice walk up a volcano to watch the sun set. It was a pretty quick hike which took only about 20 minutes total. When we looked out into the distance we could see miles of continuing dry rain forest and the sun setting across the horizon. We watched the sky turn from light blue to purple to orange to red and finally dark blue. We sat on a bench at the top and watched, letting our minds go free.


That night we had a barbeque and sat around the fire, as I described earlier. We were pretty early to bed because we had such a tiring day. The next morning was one of the best mornings that I’ve had in Australia. I loved waking up to the warmth of the sun on my face, to the pretty-faced wallabies and the grey kangaroos foraging outside of my tent, hearing the cacophony of the kookaburras from a nearby tree, watching the rainbow lorikeets talk across the bushes and searching for berries and hearing the click of the cicada wings before they started their song. It was so peaceful that I couldn’t help but be happy and be living in the moment.


The next morning we collected more data at the 40-mile scrub and then made our way back home. Shortly after we returned from Undara, our project proposals were due, and we began collecting data on the samples we had taken. I spent the next week in the lab taking pH readings of about 300 leaves and leaf thickness data of about 400 leaves. Needless to say, there were some nights during that week that I started confusing time with pH readings… and would read the time on the clock as 9.30pm and the pH readings as 5:04… that’s when I knew it was about time to put the meter down, unplug the microscope and go to bed.