Kira is a 3rd year PhD student from PEEC working in the Brawn lab. She studies the hybridization dynamics of the Golden-collared and White-collared manakin in western Panama using population genomic techniques alongside field work and ecological sampling.
What have you been working on this week?
Right now I am in Panama! I am about one month into my third field season. While I’m in Panama, I go out every day early in the morning and drive to one of my three field sites, where my assistants and I set up mistnets to catch the manakins and gather field data. This week, I’ve caught about a dozen new individuals and about a dozen previously marked Manakins from the last two field season. I even caught male 63, one of my first year birds! This week, we have been focusing on three main things: mistnetting, nest searching, and radio telemetry. During radio telemetry this week, we spent 4 hours hiking through the rainforest trying to follow one of my radio marked females, but alas, she gave us the slip! While following her, we actually stumbled across another manakin lek. A lek is a communal breeding ground where a bunch of male manakins gather together to display for the females and the females “shop” for the best male. This lekking behavior is one of the the things that makes this hybrid zone so interesting! And watching the males dance is fun. Here is a link to a YouTube video of a male and female on a display court.
Do you have a work routine/schedule?
While I am in Panama, I have a much stricter schedule (barring heavy rain and tree falls blocking the road!). We pack up and leave the field house at 7am, get to our field sites by 8 to 8:30. We quickly set up the field station and mistnets and check the nets every 30 min. By about 10am, I start nest searching duties, where I send out one of my assistants every hour to comb through the understory looking for nests while me and another assistant manage the nets, banding birds, and taking blood samples. Then after lunch, we begin doing radio telemetry, where we follow radio signals from a little transmitter backpack I put on female manakins to follow their movements and hopefully find their nests. I’ll often switch up whether we do telemetry in the morning or afternoon to catch the females in different locations throughout the day. Then we pack up everything around 4pm and head home. At home, I prep everything for the next day in the field, enter data on the computer, shower, dinner, then bed. It’s quite a full day! We do this 6 days a week and take Sundays off. Sundays are when we sleep in, get groceries, and I work on grants and any other computer work I ran out of time for during the week.
What have you been listening to recently?
While waiting between net checks during the day, I sometimes listen to two different podcasts: Science Friday and CoffeeBreak Spanish. Science Friday has general, short stories on a variety of science research and CoffeeBreak Spanish has quick spanish lessons that I’m using to brush up my Spanish skills, especially my listening comprehension.
While driving in the car, I listen to my usual music on shuffle: folk and power metal, electronic, alternative, and rock music. One of my favorite metal bands is Alestorm, a pirate metal band. Their music is lively and funny and always gets me in a good mood. Another one of my favorite bands is Caravan Palace, an electronic swing band. They range from some chill songs to energetic ones.
What was one of your biggest struggles this past week?
Speaking of driving, one of my biggest struggles every week involves driving! When my cranky field truck (Officially named Trucky-Truck, thank you, Elise) decides to work, I often get stuck behind very slow cars, making my commute to my field sites excruciatingly long at times. I often joke that there is only one road in Bocas but… it’s true. I am often fuming in my truck going 5 kph up a hill behind a giant Chiquita Banana truck and there is literally nothing I can do about it. An amusing game I began playing I deemed “Panama Tetris” where I look for pick-up trucks that have amazingly stacked objects in their truck beds. I once saw over a dozen school desks stacked in the back of a pick-up. I personally enjoy seeing the pick-ups stacked sky high with plantains. Driving in Bocas almost feels like a video game at times, you never know what you’re going to see on the road each day.
What’s a fun thing you did this past week?
Last Sunday we actually went out to Isla Colon, the main island in the Bocas del Toro archipelago. We went to bird island, a little rocky island off the coast of the main island to look at nesting Red-billed Tropicbirds and Brown Boobies. After that, we headed to Playa Estrella, Seastar Beach, where we spent a nice day on the beach looking at sea stars, swimming, and eating tacos. While we are often too busy to make the trek out to the island, it is always a nice time when we do make it.
How do you unwind after a long day of work?
While going to the island is for occasional full days off, on a regular day, my assistants and I will watch TV together during and after dinner. Recently, we’ve been watching Brooklyn 99, El Internado, and a variety of anime. My assistants’ favorite anime we watched recently is Shin Sekai Yori, about a dystopian future after the fall of modern man where humans have telekinetic powers that, if not controlled, can cause mass chaos in society. This show has quite a bit of mystery, is a little weird, but isn’t insanely long so check it out if you’re interested.
While I’m at it, I’ll make another anime recommendation (Webmaster, please don’t smite me!) [Note from the Webmaster in his best Ron Howard impersonation: She was.] I also recommend Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai. Ok, hear me out. I know the title sounds stupid, but I whole-heartedly enjoyed this anime. It’s a cute, high school romance with an air of supernatural, as our main character, Sakuta, helps students at his school overcome strange supernatural phenomenon. It’s funny, cute, and short.
There was no sword slinging in any of my above recommendations, but if anyone would like any tips or recommendations for anime don’t hesitate to talk with me! I’m by far not an expert, but I enjoy watching short, 23 minute-long anime episodes as a study/work break.
Describe your office. If you could change one thing, what would it be?
Right now my office is secondary rainforest and forest edge habitat! This is the preferred habitat of both the Golden-collared and White-collared manakin. This type of habitat is usually highly productive, with lots of light coming into the forest from disturbances (a river, cutting down trees, or along the edge of farms, ranches, and burned areas). This makes the vegetation here very thick and full of fruiting plants, which the frugivorous manakins love to eat. If I could change one thing about my office, I would get rid of all the mosquitos! The mosquitos love whispering sweet nothings into my ear while I pick birds out of the mistnets or while I’m processing manakins. They can be very distracting.
