Biological Science students in Costa Rican rain forest
Biological Science students in Costa Rican rain forest
Over Thanksgiving break, twenty students from the School of Biological Sciences were off on a field trip to Costa Rica to study the ecology of rain forests.
While most Illinois State University students go home for Thanksgiving break, twenty students from the School of Biological Sciences were off on a field trip to Costa Rica to study the ecology of rain forests. The trip fulfilled part of the requirements of BSC 311: Rainforest Ecology. More than 200 biology majors and graduate students have participated in this annual field trip since its initiation in 1996, the direct outcome of Professor Joseph Armstrong’s research sabbatical leave to study the reproductive biology of tropical forest trees in 1993.
The field trip is conducted at the La Selva Biological Station run by the Organization for Tropical Studies. Far from being a vacation tour, students on this field trip spend upwards of eight hours a day learning about the natural history of rain forest organisms and conducting an original field research study. The biological diversity of the 1,600-hectare field station includes more than 2,000 species of vascular plants, of which over 400 are trees. For comparison only a bit more than 900 species of trees are found in the USA and Canada combined. In addition to the plants there are more than 4,000 species of moths, 500 species of butterflies, 500 species of ants, countless beetles, more than 400 species of birds, and about 200 species of mammals, of which nearly 40 percent are bats. The area gets over 13 feet of rain a year, so umbrellas and boots are necessities.
