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The Ecology of Extreme Environments: Galapagos
Journal of Meg Lowman
Faculty of Department: Environmental Studies
Division: Interdisciplinary Sciences
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Small plane to San Cristobal (English name, Chatham) and transfer to the ship, Evolution. No thanks to International Expeditions logistics staff in Alabama, our ship rooming situation was a mess, and we had two students beyond the original list due to a long sequence of mis-events, mainly emanating from their headquarters. Nonetheless, the ship manager Javier and I hustled and re-created a new list of rooms and bunkmates that satisfied everyone’s demands. Whew!
After a briefing, we ate lunch and then boarded our small pangas (inflatable boats) to head ashore on Isla Lobos, a small sandy island with a large colony of sea lions. The lions cavorted in the lava-edged water, came up on the sandy beaches to sleep and sun, and interacted quite easily with the resident marine iguanas. Red Sally lightfoot crabs adorn the black lava rocks, and scuttle about as the only shy residents of this first Galapogos exploration.
We boated around Kicker Rock (Leon Dormido), a vertical tuff cone rising steeping approximately 400 feet from the sea. On it reside thousands of blue-footed boobies, Nazca boobies, frigate birds and swallow-tailed gulls. On top are scrawny tufts of small shrubs and trees that are completely weighted down by nesting frigates. Boobies are one of the most fascinating groups of wildlife in the Galapagos. “Bobo” is Spanish for clown or buffoon, and the booby seems very clownish when it awkwardly bobs and sways on land. It is, however, extraordinarily graceful by wing. Boobies have wonderful adaptations to their life at sea and their nesting on remote Pacific islands. They have pointed bills, excellent in the process of dive-bombing into the water to catch fish. They have torpedo-shaped bodies, and air sacs in their skulls to protect their brains during sudden immersion into water, as well as closed nostrils. Boobies incubate eggs at 39 degrees Centigrade atop their webbed feet, which have the perfect circulation to transfer heat through their feet to the eggs. The male has a characteristic beseeching, long whistle while the female makes a nasal honk. Courtship is very clown-like, with beaks sky-pointing, many dance steps, and the creation of a fake nest. They do not really use a nest, but use their feet for the egg instead.
There are 3 types of booby. The blue footed boobies feed close to shore in shallow water, due to the shape of their beak which is adapted for shallow diving. They nest on the ground, while the masked boobies nest on cliffs and the red-footed boobies nest in trees. The blue-footed booby lays 2-3 eggs about 3-5 days apart. Because they can not provide enough food and protection for 3 babies, the children practice “opportunistic sibling murder” whereby a stronger young may exclude a weaker one. One of the behaviors for this is when a larger chick will force a smaller chick outside the guano ring that is the nest boundary. Once outside, parents will not feed this chick and so it will perish. Masked boobies practice “obligatory sibling murder” in that two eggs are laid, and the parents can only care for one. So the weaker chick will be pushed off the cliff or simply miss out on the food since the larger one will take a bigger share. The second egg is important, however, in the event that the first chick dies or falls off the cliff. It is a tough world in the booby kingdom.
We have a quick Darwin lecture on Day 1, so that everyone can think and smell and touch and even dream in the world of Charles Darwin. Here was the gist of my talk:
Imagine yourself as 22, shy, awkward. Feel your shaggy beard. You have failed medical school. Your father has said you will amount to nothing. You are not strong and healthy. Your only admirer is a first cousin who offers to marry you. Off you go as a volunteer for five years on a small ship called the HMS Beagle to keep the captain company and also to serve as ship naturalist. You are excited about the naturalist role but probably not prepared for a long life at sea. You get sick often. You spend five weeks (ONLY) in the Galapagos Islands where you see, observe, smell, think. You return home with a collection of bids, fish and plants that force you to exclaim to your conservative religious colleagues tht the world was not created in 4004 BC as the church believed, but instead was the product of natural selection.
You knew very few names of any species you saw or collected, but you figured out how they worked and what was their function and adaptation to their world. You could not spout off scientific names like Acacia rorudiana, Parksinsonia aculeate, Scalesia sp., Tribulus sp. or Bursera graveolens. You brought home a collection of finches, but only much later with careful dissection did you figure out that each had a different beak to reflect a slightly different niche on these island ecosystems. You pioneered the theory of island biogeography in this observation.
So, welcome to the Galapagos. Go and explore like Darwin. Look at behavior, function, and observe the ecosystem as an engineer observes a machine. Learn biodiversity by its role and behavior, not just a name which is a human invention. Think about what keeps this ecosystem balanced and healthy.” (end of my first lecture)
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| Professor Meg Lowman, front and center, with students and tour guide. |
Monday, January 23, 2006
Espanola (Hood Island) -
Today we visit the oldest and southernmost island in the archipelago. Because it is isolated geographically, it has a large portion of endemic species including mockingbirds, waved albatrosses, marine iguanas and others. We walk over a rocky trail approximately 2 miles – mom did great despite her inability to navigate rough terrain. I bet our guide, Boli Sanchez, a vodka tonic if he could find me an albatross, since these birds usually fly with their young at the end of December. He not only found one, but two! They were juveniles, left behind, and we hoped fervently that they would soon take wing and find their flock somewhere in the vast Pacific. No bird is more expert as a flying machine as the albatross, which allegedly flies for many months without resting as it navigates the wide expanses of the Pacific. We watch geysers erupt through blow holes in the lava rock, and walked past myriad masked boobies nesting on rock cliffs and also some red-footed boobies in the saltbush, Croton, Sesuvium, Atriplex, Lucium, Cordia lutea, among others.
Sea lions are plentiful at Espanola. The perform all sorts of gymnastics in the water. Baby sea lions are very cute, and form a nursery of playmates when mom goes out to fish during the mornings. The cow returns in several hours and clambers ashore. The bulls are not as friendly as the babies and the cows – he may be protecting his harem, and roars and rushes toward the innocent tourist who may walk in the wrong place.
In the afternoon, we visit Gardner Bay Beach. We all receive shortie-wet suits and fins and masks from the ship, and go ashore to walk and also snorkel. It is beautiful fine sand, and everyone enjoys the afternoon of fish, rays, and a few small sharks. Visibility was poor, however, and so the fish were not as colorful as otherwise possible.
Kelsey presented a nice lecture on macro-algae in the evening. I spoke on Chuck Darwin.
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