Today we arrived at our final research station, which means it is time for our independent research. In my previous post, I briefly discussed my research proposal and ideas for research at Las Cruces Biological Station. Since then, I have paired up with another student and we have worked hard to combine our projects together nicely. Luckily we were able to incorporate most of the main aspects of each of our proposals. Our new project, that we will execute at Las Cruces, will study both terrestrial mammals and primates. We will be examining a few different factors on mammal biodiversity, including both anthropogenic and natural sound, edge effects, and riparian and trail corridors. The idea is that some animal will be attracted to anthropogenic sound, but more mammals will be deeper in the forest, where there is more natural sound. Also, mammals will utilize different corridors. For many mammals, riparian corridors are very important, but some mammals will use the trail corridors as well. We expect to see differences in diversity of mammals in riparian, trail, and edge habitats. So, to study these questions we have, we will set up camera traps in strategic places throughout the station, and then perform line transects in the three habitats. We will do a soundscape in each transect and then keep an eye out for mammal sightings, tracks, or scat. Our first day in Las Cruces, within a few hours of arrival, we spotted an agouti in the botanical garden, so hopefully that is a good sign that we will get a lot of data, while we work hard hiking through the jungle. And then my last post will hopefully be filled with exciting results!