This trip is all about the fecal samples. I’ve been collecting samples from juvenile and adult males in order to validate an assay for testosterone. The juveniles have proven to be a bit of a challenge – you would think it would be easy, 1) follow the monkeys, 2) wait for them to poop, 3) collect the poop, but you would be wrong. With how high the monkeys are the samples often don’t even reach the forest floor – they get stuck in branches or lower trees. Currently the woollies have been eating a lot of seeds and so there is often very little fecal material to collect, just seeds with a slight coating of poop. This is especially true for the juveniles whose contributions are smaller to begin with. Then there is the matter of spotting the samples that do make it to the ground – sometimes easier said than done. There is one extra resource that can be used however in the hunt for samples – my friend, my foe the dung beetle! I actually think the larger of the species here is quite beautiful; they are a deep, iridescent green with little orange feelers. You can often spot them sitting on leaves about chest height waiving their feelers back and forth, waiting on the woollies. The other species is much smaller and a light brown. Often as I stand desperately trying to locate woolly poop I hear the familiar buzzing of dung beetles and they have frequently taken me right to samples. After that it becomes a free-for-all with multiple beetles of both species (and one human researcher) wrestling over the spoils. You might think it an uneven match but the dung beetles are deceptively strong and they will roll their prize away very quickly if you don’t keep an eye on them. The things we do in the name of science!
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June 2016
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