Contents
Reflecting on Biology and Me |
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By Sarah Ludwig ’13![]() |
An Experience of a Lifetime |
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By Andrew Kaul ’13As many of you know well, each interim St. Olaf offers numerous options to take an experiential course that involves leaving our safe home on the hill and travelling right to the source of knowledge. These courses studying abroad provide students the opportunity to learn with all five senses, and discuss and write about their own experiences in addition to reading about others’. A picture is worth a thousand words, and personally I returned with 770 pictures from my brief term abroad, but I feel even 770,000 words could not encompass my experience abroad, as words and pictures can only go so far. But that’s the point really; a St. Olaf education is so much more than the sum of words and pictures in our textbooks. I spent this January on the Equatorial Biology program with professor Kim Kandl and 18 of my peers, and I had the experience of a lifetime.![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Galapagos archipelago was the first biome we visited, and I imagine was the favorite for many on the trip. The islands are so new that the species residing there have only had very recent contact with human beings, or any large mammals for that matter. Because of this, they have not experienced selection to fear us and thus are either quite curious about, or indifferent to human presence. If you think a zoo is the best place to see a wide diversity of animals up close, then you haven’t been to the Galapagos. On a single 30-minute dingy ride, we motored around a rocky inlet and saw frigate birds, blue-footed boobies, sea lions, marine iguanas, crabs, flightless cormorants, and the adorably small Galapagos penguin. You can walk or boat right up next to them, or often they will swim or walk right up to you. This behavior applies to terrestrial animals as well; I can recall at least a dozen times I had to walk around a tortoise, iguana, or sea lion lying in the path. As biologists, I think we all felt a little spoiled. Despite how cool the uniquely adapted plants and animals were in the Galapagos, it was not my favorite Equatorial biome. I am a botanist at heart, and everywhere we went I was much more interested in the flowers than the fauna. The Amazon rainforest contained such high diversity it made my head spin. We were told that a single square meter contained more species richness than an entire hectare of forest in Minnesota. I thought I knew a lot about plants going into this experience, but after seeing all the new shapes, structures, and strategies the Amazonian plants exhibited, I was humbled and struck with a sense of awe, yet even this was not my favorite biome. Coming to the end of our time in Ecuador, we took a long bus-ride west from Quito and climbed in elevation. We passed through a montane grassland called páramo, where we spent only a few hours looking at the plants adapted for the harsh windy conditions; they were like nothing I’d seen before and I wished we could have stayed for a year. We eventually arrived at our final destination and my favorite of the biomes we studied, the Andean cloud forest. Here the plants and animals experienced rain only slightly less than in the lowland rainforest, but also had to adapt to the steep and rocky mountainsides and the higher rate of disturbance as a result. Half of the world’s species of orchids can be found in Ecuador, and the cloud forest is home to most of these species. As a botanist, having the opportunity to walk around an entire garden housing dozens of species or orchids, was seriously a dream come true. I am sure that I’m not alone in saying that my time in Ecuador definitely caused me to reshape my plans for a future career in biology to include studying internationally and working to increase collaboration between nations for a common cause. Ecuador contains an astounding collection of species that I feel incredibly lucky to have seen first hand. I highly recommend considering studying biology abroad on this or any of the other amazing programs that St. Olaf offers. Images from left: Andrew using a magnifying glass to look at a plant by Marie Bak ’14, Plant from the Heliconia genus by Andrew Kaul, Sketch by Meghan Exner ’14, Galapagos Tortoise by Andrew Kaul ’13 |