Las Cruces is thrilled to announce that, in late February, the final closing papers were signed on a new 30 hectare property located on the eastern end of Las Cruces. This achievement was many years in the making and is the result of intensive fundraising and a major donation by the March Conservation Fund to secure this particular property. It is located due north of the last parcel acquired in 2009 and will provide an important buffer for the Rio Java watershed (the western jagged boundary in the image below) and will also buffer our primary forest. The property ranges between 1050-1150m in elevation and is comprised almost entirely of degraded pasture. As this property recovers it will provide additional important habitat for the fauna in our reserve and new space for colonization of our diverse flora.  This important addition will increase our protected area to a slightly over 360 hectares overall and will help connect up the matrix of remnant forest patches and recovering habitat in and around this immediate area. 

The Las Cruces Land Campaign has been an ongoing project for many decades and over the years the protected area has slowly expanded to the reserve's current boundaries. Each expansion has helped protect the incredibly diverse flora and fauna that are found in our forest fragments. The ongoing goal is to connect the Las Cruces reserve to the Guaym� indigenous reserve and create a biological corridor to ease the pressure on our wildlife, and facilitate their movement in this region of Costa Rica. The region saw tremendous deforestation back in the 1970s and 1980s and only 25% of the original forest that once covered this landscape remains.  

With your help and generous donations we have been able to offset the impact that has had on the wildlife and flora of the region. Everyone at OTS expresses their thanks to all the donors who have helped make this new acquisition a reality, with a special note of gratitude from everyone at Las Cruces!  

To support the ongoing efforts of the Las Cruces Land Campaign, please click here to make a donation. 

Karen Vickers Photo by Jay Taft

It is with sadness that the OTS South Africa Program will be bidding farewell to Karen Vickers. Karen joined the OTS South Africa Program in 2006 as a teaching assistant, having recently graduated from the University of Cape Town Conservation Biology Masters Program. It quickly became apparent that she would make a wonderful academic, and she was hired as a lecturer.

In the nine years she has been with the OTS, Karen has...

• Taught on 15 undergraduate courses, which included teaching 360 undergraduates, partnering with 15 OTS lecturers and 54 visiting faculty, training 17 TAs, working with three logistics managers;
• Traveled (and driven most of ) 141,000 km and flown on 26 flights, all while herding students;
• Designed and implemented six NSF-funded summer research experiences for 17 US students;
• Established the Nsasani Trust, an NGO that focuses on human capital development in the biodiversity sector in southern Africa;
• Helped establish the Skukuza Science Leadership Initiative (SSLI), a partnership between OTS, the Nsasani Trust and SANParks which aims to provide science and leadership opportunities for South African and international students and researchers;

She will leave both a substantial legacy with OTS and some enormous boots to fill. We wish her all the best for her future endeavors!

The winner of the 2014 OTS Student Paper Award is Susan Whitehead for the paper "Chemical ecology of fruit defense: synergistic and antagonistic interactions among amides from Piper" published in the journal Functional Ecology.  Susan is an alum of the 2008 Tropical Biology course and all of her research was conducted at La Selva Biological Station.  This research was part of her doctoral work at the University of Colorado under the direction of Deane Bowers.  Susan is currently a  Post-doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Entomology at Cornell University.

Honorable mention goes to Camilla Crif� for her paper "Variations in angiosperm leaf vein density have implications for interpreting life form in the fossil record" published in the journal Geology.  Camilla is an alum of the 2014 Tropical Plant Systematics course.  This was her Master's research at Miami University (Ohio) under the direction of Ellen D. Currano.  Camilla is now a doctoral student at the University of Washington.

The Awards Committee was Kimberly G. Smith (Chair), University of Arkansas; Elisabeth Arevalo, Providence College; Erin K. Kuprewicz, Smithsonian Institution; Kyle E. Harms, Louisiana State University; and the 2013 award winner Samantha R. Weintraub, University of Utah.

Congratulations Susan! 

The Las Cruces Biological Station owns one of the largest remaining forest fragments in the region an is home to over 2,000 native plant species. Numerous smaller fragments are scattered throughout the area and some measure of biological connectivity exists in the form of living fence rows and narrow corridors along riparian zones. However, rather than viewing this landscape as an impediment to research, it is this setting that makes Las Cruces an ideal station to study the effects of forest fragmentation and isolation on animal and plant communities. The area is also ideally suited for research on biological corridors and restoration ecology.

Las Cruces is working to actively promote and facilitate research in a number of ways. In addition to numerous databases, Las Cruces is equipped with classrooms and wireless access to the internet, as well as laboratory and library facilities to serve researchers and academic courses for short or long-term projects. 

Bats and Piper

This OTS "fundamentals course" is an intensive, field-based experience in tropical biology for graduate students. Since the 1960s, this classic OTS course has trained ecologists and evolutionary biologists using an active learning approach, which engages students in a fun and fast-paced research environment. With guidance from expert scientists, students will gain experience in critical thinking, research design, data analysis, analytical tools, science communication, ecological modeling, and collaborative research-all in the beautiful tropical setting of Costa Rica. We guarantee you will come away from the course a better scientist with new skills and ideas to carry into your future research.