Current research projects at Yanayacu

Caterpillars and Parasitoids of the Eastern Andes
Principal Investigators:
Harold Greeney (Yanayacu)
Tom Walla (Mesa State College)
Lee Dyer (Tulane University)
This project is one of the longest on-going projects atYanayacu. The goal of the research is to collect and raise caterpillars in order to find out what they eat, what species of adult butterfly they become, and what parasites attack them. On the left is a picture of the catepillar rearing shed.

Sociality and Spatial Distribution:

social spiders as a case study

Principal Investigator:
Jessica Purcell (Univ.of British Columbia)

Jessica's research is dedicated to understanding the effect of social behavior on spatial distribution and population dynamics on several spatial scales. She uses social spiders (genus Anelosimus) as a model organism,because they exhibit a range of social behaviors.
Jessica hopes to determine a) why social and subsocial species ranges usually do not overlap, and b) how species with different social strategies are distributed within their environment.

Proyecto Ecuatoriano del Monitoreo y Investigacion de Anfibios
Principal Investigator:
Chris Funk (University of Montana)
Chris's project is active throughout Ecuador. Yanayacu is one of several sites being used to monitor populations of frogs and toads. Five new species of frogs have already been discovered!

Breeding Ecology of Ecuador's Mainland Avifauna

Principal Investigators:

Paul Martin (University of Washington)

Mitch Lysinger (San Isidro)

Rob Dobbs (Yanayacu)

Harold Greeney (Yanayacu)

Rudy Gelis (Yanayacu)
This project is ongoing and dedicated to the understanding of all asects of breeding biology and natural history of birds. What do these birds do for a living??? That is exactly the question these researchers are attempting to answer!
 

Biogeography and Thermal Tolerance: understanding distributions of dung beetles in tropical and temperate regions.

Principle Investigator:

Kimberly Sheldon (Univ. of Washington)
Kimberly is investigating the effects of temperature variability on the distribution of tropical and temperate dung beetles.

 

Mating Signal Evolution: exploring the evolutionary history of duetting in neotropical passerines

Principle Investigator:

Caroline Dingle (Univ. of Cambridge)

Caroline is working on a detailed study of banded populations of the grey-breasted wood-wren and the white-breasted wood-wren. She focuses on collecting natural history information of these species to characterize breeding behavior and territoriality of duetting species.

Find out how to volunteer to help with one of these or a variety of other projects