by Candy Feller

Hi All,
I'm getting ready to head off to Belize again on Saturday (Jan. 4), so I thought I had best send out the somewhat delinquent report from our November 2002 trip to Carrie Bow. Participating in that trip were: Rachel Borgatti, Anne Chamberlain, Claudette Decourley, John Paul Schmit, and Rachel Tenni.

1. Panama
a. I spent Nov. 3-6 at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama working with Penny Barnes on logistics and other details for the STRI/OTS course in Tropical Marine Ecology to be held next summer at Bocas del Toro (See details on the course at http://www.stri.org/tropical/) We visited mangrove sites on the Pacific coast of Panama and arranged for a field trip and accommodations for course participants to the International Tuna Research Laboratory at Achotines. We also drafted a grant proposal to convene a mangrove/seagrass workshop next year in Florida, Belize, and Panama as part of the new Smithsonian Marine Science Network.

2. Belize
a. I spent Nov. 6-9 in Belize City at the University of Belize and at UB's field station on Turneffe Atoll working with her graduate students, Faustino Chi and Cyril Piou, from the University of Bremen, Germany. Tino and Cyril are working on long-term recovery patterns in mangrove forests severely damaged by Hurricane Hattie, a SS Category 5 storm that hit Belize in 1961.

b. At Twin Cays, Rachel Borgatti, Anne Chamberlain, Claudette Decourley, and Rachel Tenni began the fieldwork to determine forest structure across and within all zones. In addition to the CARICOMP plots, we are using the point-center quarter (PCQ) transect method to quantify structural attributes, including tree height, basal area, and biomass. We got a good start on this project and managed to do six PCQ transects this trip. Claudette and Anne set up 90 1-m2 litter traps in the CARICOMP plots to quantify litterfall in fringe, transition, and dwarf zones.

c. Also at Twin Cays, we initiated a project to quantify the coarse woody debris (CWD) in the mangrove. Tino and Cyril spent a couple of days with us and helped work out the methods. When John Paul Schmit arrived, we focused on this project. All together, we managed to sample at total of five plots in fringe, transition, dwarf, and moribund zones. To sample CWD, we used a fixed plot method. We set up plots, 3 x 3 m, in each zone, using telescoping poles at the corners and brightly colored twine to mark off the boundary of the plot from the ground through the canopy. First, we removed all dead wood from the ground area within our plot. We then harvested all the dead wood from the canopy using sawzalls, hand saws, clippers, loppers, and brut force. These two categories of dead wood were sorted into a series of additional size and decay classes. After sorting, we weighed each class separately. We collected a subsample of each class, which we took back to Carrie Bow, where ! it was weighed for wet weight, dried, and reweighed for dry weight. Subsequently, a portion of the dried sample was ground for nutrient analyses. We will continue this CWD project during trips to Belize in FY2003. We plan for a minimum of five plots in at least five forest types/zones that we have identified in association with the PCQ transects for forest structure.

d. We started to measure FIG (Floc Influence on Growth) experiment; however, because of some nasty weather, these measurements were suspended and must be made in January 2003.

e. We also initiated the FIGLET (Floc Influence of Growth of Little Enclosed Trees) experiment to look at the effect of floc on plant growth. Anne Chamberlain and Claudette Decourley set up this experiment on West Island, approx. 200 m S of the P transect in the ecotone fertilization experiment. For this experiment, we built small enclosures made of PVC and fiberglas screening.

f. We fertilized the 81 trees in the ecotone experiment.

g. We collected and processed the 9-mo litter bags from the three ongoing decomposition experiments associated with the ecotone fertilization experiment.
h. We measure survival and herbivory of the 1620 Rhizophora mangle seedling (20 at each of the 81 trees in the ecotone experiment) that we planted in Sept 2001. For each seedling, we quantified damage by crabs, miners, borers, bud moths, and folivores.

i. We continued our measurements to determine the effects of nutrient enrichment and zone on damage caused by foliage-feeding herbivores in the canopy of fringe, transition, and dwarf trees for the 81 trees in the ecotone experiment. This time, we measured: 1) Aratus pisonii (mangrove tree crab) damage by leaf age/position at each of the 81 trees in the experiment; 2) the proportion of leaves with Ecdytolopha sp. (the mangrove bud moth) damage.

j. We also worked on the crab exclosure experiment West Island to remove all the crabs that had recruited into the plots over the summer.

k. We collected senescent leaves from the ecotone experiment in order to get enough material for microbial and fungal experiments to be conducted by Marc Frischer and John Paul.

3. Florida
a. At the Smithsonian Marine Station in Fort Pierce, we continued our measurements to determine the effects of nutrient enrichment and zone on herbivory in the fertilization experiment in Mosquito Impoundment 23. We also hosted a graduate student from Northern Arizona University who will apply for a 12-wk graduate fellowship to work at SMS.

Happy New Year,
Candy