I'm currently enjoying a breakfast sandwich and a tall Americano at the Starbucks near our hotel in Manila. Luke has just called Rafe from the town of Solano (about seven hours north of Manila). The boys were supposed to head up to the first site and establish camp at Mt. Palai, but only seven of the 30 porters that they hired yesterday have shown up.

A major Midwest snowstorm during the Christmas holiday delayed the 36-hour journey for our intrepid herpetology team, but we eventually made our way from snowy Lawrence to the Kansas City airport. The very long plane trip to Manila included a layover in Minneapolis and a layover in Japan. -Rafe

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Over winter break, Herpetology curator Rafe Brown is leading a team of KU students to the Philippines.  The group's research will help scientists better understand the biodiversity of the Philippines, an archipelago of some 7,000 islands.

Rafe Brown

From KUCR.... STUDENT TRAVEL FELLOWHIPS AVAILABLE TO ATTEND "GENES IN ECOLOGY, ECOLOGY IN GENES" SYMPOSIUM The Ecological Genomics Institute (www.ecogen.k-state.edu ) at Kansas State University is pleased to announce that funding is available to support student fellowships to attend the 7th Annual Ecological Genomics Symposium (November 13 to 15, 2009, in Kansas City). Registration Information and details are available at www.ecogen.k-state.edu/symp2009 .

The last week has been a bit hairier than normal. Joined by another Colombian water beetle student, we flew down to Puerto Ayacucho in southern Venezuela to scope out some new sites. No need for details at this point but things did not go quite as planned. The fact that an American and a Colombian were traveling together along the boarder with Colombia the day after Venezuela shut down all relations with Colombia because of perceived US military aggression (likely) played a role, if you are curious.

The main expedition is now complete and we are all now back in Maracaibo doing some post-expedition sample sorting and prep. Not a whole lot of time to write at this moment so hopefully some pictures will suffice:

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From San Cristobal: The last week has been a whirlwind of different habitat types (as normal). We zipped across from Maracaibo to Coro in Falcon state where we stayed for a few days to work the region. This part of Venezuela is mostly dry semi-desert. Lots of cactus. Among the more striking feature is a dune region which is large enough to make you think you were in lost somewhere in the Sahara. Of course, there are oases of sorts that were full of beetles.

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The Gyrinidae are a family of charismatic aquatic Coleoptera commonly known as whirligig beetles, for their gyrating swimming style. Gyrinids are peculiar for having completely divided eyes giving them the appearance of having four eyes: two that peer above the water and two that peer below the water. They swim about on the surface tension of the water kicking with two pairs of paddle-like legs.