2022 Bioinformatics

Today was super productive and intellectually challenging for all!  As the projects develop, each group develops expertise in their project topic area with a goal of explaining what they are seeing in the graphical comparisons. According to Gabriel "Dr. Vargas" "The students are looking for pathways corresponding to microbial processes that explain the abundance of the dominant bacterial groups in their ecosystems. By doing this they find out how the microbes contribute to global biogeochemical cycles (like nitrogen & carbon cycles)." We know that the brain needs breaks - so most days we get out and about to do something to give the brain a break. Today we started out with a horseback ride down, around, and through to a rushing river and thermal pool at the bottom... Dipped our toes in or fully immersed in a thermal pool for a half hour and then climbed back up.  WE WERE SO LUCKY!  Because it was absolutely gorgeous out! Amazing views! After the afternoon in-dep...

Today our host from the Estacion Biologica Monteverde gave us a guided tour to two waterfalls accessed on the property!   Here is Marvin, machete and all!   Gabriel - our amazing instructor View from the waterfall pool After lunch we had another activity - for this we had to drive down a VERY steep road to San Luis where we visited a small, family-run coffee plantation. Victor was our guide and our instructor Gabriel translated all the sustainability background and machine building innovation and building engineering Victor has done to make his farm support his family well. Learning how to toast the beans the way Victor's mom used to do 2-3 nights a week. Grinding...  Then, on the way up the hill from San Luis to Monteverde, we stopped at the Monteverde Cheese and Ice Cream factory for ice cream and milk shakes. From there we headed up the next hill to the to the Estacion Biologica Monteverde and found this colorful MotMot bird was right on the edge of the drive...

 Today everyone finished the next task - make a figure that compares one or more of the following: principal coordinate analysis (PCoA): A method to explore and visualize similarities and differences in data. hierarchical analysis (phylogenetic tree - like) either based on taxonomy or function After lunch (and the night before... and all morning) there was heightened tension, nervous chatter, lots of stories about height-related fears... as we all got mentally prepared for ziplining = A gondola ride to the tippy top of the range, followed by 6 ziplines that traverse above the canopy between two mountains. The last one is over 3/4 of a mile long - the others feel that long! We lucked out and could see all the way to the Nicoya Peninsula... if you dared look! Most of us also did the "surprise" bungee jump at the end... it's more like a controlled fall, with a second or two of free fall... Super hard to jump off backwards, but they count 1-2-3 and off you go! To "get gr...

Immersion! We spent a solid morning finalizing our metagenomic sample selections found in IMG/M for use in our phylogenetic distribution stacked bar graphs: These show the distribution of microbes in the compared samples. After lunch we went to the community run Santa Elena Biological Reserve. We hiked up through the cloud forest to a tower platform that allowed us to see the landscape in all directions. We saw amazing flora and fauna including a tarantula up close, some black guans (pavos - in the turkey family) climbing/squabbling with each other in the trees, huge Ficus trees, toucan barbets, listened to a toucan squawking, and more! Cloud forest growth (Epiphytes) on the branches!