La Selva Biological Station

My next stop was La Selva Biological Station. It was established in 1968 by the Organization for Tropical Studies and is internationally recognized as one of the most important field stations for research on tropical forests. Before that it was a research farm owned by Leslie Holdridge, an American botanist and climatologist who devised a classification system for the world's biomes called the Holdridge Life Zones System. La Selva is a species-rich location going from lowland Caribbean rainforest to the Braulio Carillo National Park and it's higher elevation cloud forests. There are over 2,100 species of plants including 410 tree species, 125 species of mammals (72 of them bats), 470 species of birds, 48 amphibian species, 87 species of reptiles, 45 species of freshwater fish, and tens of thousands species of insects, arachnids, and other arthropods. Forest ecology plots have been continuously measured for more than 50 years representing an important long-term data set. I know several people who have done research here.

The first morning I did a tour with one of the naturalists here and learned much about the flora and fauna. Later I had the opportunity to meet with the Head of Scientific Operations, Orlando Vargas. He is a botanist and naturalist, and a very nice guy. It was good of him to take some time out of his day to talk with me about La Selva, forest research, and impacts of climate change. I also found out that we have a friend in common. Later that evening I met some bat people (more about that in my next post). The next day I had time to explore the rainforest on my own - and experience the rain as well as the forest.