Week 9 – Second Start

July 20, 2019

This week we were more or less entirely switched. Carol went on the big nursery check on Thursday just in case they needed help, but it sounds like everything went great! I spent the whole week with the Simus team! I think I have got the acronyms for the behaviors memorized, or at least the common ones.

For the Prolemur Simus team (Greater Bamboo Lemur), each day consists of one ‘Follow’. A ‘Follow’ is 6 hours following one individual. However, if the individual we are to observe is not found before 8:00 am, then the Follow is only 4 hours. The first hour and a half or two hours of a Follow seem to typically be watching a bunch of brown balls up in trees. Greater Bamboo Lemurs are slower and lazier than some other lemur species, such as the Varecia (Black and White Ruffed Lemur). However, the breeding season has started, and the lemurs are more active and aggressive than usual.

During a Follow, there is a watch with a timer that goes off every 5 minutes. Once the alarm stops, the guides say the behavior the Follow individual is doing and if any other individuals are nearby (within 5 meters).

Some of the most common behaviors are:
R (Resting)
FBOS (Feeding, Bamboo, Old-Shoot)
FBA (Feeding, Bamboo, Apex)
DRRF (Drinking, Ravenala, Flower)

When we would write the acronyms in the field book, we would place the letters right next to each other. However, they actually correspond to different columns in the spreadsheet where we entered the data. Feeding was in the behavior column, then Bamboo was the type of food, and old-shoot or apex was the part of the plant being eaten. Drinking was a behavior (DR), Ravenala (also known as a travelers’ palm), the type of food/drink, and the flower is the part of the plant being consumed from. The Ravenalas are going to be in bloom until after I leave Madagascar, and they are hotspots for wildlife. Everything from Madagascar Day Geckos, to Crested Drongos, to Sunbirds, to several species of lemurs will all drink the sweet nectar from the Ravenalas.

We are almost finished with Following each Lemur group. We follow each individual in a group once a cycle, then after all individuals in all the groups have been observed, we spend a few days doing surveys. Surveys are when we walk around trails in areas near where our follow groups are to see how many Greater Bamboo Lemurs we see, or if we see evidence of them (poop). When we see a lemur or any evidence of them, the GPS location is written down. If lemurs are actually seen, then the number seen is recorded as well, and if the genders can be seen, they are marked down too.

In the afternoon, I sit in my hammock on the second floor of the KAFS building and watch the birds and geckos drink from the Ravenala. It’s entertaining watching the geckos as there are many of them, and they each want to have a flower to themselves. Larger geckos will chase smaller ones away, but then some times the smaller ones will sneak between the flower petals to drink nectar where the larger geckos cant get them. And every now and then, a Giant Madagascar Day Gecko (a variant of the common Madagascar Day Gecko) will come by and scare all the other geckos away!

Next week the new volunteer cohort arrives; there are five of them. We have the names of the new volunteers, but we do not know who is a girl and who is a boy, this is troublesome because we need to plan how to arrange the tent sites for the 2 weeks when will all be here. Dana and Soumaya are not from the United States, Fredo said that one volunteer is from France and another is from Germany. We are guessing that Dana is from Germany, and Soummaya is from France. The other three volunteers are Dakota, Claire, and Sam. Sam will be with Evan and me on the Simus team first, Claire and Soumaya will be on reforestation, and Dana and Dakota are with the Varecia team. They are arriving in Antananarivo on Tuesday-Thursday then will travel to KAFS on Saturday, July 26th.

Evan and I are going to Mananjary on Saturday, July 26th. The first time the whole group went there, we were both not feeling well and did not have a great time, so we want a do-over. We should be back before the new volunteers arrive.