January 2010 Visit

Greetings from Panama! I am on my second and final research trip my field site and wanted to update you on all that has happened.


Background

The project's evolution since my first visit has been tremendous. During the initial trip to Cocobolo Nature Reserve (CNR) my interest in applying microclimate mapping to a specific local problem was sparked. Chagas disease, a neglected tropical disease spread by triatomines, immediately came to the forefront. The natural history of triatomines is fascinating and complex. Triatomines can be found in all of South America, Central America, and even the Southern U.S.

In the cooler climates of the Southern Cone triatomines cannot survive without occupying human dwellings, so an eradication campaign against the endemic species, Triatoma infestans, succeeded easily. In regions closer to the the equator, however, eradication is not so simple. Triatomines there can either have sylvatic life cycles (subsisting solely on warm-blooded vertebrates in the forest) or be domiciliary (adapted to inhabiting human dwellings). Given the hot, relatively stable year-round climate of Panama, the two most prevalent triatomine species, Rhodnius pallescens and Triatoma dimidiata, are not strictly tied to sylvatic of domiciliary life cycles. This makes it far more difficult to rid villages of these dangerous disease vectors.

For this reason, I had hoped to study the microhabitat conditions that Panama's triatomines most prefer. By understanding the unique light, temperature, and humidity preferences of the Chagas vectors, I was expecting to be able to describe changes that could be made to decrease the triatomines' preference for infesting human dwellings. In this way, new cases of Chagas disease could be avoided not by spraying insecticide (which is ineffective in the Panamanian context), but by helping local residents manipulate the way they relate to the natural world.

Allow me to contextualize this idea in the specific area of Panama that I have been focusing on. The town nearest Cocobolo Nature Reserve, Las Zahinas, is a small village in an extremely rural setting. Las Zahinas' economy is primarily agrarian, putting people into frequent contact with forests of many different stages of regeneration. I had hoped to look at the interfaces between their daily lives and the lifecycles of triatomines. For example, certain housing types (thatched roofs), spatial relationships (close proximity to palm trees that function as triatomine refugia), and lifestyle elements (peridomestic livestock) are all locally relevant risk factors.


Planned Research

Based on the research question outlined above, my plan for this research trip had been:

1 - Take GPS coordinates of homes in Las Zahinas
2 - Take GPS coordinates of palms in Las Zahinas
3 - Deploy wireless sensors to different housing types to determine microhabitat characteristics of each
4 - Administer household survey to ascertain self-reported triatomine abundance

Once these data were collected, the analysis would have allowed me to determine if proximity to palms was a risk factor, if microclimate differed by housing type, and if triatomine abundance was - consequently - related to housing type.

These data, though based on correlations to self-reported triatomine presence/abundance, would have allowed us to evaluate risk factors and make practical, locally-relevant recommendations based on a mechanistic model. But...


On Use of the "Past Perfect" Tense

You have by now probably noticed that I'm making abundant use of the past perfect verb tense. Here's why:

Two days before leaving for this research trip, ticket already in hand, I found out that our wireless sensors were malfunctioning - badly. To gather the necessary data, we would have had to deploy the sensors as independent, overnight data-loggers. Currently, though, the sensors are unable to log data and report it when reconnected to the base station. It seems only the manufacturer is going to be able to untangle this issue - nothing my colleagues have tried has worked.

From there, it is obvious how my neatly planned research unraveled. Without the crucial element of quantitative data on the microhabitat conditions within different housing types, the proposed study became impossible. Determining a relationship between proximity to palm trees and household triatomine abundance would still be possible, but this variable was only of interest in relationship to the microclimate of housing types. Alone, the correlation has already been established, so such a study would not add to scientific understanding of triatomine ecology.

Upon first hearing this news, I was pretty devastated. To have spent two years exploring the scientific literature on Chagas disease ecology and designing a completely reasonable/practical/useful project around it only to have it crushed by totally unexpected technical difficulties just before departing?! Unbelievable. Still, this has been a great opportunity to truly understand what it means to conduct situated research. Using the past perfect is an indication of having had everything planned, calibrated, ready to go...and then hitting unexpected difficulties and being forced to change course. I had thought I had a perfect research project on my hands until a week ago. Now, though, I am past perfect; I've entered the untidy, frustrating world of applied research. And this - this complex jumble of real and messy events - is what science is all about.


Moving Forward

So - where am I going from here? Well, I will be in Panama through January 10th and there's a lot I hope to accomplish. Currently, my colleagues and I are stranded in Panama City waiting for the transmission on our partner-NGO's truck to get repaired. (Yep - that's how far past perfect we are). We should be out at our research site, Cocobolo Nature Reserve by tomorrow or Wednesday. Once there, I'll be diving into some of the other goals I had initially detailed in my grant, namely strengthening the geographic information system for the nature reserve. Cocobolo Nature Reserve is currently striving for documentation of the carbon they offset through reforestation. To initiate this process, having precise land use maps is even more critical now than when my work began. Thus, I will spend the next few days working with my Panamanian counterpart Emilio to cement and mark the location of 16 permanent monitoring plots that are each 25x40 m and are distributed throughout different land use types. The represented land use types are: primary forest, late secondary forest, early secondary forest, and pasture. Emilio has documented all of the tree species in these plots, giving us detailed data on the amount of carbon sequestered by each forest type. In order to extrapolate this to the entire reserve, we'll be doing a more fine-grain delineation of forest types throughout the whole property. Translation: I'm in for lots of walking around with a GPS unit!