Arrivals

The 23^rd was a sad day indeed as we said goodbye to the Team MAGnificent. The day was spent catching up on boring business things and making sure all the excellent data collected were up-to-date and backed up. Diana and Luis’ wedding anniversary was just before the first team arrived, which meant they spent their anniversary assessing equipment and stocking up on supplies. This was not very romantic, so instead, they took this weekend for a trip to San Cristobal, an island they had not been to. While they were away, I worked on my thesis (no, really, I did!), and Jaime and Jeff came over the weekend.

Jaime does a lot of the genetic work our team is involved in, focusing on the role of hybridization in speciation. He also teaches at San Francisco University of Quito which has a campus on the Galápagos Islands.

The new arrivals with Luis

Jeff is the Papa Pinzón of the team, and first came to do research in the Galápagos 15 years ago. His work involves the role of song in adaptation and speciation, and came equipped with some nifty equipment that records the finches’ songs. I hadn’t paid much attention to the songs last year, so this is new challenge: recognizing finches by their song. Jeff found a tiny little gecko as a roommate!

Jeff's new roomate

Luis and Diana returned, slightly green from spending all of Sunday on rough water, and the rest of the weekend was spent trading stories from the field over the years.