My wife took this amazing picture of a White-lined sphinx moth (Hyles lineata) visiting the beautiful inflorescences of the Pride of Madeira (Echium candicans, syn. E. fastuosum), which have beautiful blue flowers with red stamens and are found all over Palisades Park in Santa Monica, CA. The White-lined sphinx moth follows a bee-line foraging strategy; so the individuals we observed visiting these flowers stayed for about 15min and then left the park! Here's a cool paper by Casey 1976.
The Roya fungus (Hemileia vastatrix) infects coffee leaves and the resulting leaf damage & discoloration gives it the common name of "coffee rust". Roya hit El Salvador hard this season & it's estimated that half of the country's coffee plantations have been infected. Climate change (wetter rainy seasons, dryer dry seasons) has exacerbated Roya across Central America.
Got the chance to celebrate the Day of the Dead in beautiful Nahuizalco. In the background you can see the Santa Ana Volcano (left), Cerro Verde (middle), and Izalco Volcano (right). The debri field from the collapse of the Santa Ana summit (in the late-Pleistocene) reached the Pacific Ocean (40Km away) to form the Acajutla Peninsula. Here's a cool paper by Siebert et al. 2003.
An amazing find; this Salvador worm salamander (Oedipina salvadorensis) is an endemic species - and was recently separated from the more widespread O. taylori. Here's a cool paper justifying the split using its distinctive ecology: Brodie et al. 2012.
The San Salvador Volcano "Quetzaltepec" produced the eruption known as "El Playon" around 1658, which destroyed the town of Nexapa (later relocated & renamed Nejapa). The picture above is an example of primary succession - the plants that colonized these hardened lava flows have to make do without any soil! These early pioneer species will eventually prepare a soil matrix that will give way to other successional communities that can't thrive on bare rock - but the process is slooow, the flow picture above is just 354 yr old. Here's a cool paper on successional "facilitation": Callaway 1995.
There are lots of subspecies of variegated squirrels (Sciurus variegatoides) in Central America, and the color morphs vary tremendously. This little squirrel got zapped by a power line in Zaragoza (La Libertad, El Salvador) & I managed to get a quick picture while it was recovering in the crook of a Maquilishuat (Tabebuia rosea) tree. Here's a great paper on that describes the geographical distribution of variegated squirrels in El Salvador: Owen & Girón 2012.
The fruit of Bixa orellana (Bixaceae), growing in the streets of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico! This is the source of Achiote - a colorant and condiment used in many popular dishes, such as yellow rice.
