Day of discoveries

Chitengo Camp, Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique

Where to start?  Possibly it would be a reflection of a safari with Ed Wilson, his first.  Maybe the talk with the breakthrough discoveries of the archaeologists from Calgary.  Or possibly the helicopter ride and pilot bioblitz to Gorongosa.  

The day actually started by bringing a few specimens to Ed for identification.   Prepping for our upcoming bioblitz and the running entertainment for a camp full of biologists and national geographic crew has been to collect insects and bring them to Ed.  After shining my light out on the grass last night, and see the glowing eyes low in the grass, I knew I had it.  A wolf spider.   Additionally just along the trail light outside my hut, I collected a large winged-insect with massive jaws.  Bringing these to Ed in the morning was extra exciting since the winged beast was a male driver ant.  This was the first driver ant Ed had seen.  I then remembered last year, in Ed’s office at Harvard he showed me a sketch of driver ants in a book of his with a sketch of a tribesman and he asked if I thought the man could have been Maasai.   Incredible to be sitting here now finding these animals with him.  



Monster Gorongosa Ant Lion (5 mm)



It is hard to describe the energy with the crew regarding the morning safari.  This would be the first for the world’s greatest naturalist.   Our group included Ed Wilson, Greg Carr, Rob Pringle, and Mark Stahlman.  Rob is a biology professor at Princeton and Mark is a scientist from South Africa who does lots of work in Gorongosa.  The National Geographic crew road in Bob Poole’s personal Land Rover that was customized by shooting wildlife with a turret-mount above for video and a detachable side panel.  Serious photography.  Shortly outside of the camp we had the good fortune to find some hissing termite raiding ants crossing the road.  These were some of the largest ants I have ever seen.  Their movement was of a very confident army moving across the land undeterred by anything.  Getting close to them the hissing sound they collectively produced was incredible.  The video was fantastic, but unfortunately can’t be loaded here.  Ed was clearly in his element.

A lot of the Nat Geo production involves Ed with a local Mozambique the biologist in-training Tsonga.   Ed and Tsonga created a great team with Ed showing him techniques for collecting and identifying insects. Tsonga would share the local natural history of certain species.  It is important to remember this is Ed’s first trip to sub-Saharan Africa. 

We spent a fair amount of time telling the story of the succession of the termite mound.  Fundamentally, these highly specialized social insects construct a massive earthen tower in the savannah.   After the termites die off the mound soon becomes inhabited by a variety of small mammals. The initial vegetation begins with grasses and shrubs.  The former termite colony has left behind a super nutrient rich deposit.  Eventually large trees become the climax plant community in the mound.  Burrowing animals take over the mound and when the trees die off the mound is reduced to a depression that can become a shallow pan for water.

After lunch we headed for a science talk from the University of Calgary archaeologists.  We had heard of their work up in the limestone caves and their search for stone tools in the region.  The presentation was given by the principal investigator, Julio Mercader. Little did we know of the significance of what was ahead.  The group has been working in a local cave called Cheringoma.  The region is the southern tip of the Rift Valley which runs 4,000 miles to the north to Ethiopia.  The very active plate tectonics in the Rift have led to continual renewable of landscape, creating the very diverse geography in the region.   Mercader reported their findings included Iron Age (2,000 ya), Stone Age (30,000 ya), and Middle Stone Age (300,000 ya).   They also informed us of the challenges they have faced from a variety of onslaughts including:  limestone collected for cement, rocks collected for roadwork, and bat guano collected for fertilizer.  All of which has caused the devastation of several rich sites in and around the limestone caves.   The good news came from an initial trench dug by this team in front of the Cheringoma Cave.  Finds included hominid bones which they estimate between 1.9 to 2.6 million years ago!  This is somewhere between the genus Homo and Australopitechus.  This would be the first Australopithocene finds in the country of Mozambique.  This is incredible news for Gorongosa National Park, for Mozambique and for a better understanding of who we are and where we came from.  

After the news from the caves it was time for a pilot bioblitz on Mt. Gorongosa.  Greg, Ed, Mark,  Andrew from Nat Geo, and I flew in the larger helicopter to a site on the eastern edge of the mountain where Gorongosa National Park forestry workers have been cultivating a variety of native trees and replanting.  This year they will have replanted one million trees!  The workers performed a dance and welcoming cheer for Greg’s arrival.  After searching for insects with Ed for a while, the findings were slim.  We had been collecting on a magnificent grassy flat of the bluff above a large waterfall.  This is situated just below the rainforest on the mountain. We started to find more life as we headed down to a stream.  Mark commented on the low nutrient quality of the soil in the region as a possible cause for low abundance.   I captured a dragon fly and found more flying insects near the stream.  This will most likely be the spot for the bioblitz in a few days.



Slash and burn agriculture seen on Mt. Gorongosa.



We had another incredible flight back to camp.  We were filmed by the second helicopter most of the way.  It will be interesting to see how this footage is used for future Nat Geo productions.

What a day. 

Morgan Ryan, project manager of Life on Earth arrived in the afternoon with his daughter Bailey and follows with his report.