The PLA is back from Puerto Rico, and I am full of stories and commentary about the trip that I’m sure will last me into the end of the semester. For now, though, I want to wait until the information has time to marinade a little bit before I dive into the deeper aspects of what we saw and did (although I can see that Steve Payne has wasted no time going after the big fish right away). I want to start off with a place-description for my readers.
Hacienda La Esperanza is a former Spanish sugarcane plantation found in the Puerto Rican coastal plain about halfway between the capital San Juan and the town of Arecibo. Interestingly, the lab does much of its field work in the coastal plain of the southeastern US. Indeed, the Conecuh Narional Forest (which you might call the Langkilde Lab Basecamp) is situated centrally in the wide southern Alabama plain. Unlike the rather wide belt (extending from the gulf northwards to about halfway up the big gulf states like Alabama and Georgia) that the plain forms in the southeastern US, the Puerto Rican coastal plain is a thinner sliver of flatland ringing the island.
Here you can see the location of Hacienda La Esperanza in the coastal plain near the mouth of Rio Manati:
Hacienda La Esperanza north of the haystack karst formation in the coastal plain (Map Courtesy of Acme Mapper).
You can see that the terrain changes abruptly from the flat, productive agricultural land to the fascinating mogul like hills of the Puerto Rican Haystack Karst. The karst is a limestone formation so incredible that it deserves, and will probably get, its own blog here in weeks to come.
Anyways, the Hacienda was a relatively late bloomer in the sugarcane business in Puerto Rico, being opened in the early-mid 19th century but quickly expanding. The sugar business in Puerto Rico in that era stood precariously atop the shackled bodies of the slave laborers that it required to function. Precarious or not, though, the plantation was exceptionally profitable and quickly increased its acreage and added slaves. The history of the place is as rich, and indeed perhaps as dark, as the thick black molasses byproduct that slaves toiled to scrape from the bottom of the extraction kettles in the inferno-like boiling room.
Eventually Spain outlawed slavery in Puerto Rico. They did this in 1873, 8 years after complete abolition in the US. Interestingly, Spain had abolished slavery at home over 60 years before. I’ve always found the timeline of the abolition of slavery across countries fascinating, with different powers abolishing slavery at greatly different times – generally later in their colonies than at home. Perhaps it was the different relationship that America had with colonialism (which I explored in a pre-trip blog) that resulted in its equally unique experience with abolition: no other major power required an armed conflict to settle the slavery question. The United States did. That contrast is intensified when you consider that the resolution of that civil war required the interment in caskets of over six hundred thousand Americans: more than died in World War 2, the single deadliest military conflict in world history. Was it the lack of overseas colonies, and the subsequent use of slavery at home that changed the nature of the question?
As usual, I’m off topic again. Back to the Hacienda: with the abolition of slavery the sugar business in the Caribbean quickly crumbled to nothing, and the Hacienda went bankrupt. Further attempts to cultivate the area were short lived, and it was soon left to fallow until it was purchased by Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico and restored as a historical center. Additionally, the area provides critical habitat for wildlife, including the endangered Puerto Rican Crested Toad.
Despite its dark history, and perhaps in some weird way enhanced by the contrast of it, the Hacienda is breathtakingly beautiful. Old Spanish colonial architecture sits atop sprawling grounds with palm trees in the foreground and the haystack hills of the karst in the back.
Brandon, Nico, and I in front of an excavation site at the Hacienda.
This photo illustrates that incredible abrupt transition from the flat sugarlands of the plantation into the karst hills of the interior in the background. Of course, I’m never walking around an area without looking for reptiles, and this is one site that doesn’t disappoint. Anolis (or perhaps Ctenonotus? I’m not going to touch that debate with a meter-long pair of snake tongs…) lizards bask on every tree trunk. Puerto Rican Giant Ameivas scour the ground in their unceasing search for food in the blistering heat of the day.
One of the thousands of anoles that we saw on the trip.
Perhaps most relevant to the Langkilde Lab’s research is another inhabitant of the Hacienda’s fauna. Like the Anolis classification debate, I’m hesitant to touch this one too, but for different reasons!
Fire Ants! Dr. Langkilde is an expert in invasive fire ants and their interactions with (perfectly enough) native lizards! I’ve been lucky enough to run some of my own experiments on this system (Pubs to follow! Hopefully soon…) under her tutelage and I’ve also helped out her graduate students and post-docs with their own trials in the field in Alabama. Fire ants are near and dear to our hearts as research subjects. However it’s very much a love-hate relationship as our studies center around the major impacts that they have on our beloved native fauna.
Hacienda La Esperanza is absolutely littered with fire ants.
Each brown pile of earth is a fire ant mound. Each colony is home to untold thousands of vicious, stinging, predatory, invasive ants. Fire ant invasion is really something of an ecological tragedy, but through research like Dr. Langkilde’s, we are starting to get a better grasp of the way that native fauna might respond to the hammer blow of their invasion. We’ll talk in lab meeting this week, and I’ll be sure to bring up this site to the lab as a spot where some of those research questions might be explored.
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