This expedition lasted two weeks.  We broke our group into two field crews that covered most of Costa Rica.  The first group was led by Professor Jerry Johnson and included Dr. Jaime Zúñiga-Vega, graduate student Carissa Jones, and undergraduate students Laura Scott, Kat Elder and Clay Yardley.  This group worked the northern part of the country, focusing mostly in the provinces of Alejuela, Guanacaste, and Puntarenas.  The second group was led by Professor Mark Belk and included graduate student Josh Rasmussen, and undergraduate students Leslie Rogers, John Aedo, and Cami Frandsen.  The focus of this trip was to make collections of the fish Xenophallus umbratilis for Carissa's thesis research.  We also made collections of several other livebearers for a variety of projects.  Some of these species included: Poecilia gillii, Brachyrhaphis rhabdophora, Priapicthys annectans, Brachyrhaphis holdridgei, and Alfaro cultratus.

This expedition lasted two weeks.  A single group consisting of graduate student Carissa Jones and undegraduate students Johnny Schellenberg, John Aedo, and Jonathan Jones worked in northern Costa Rica and along the Pacific coast.  The primary purpose of this trip was to make additional collections of Xenophallus umbratilis for Carissa's thesis project and to make collections of Brachyrhaphis roseni and B. terrabensis for comparative life history and speciation research.  Additional collections of several other poeciliids were made for a variety of other projects.  Some of these include: Poecilia gillii to seed graduate student Jared Lee's project, as well as samples of Alfaro cultratus and Prapichthys annectans.

This was a two week expedition from September 25^th to October 6^th to make collections in the Rio Colorado Basin for perches, silversides and catfishes.  There were six researchers involved, Victor Cussac and Juan Pablo Barriga from the Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Carlos Jara, from the Universidad Austral de Chile, Daniel Ruzzante from Dalhousie University, Peter Unmack from Brigham Young University, Julie Sommer from University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  A number of locations were sampled and good collections were made for all of the target species as well as other species found in that basin.

This was our first field trip to Mexico.  We set out with three objectives.  First, we were interested in Poeciliopsis scarli collections for life history and geometric morphometric projects; we wanted to know if patterns of superfetation in this species were similar to those we reported in Zuniga et al. 2007.  Second, we were interested in finding a research system for Laura Scott to examine the evolution of reproductive barriers, possibly focusing on the evolution of spotting patterns and reproductive isolation among Poeciliopsis fish species.  Finally, we were interested in life history variation in the widespread fish Poecilia butleri.  We traveled through Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta, Nuevo Italia, and Apatzingan.  Mexico’s rainy season had just ended.  During the trip, we sampled 30 sites, yielding enough fish for projects to get underway at UNAM and BYU.  We made good collections of Poecilia butleri for Jaime's life history project and identified a slick master's thesis project for Laura in the Rio Purificacion river basin.  This drainage has with two species, P. baenschi and P. turneri, co-occurring and both have unique yet similar spotting patterns posing the question of what is maintaining their reproductive isolation barriers.  We struck out on finding good collections of Poeciliopsis scarli.

The major focus of this trip was to collect Poecilia gillii throughout Costa Rica for Jared’s thesis.  We split into two groups, the 3-toed Sloths and the Lesser Anteaters: 3-toed sloths were led by Dr. Jerry Johnson, and included graduate student Jared Lee and undergraduate students Zac Lewis, Liesel Christensen, April Larson; the lesser anteaters were led by Dr. Mark Belk and included undergraduate students Nina Laitinen, Laura Pennock, Kevin Menzie, and Dustin Patrick.  For two weeks we moved through the country jumping into every river, stream, small ditch, and pool that we thought we could find fish. This high adventure trip included slogging through red, sticky mud, trudging in water full of ferocious prawns, getting oh-so close to going into Panama, and in general having a fun time.  We also collected more Xenophallus umbratilis for Carissa’s project.  We also picked up several other species to build our collecting efforts in Costa Rica.  This trip was also the culmination of our tropical biology field course (Biol 559R) for 2007.

This was a small exploratory trip focusing primarily on identifying samples of Poecilia to tie in with broad scale phylogeography and life history work in Poecilia butleri.  This was a collaborative project I conducted with Dr. Jaime Zúñiga-Vega.  Just the two of us were on this field trip.  This project is funded by a SANT award through Brigham Young University.

The purpose of this field trip was to expand our collections of the Patagonian pencil catfish Hatcheria macrei for the PIRE Patagonia project.  This trip is funded primarily through Brigham Young University, but is part of a larger project supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

This trip focused on sampling the pencil catfish Trichomycterus aereolatus from the Maipo drainage and adjacent areas of central Chile.  This trip is a follow-up based on phylogeographic results obtained from our initial work in this system.  Participants on this Dr. Jerry Johnson, BYU undergraduate student Benjamin Groves, Alfonso Flores and a graduate student from the University of Concepción, Carlos Muñoz.  This trip was funded through Brigham Young University, but is part of a larger project supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (OISE 0530267).  The molecular genetics data collection for this project is being conducted primarily by Ben Groves as part of his undergraduate ORCA project (funded in 2008).