Our project recruits about 3 assistants each year to live and work with us in Costa Rica. Keep an eye out for our advertisements on the Primate Info Net and Animal Behavior Society websites. We are looking for enthusiastic, fun-loving, biologists who are looking for extensive time outdoors and field experience in behavioral biology of primates and can make a one-year (or longer) commitment. If you can stand the heat and humidity, this is a great project for getting experience for graduate school in behavioral ecology and evolution.
From left to right: Countney, Juan Carlos, Jahmaira, Alex, and Celia
Renovation of “Residencia No. 3” at Taboga
Starting in March of 2019, the University of Michigan, working through the Capuchinos de Taboga Project, began rebuilding one of the “faculty” houses (specifically Residencia No. 3) located on the North side of the Taboga finca of UTN. We have also dedicated many hours of our own labor to the renovation of the house, allowing us to maximize the impact of our investment. The house will not only provide the Capuchinos project with housing and work space for the future, it demonstrates how we plan to improve additional houses over the next 1-3 years. The completion of one house will make us more competitive for additional funding, which we are actively seeking now. We hope that the improvements to Residencia No. 3 demonstrate to UTN our commitment to making Taboga a world-class, carbon-neutral field station.
Structural improvements
Roof: Residencia No. 3 has an entirely new roof and a completely rebuilt support system and ceiling . We replaced the old tin with new, seamless tin that is will remain water tight for many years. We also replaced the support wood underneath the roof that that had been damaged by water or insects. The wood that was still strong was cleaned, treated, and varnished to preserve it. We did the same for the wood on the ceiling visible from inside the house: refurbishing wood that was strong, replacing damaged wood with wood to match. Although it would have been cheaper and easier to replace the wood with metal, we wanted to keep the wood in order to preserve the natural appearance of the houses (as appropriate for a field station) and minimize the environmental damage of buying all new materials.
Electrical: We replaced all of the wiring in the house for safety and functionality. Although the old wiring was still working, the new wiring will last much longer. In case of power failure by the grid, we also wired the house so that, in the future, one of the rooms will function as a laboratory that can be switched over to run entirely off batteries charged by solar panels. This is important, as we have many biological samples in a freezer that must remain frozen and, in our experience, the grid power at Taboga has frequent interruptions. We also installed new fans in all of the rooms of Residencia No. 3.
Although not Residencia No. 3., we took this opportunity to install a solar micro-grid on the laboratory building. This system has 10 panels (1000 watts) and 800 amp hours of batteries. This system supplies reliable and net-zero energy for our laboratory. We will move this system and the laboratory to the faculty houses once we finish renovation of an additional house and have sufficient space. We will also greatly expand the system to cover all of the energy needs for our research and field school.
Doors, windows, screens: It is important that the house can be tightly closed for security. We replaced all of the external doors, repaired or replaced any broken windows and put new screens on all the openings. We screened the ‘breezeway’ above the house to keep bats and insects out of the house. We added a continuous cement floor in front of the house and we screened in the porch in for protection from mosquitos. The house is now secure and free of mosquitos at night.
