Capstone Project Day 26

More lab work and a big birthday celebration. We got our first results today. My mosquitoes numbered 801 and 802 were morphologically identified as An. albimanus and the the ITS2 PCR seems to confirm that. Mosquito 803 was identified as An. calderoni and it shows up as a different species.

This is good news. Our protocol is going to work and we’re well on the way to finishing the project.

This afternoon, CISeAL offered a lecture on the properties of frog skin. It was all in Spanish but I was able to understand most of it. Researchers here are working on chemical properties found in certain tree frogs in Ecuador to find if they can reduce cancer rates and create new antibiotics. Very interesting stuff!

Tonight, we all met up at Pim’s, a restaurant near the top of a mountain in Quito. We’re celebrating Sofía’s 40th birthday with our partners at CISeAL. Pim’s sits under the Virgin of Quito. It’s a giant statue of the Virgin Mary, with wings, standing on top of a serpent. It’s a great view of the entire city. We each ordered something we’d been missing from home on the menu. Lots of hamburgers and French fries were had.

I made the executive decision to pay for the entire meal out of my budget. I hope that’s ok. I figured this was a great way to say thank you to our hosts and will help to solidify our partnership going forward.

We all love Sofía and Fabian. I feel that we might be the luckiest group in our cohort.