My name is Adéla Paříková and I am second year student of master programme Animal and Food sciences in Tropics. Topic of my diploma thesis is Nutrients driving foraging on bromeliads by the Andean bear.
As the Andean bears live only in South America, for data colection I went with my coleague Anna Bernátková to Ecuador. We made our data collection from June to August 2017. We lived and worked in south of the country in city Loja in the Andean mountains. As I am interested in nutrition of Andean bear, I had to focus on ecosystems, where he lives. It means parámo (high montane tropical ecosystem) and forest. I established there 20 plots in which I collected plant eaten by the bear. From this we are about to make nutritional analysis. I did not expect any vacation there, but we had really hard time. The weather was not on our side and it was raining almost every day and it was raining so heavy that we had all our clothes wet all the time. Plant collection in the forest was also really chalenging. Vegetation there is dense so we had to make our own ways by machete. To make one side of a plot (10 m ) it took us at least one and half hour.
Anyway this was great experience and I am so glad that I could be there and work on this project, that could potentilly help in conservation of the Andean bears.
