Hello there!  This camera trap photo of a jaguar was captured in mid January along the Parahuaco trail in Tiputini Biodiversity Station, a field station in the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve operated by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ). John Blake has led the camera trap project together with Diego Mosquera, and earlier Jaime Guerra, as part of our efforts to develop a monitoring program of terrestrial vertebrates at the station.  Camera traps have been in operation primarily from January – March for more than 15 years.  In addition, we are close to completing 20 years of research on the population abundance and community composition of birds on two 100 ha plots.  These studies have produced a wealth of information about spatial and temporal variation of birds, habitat requirements, survival estimates, variation in avian malaria prevalence among species and years, and for manakins, detailed information about their lek breeding behavior. It is one of the richest data sets on Neotropical birds with more than 16,000 mist-net captures and >55,000 observations of birds in systematic transect counts. Over the years a number of students from the Loiselle and Blake lab have conducted research at the station, and work has resulted in many collaborative publications with students and colleagues from UF, USFQ and elsewhere.  To access some of our publications click here and to learn more about Tiputini Biodiversity Station visit this link.