About My Project

For those of you who don't know, I am here at La Selva biological research station in Puerto Viejo, Sarapiqui, Costa Rica for 5 weeks (from June 21st to July 23rd).

If you're curious, here is what i am doing:

With thousands of medicinal plants already identified, and the number continuing to rise every day, ethnobotanical research is coming more and more to the forefront of the minds of many. Researchers, who are trying to search though the multitude of plants attempting to identify biologically active plants before they disappear from this world forever, need methods to narrow their search. As we lose more and more precious rainforest every day, the need for ways to accelerate this process is immediate. In addition to the fast rate that the plants and their habitats are disappearing, the culture and knowledge of native people is just as rapidly vanishing. Oral traditions that hold the knowledge of thousands of years of trial and error are vanishing forever. It is crucial to protect not only the plants that have such important powers, but also the traditions that hold secrets locked in its leaves. Surprisingly, there exists a great lack of research about the use of ethnobotanical consultation and by how much it increases the probability of finding biological activity.
The main objective of this research is to determine if plants plant chosen though ethnobotanical consultation have a higher probability of having a greater amount of biological activity than plants chosen at random. A secondary objective is also the discovery of the biological activity in previously untested plants. By comparing the level of biological activity in a group of plants selected through ethnobotanical consultation with a group that was chosen at random, I hope to determine if one can increase the probability that the plant will have medicinal qualities by using this kind of consultation. By measuring the lethal concentration of plant extract necessary to kill one half of the test specimens (LC50) one can find the level of biological activity in the plant easily. A Brine Shrimp Lethality Assay (BSLA) will be performed on the plants from the two groups, and the results compared. From this assay the LC50 and, subsequently, the level of biological activity will be calculated and compared across the two groups. If plants that have been previously untested have notably low LC50s, that may prompt more research to be done.