In early September, the MountBuzz Ecuador team united in Ecuador, consisting of César Arvelos and Juliane Nazari-Montazer (University of Vienna), Laura Lopresti (James Cook University, Australia), and Madelén Quistial and Juan Carlos (INABIO, Ecuador). During the first weeks, the fieldwork team was joined by Diana Fernández-Fernández and Agnes Dellinger for an exploration trip to all the study sites. At first, we thought we were only going to find fruits… Diana had visited the area a few months prior (July) and found many Melastomataceae species with flowers – understanding phenological patterns still is a major challenge in tropical ecosystems, and obviously, Agnes’ observations from her PhD did not fully match up – Agnes had worked in the same area during her PhD and normally found many species in flower in the months between September and November. Eventually, however, more intense explorations paid off, and the team could locate good areas with many flowering Melastomataceae, such as in the few remnant rainforests in the Chocó. The trip to the Chocó, coming from the high Andes and cloud forests around Quito, was particularly impressive, troublesome and thought-provoking. The Chocó is one of the most biodiverse (and wettest!) areas of our planet, yet has suffered from intense deforestation, which we could unpleasantly testify when driving through barren grasslands where only about 30 years ago, there had been pristine primary rainforests. For the trip to the Chocó, we were joined by our long-term friend and colleague Pancho Sornoza, bird specialist and conservationist in Ecuador, who had been instrumental in preserving some of the remaining forest patches of the Ecuadorian Chocó. Waking up to the calls of howler monkeys and falling asleep to a tropical frog concert, getting a glimpse of ice shields of the majestic Cayambe volcano when the cloud forest clouds lifted for a moment, and watching many buzzing bees on Melastomataceae flowers certainly stick out as highlights from the exploratory trip.

After settling on the field sites, we started training and data collection in the high elevation cloud forests, and were immediately rewarded by exciting discoveries. Besides the bee-pollinated Melastomataceae, we could record new instances of pollinator shifts to vertebrate pollinators, namely hummingbirds and bats, by putting up cameras during day and nighttime. We further performed a range of manual pollination experiments to understand whether reproductive strategies of Melastomataceae change to reproductive autonomy at high elevations (where bee pollination is often limited by adverse weather conditions). At this point, also a big shout out to the Ecuador team – this type of fieldwork is all but easy, and besides harsh conditions during work in the field, living conditions may also be harsh – like sleeping in a tent on a cold stone floor at 3000 masl. The upside: a bucket-shower under the starry sky 😉