Since March 2025, FCAT has welcomed new university partners, strengthened ties with neighboring communities, uncovered new discoveries, and continued advancing research in the Chocó. Here are a few highlights from this season:
- New academic partnerships with California State University and Spelman College
- Knowledge exchange with Kichwa communities, local ecoclubs, and screen-printing artists
- First archaeological survey of the upper Mache Chindul Reserve
- Several new peer-reviewed publications on the Chocó’s rivers, birds, and forests
FCAT Visits
FCAT has seen a steady stream of visitors. In March 2025, 22 FCAT allies spent four days with us, enjoying the chocolate experience, a local eco-refuge, lagoon, and some hands-in-the-dirt planting. There was cultural exchange too, with performances from the women’s art collective and La Y’s folk dance group
The momentum continued through the summer. TIERA (Tulane Interdisciplinary Environmental Research & Action Program) brought 45 students for two field courses and a scholars program between May and July, covering topics ranging from bird and bat research to the cacao microbiome and water quality. For the first time, five Ecuadorian scholarship students joined the group.
The station remained just as busy throughout the rest of the year. In November, botanist John Clark brought a crew of Gesneriaceae enthusiasts to admire the reserve’s plant diversity, including our endemic Gasteranthus bilsaensis. Two milestones followed: In January 2026, California State University ran its first pilot field course, focused on the cacao microbiome. And in March, Spelman College sent its first-ever group, which included 10 students and two professors from Atlanta, who worked on camera traps, bird ecology, and water quality.
Knowledge Exchange
We continued building bridges with other communities and forms of knowledge. In March 2025, we hosted Fundación Pumamaqui and members of Kichwa communities from Napo province. It was a genuine exchange: FCAT shared field research experience, while visitors brought ancestral knowledge of medicinal and edible plants. A guayusa ceremony led by Kichwa women was a highlight, along with their traditional craftwork.
In n September, the Guardianes de La Esperanza ecoclub visited for a drone workshop, learning the basics and piloting drones for the first time as a new tool for forest monitoring. The visit also included a night hike and time with FCAT’s own Nueva Generación ecoclub.
Art joined the mix too. Screen printers Amapolay, Christian Tapia, and Urkuserigrafía led a workshop at the station as part of Spacio Cultural’s Converger Gráfico project. Members of the women’s art collective learned the technique, gaining a new creative outlet and a potential source of income for the community.The pieces were later exhibited at Spacio Cultural in Quito. Get a glimpse of the project in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lycol0ONLw&t=3s.
Archaeology: A First Look Into Mache Chindul's Past
The upper reaches of the Mache Chindul Reserve are still revealing their secrets. In summer 2025, USFQ archaeologist María Patricia Ordóñez led the first archaeological survey of the area. The most remarkable discovery: a small ceremonial pot from the Jama Coaque culture (500 BCE–500 CE), a reminder of the history still buried beneath the land we’re working to protect.
New Scientific Publications
Jordan Karubian, one of our founders, recently co-published a new piece in BioScience — “From Policy to Practice” — exploring the role tropical field stations can play in meeting global biodiversity targets. The article highlights FCAT alongside projects in Cameroon (Ebony Project) and Uganda (Makerere/Kibale) as examples of how collaboration between stations multiplies each one’s impact by sharing lessons and coordinating efforts.
Finally, we’d like to share the latest additions to FCAT’s growing body of research:
Lek Habitat Selection by Sympatric Manakin Species in
Northwestern Ecuador — Sheehy et al., Ecology and Evolution (2025)- Streamflow generation in a nested system of intermittent and perennial tropical streams under changing land use — Mosquera et al., Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (2025)
- Spatiotemporal intermittence effect on periphyton microbial communities in a tropical drying river network — Campaña et al., ISME Communications (2026)
- Flow intermittence shapes fish metacommunity variability in a Neotropical ecoregion — Escobar-Camacho et al., Freshwater Science (2025)
- Biotic homogenization and differentiation effects of fragmentation vary with spatial scale for multiple levels of understory bird diversity in northwest Ecuador — Ellis et al., Landscape Ecology (2026)
Explore all of FCAT’s publications on our Research page.
