VOLUNTEERING · NAPO, ECUADOR
Work where the species are still being described
Volunteer with TIVEC on Ecuador’s east Andean slope. You are based at Yanayacu Biological Station, in cloud forest at 2,100 m, and part of the work takes you down to Narupayacu, in Amazon foothill forest at 1,100 m — a thousand metres of elevation, two different faunas, one placement.
Volunteers contribute toward room and board at the station. That contribution is what keeps the beds, the kitchen and the lab running. We tell you the exact amount when we answer your application.
What you would actually work on
Two long-running lines of research, and plenty of ordinary work in between.
Rearing Lepidoptera
The station runs a long-term programme rearing caterpillars collected from the forest's endemic plants. You collect them, house them, feed them, record host plant and development, and rear out whatever emerges — sometimes a moth, often a parasitoid wasp or fly that was living inside it. A large share of what gets reared here has never been described.
Bird nesting behaviour
Most of the bird data collected at Yanayacu concerns nesting: finding nests, describing them, recording incubation and feeding visits, and following what happens to them. Patient work, mostly at dawn, and the kind of record that is still thin for many Andean species.
Two sites, one placement
You sleep and work at Yanayacu. When a project calls for it you go down to Narupayacu — forty minutes by road, in the station’s vehicle — and work at 1,100 m instead of 2,100 m.
That thousand-metre difference is the point. The light trap runs at Narupayacu and the caterpillars are reared at Yanayacu, so the entomology here is not one site but a gradient. The same holds for birds: 381 species recorded at the upper hotspot, 359 at the lower one, and the overlap between the two lists is smaller than you would guess.
What you do at Narupayacu
- Running the night light trap and recording what comes to it
- Trail and camping-area maintenance
- Bird surveys and uploading checklists to eBird
- Recording plants, insects and amphibians on iNaturalist
How often you go down depends on the project you are attached to. Transport is ours.
And the unglamorous half
Not all of it is science. Trails need clearing, the garden needs weeding, equipment needs carrying uphill. Everyone here does some of that, including us. If that is a dealbreaker, better to know now than in week two.
How it works
- No minimum stay — a week or a season
- The station fills up in february -july; apply early for those dates
- The contribution covers bed in a shared room / three meals / laboratory access
- Bring: boots, rain gear, headlamp, binoculars.
- Working language: English and spanish
- Minimum age or requirements: Legal age
Who fits here
Biology students and thesis fieldwork
You need field data or a technique to learn. Tell us what your project is and we will tell you honestly whether this site fits it.
Early-career naturalists and gap year
You want months in the forest rather than a week, and you learn by doing rather than by being taught.
People who want field technique
Nest searching, rearing, specimen handling, data recording — the skills that are hard to learn from a book.
And who does not: if you need reliable wi-fi and a private room, this will disappoint you.
381
Bird species at Yanayacu
359
Bird species at Narupayacu
2
Species named after this place
0
Minimum weeks required
Apply to volunteer
Tell us who you are, when you would like to come and what you want to work on. We answer with availability and the exact contribution for your dates.