“Yes, that is the difficulty. You must find a tree that is flowering, actually, to give you time to set up your observation point in another tree, before the fruit appears and the animals come. But since the fruit goes quickly, you have to have many trees, in both the continuous forest and the forest fragments, so it is a big job just to find them and get ready.”

Like many of the researchers here, Marcela has the assistance of a mateiro, one of the men who work in the forest and are very familiar with the plants and animals within it. “Mateiro”, means “man of the forest.” “I am very lucky to have Juruna to help me.” She explains, “When I first came here, it was difficult for me to tell which trees were the ingas I wanted, but Juruna knows what to look for and he has helped me find them.”