The Humming Flutters of a MothBox: Jessie Tejera-Fabian ’25 at Mount Totumas, Panama
May 02, 2025
In Mount Totumas Cloud Forest Resort, visitors come for the remote wilderness experience and explore both the many trails surrounding the lodge and their wide variety of coffee that’s meticulously grown and harvested on site. For student’s of Antioch College, this opportunity is extended to us, and the student’s are tasked with working closely on the coffee production to ensure a good harvest and a wonderful co-op experience.
My experience at Mount Totumas was different. It was low season, so there was no coffee production for me to help with, and I was connected with Andrew Quitmeyer, a professor from Wild Labs who is currently working in Gamboa in Panama. I was connected with him by chance when my academic advisor Kim Landsbergen met him by chance at BeetlePalooza and noticed that he had been to Mount Totumas previously because of the tee he was wearing. It was offered that I could participate in his Mothbox project, one where I would have to set up a digital imaging device for the purpose of capturing snap shots of moths and I agreed wholeheartedly.
Though I finally had a specific goal for my co-op, I still needed to work at Mount Totumas in my own time, and I did so by working various jobs around the mountain. Most of my morning and afternoon was spent in the greenhouse. The first thing I learned to do here was to trim and separate strawberry plants and repot the pups in fresh soil. I learned how to group lettuce starts together in the same pot and water them afterwards, and to water all the plants that needed them daily or every other day. Since the day was humid most of the time, most of the plants retained water very easily.
Late afternoons and evenings were for setting up the mothboxes. The boxes would be set up in areas with open space, since the device needed enough of it to get a good beam of LED lights out to attract the moths. Then depending on the battery charge, the mothbox could be left anywhere from two to four days, after some proper documentation of course, such as coordinates, box ID and more. After a few days the box would be retrieved and set aside to charge, while the images in the USB would be uploaded to a google drive and categorized using this file name sequence: Location_Area_Mothbox ID_Year-Month-Date. These images would be used to help an AI develop its identification system, to better understand which moths we were working with.
I very much appreciated and enjoyed the opportunity to work with Andrew Quitmeyer and the Mothbox project, I had been looking for a specific interest during my time at Antioch College and now I’m drawn ever closer to Environmental Sciences, and many opportunities that revolve around field research. I want to be out in the field, and I want to do what I can to make sure that I learn everything I can, and be able to share that knowledge with the rest of the world.
Soaring On The Air: Tejera-Fabian ’25 at WYSO Radio in Yellow Springs, Ohio
Oct 18, 2022WYSO is a radio station that began broadcasting in 1958, student-run and stationed on the Antioch College campus, with only 19 watts of power, and only broadcasted four hours a day. Now community based, with 50,000 watts and broadcasting 24/7, WYSO is the only NPR News station in the Greater Dayton area complete with flagship programs like Morning Edition and All Things Considered, news department delivering local/state news, news specials, and thirteen different local music programs. It is also where I have been working for the past three months.
Here at WYSO Radio, my jobs included editing and recording digital productions for use, working with music hosts during programing, setting up and breaking down studios for broadcasting, researching and formatting drafts, assisting coworkers with editing software, and various storytelling projects including Dayton Youth Radio. This line of work coincides with my aspirations in voice over work and editing, and working at WYSO has provided me more than a glimpse into the work that creates a profound impact on the community.
This Co-op made me realize that no matter the profession I choose in the future, I want to make an impact on the world, one way or another, and the opportunity to work at a radio station and speak on air to tens of thousands of people was a fresh start into the direction that I need to go in order to pursue that change that I want to be. I worked closely with two employers, Juliet Fromholt (host of Kaleidoscope)and Basim Blunt (host of Behind the Groove), not just learning about the technology of the studios, but also about the guests that were welcomed into the studios and interviewed during their appearance.
Each guest appearance brought my attention to the intricate pattern of interviewing and broadcasting, the steps it took to set up the studio, preparing for airing, interviewing and steadily maintaining what’s being played on the air, bringing awareness to tragedy and grief and celebrating life, then breaking down the studio when the guests have gone and preparing to do it all over again. It’s vital to report relevant events in the world, whether it be the farthest stretches of the world or right in this country’s door step, and WYSO radio provides that information that people need to hear.
For more information, visit https://www.wyso.org/