2022

Trapping a Jaguar!!! (On camera, hopefully) (Day 10)

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Hi all, it’s Faith with Day 10 updates from the 2022 Belize trip!!!

Today we woke up extra early (mostly on accident) to birdwatch from Las Cuevas Deck! We didn’t see any macaws, but we saw two- four toucans flying across the sky. They were gorgeous!

Then we went to plan out next research project. For our question, we chose “which area (trails, jungle, roads) will each animal group (large predators, small predators, large prey, small prey) use the most measured by relative abundance?” Our hypothesis was that big cats would be the dominant animals using paths and roads whereas small prey and mammals would stay under forest cover. We planned on using trap-cameras to get photos of animals as they cross the trails. By the way, while we were planning, we saw 4 scarlet macaws flying around!

Then we set off to se tho the cameras. Our first trip out we ran into our first of three white lipped turtles (Kinosternon leucostomum). This one was easy to identify because of its white lip, it looked just like one of the ones on my taxa sheet, and we found it swimming in a muddy puddle after the morning rains. After we saw the turtle, I set up my first camera on the “shortcut path” back to Las Cuevas. Because I went first, I was deemed the “camera soldier” and had to fix/ mess with lots of peoples cameras.

We did so much in this hike: set up cameras, use gps markers, walk through the jungle, eat termites, climb a bird tower, trip on Mayan stairs, see huge cave spiders, the list is endless.

I didn’t see my taxa again until after a light evening rain, and they were two mud turtles swimming around in mud puddles. I’m finding that these turtles vary greatly in shell appearance and patterning. The last two turtles lacked the classic white lip coloring, which caused me to misidentify them at first. However, their “bridge shell pattern” between the carapace and bottom shell indicated their true species. Plus, they were found in the same environment as the other white lipped mud turtle!

I’m hoping to see other types of mud turtles, like the Tabasco turtle. The wet season is proving to be good for turtle hunting but bad for reptiles and snakes. I’ll let you know what we see next!

Til’ Tomorrow!

QOTD:

“ if you leave me I’m signing up for an online orphanage”

Giant Cave Spiders
The view at Las Cuevas
One of the three white-lipped mud turtles! (Generously picked up by Caio)
Scarlett Macaw!

 

 

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Our Luckiest Day!

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Hey guys. It’s Michiel again : )

Today was really eventful. It started off slow with breakfast and a lecture in the morning, but it quickly picked up. At the end of the lecture, Scott had a discussion with us on nutrient availability in the canopy and the forest floor, and he related it to arthropods. Together, we came up with the question “How does nutrient availability influence arthropod abundance in the canopy and forest floor?” After we came up with this question, Scott told us that the way we’d be using nutrients for our experiment would be by peeing in tubes and using those tubes as traps. This was really surprising to all of us, and we promptly drank as much of our water bottles as we could. After we filled our tubes, we went out to the Mayan Trail to set up these pitfall traps. Basically, we each put one tube of pee flush against the trunk of a tree and another tube of water on the opposite side of the trunk. We also put a tube of pee and a tube of water in the soil at the base of the tree. Arthropods are expected to fall into these tubes.

While we were going through the path to set up these traps, we passed by a tree with scratch marks and an indentation in the ground at the base. We believe it may have been one of the cat species using the tree to sharpen/shorten its claws, but the scratch marks seemed to high and the indentation too big for it to be a margay (Leopardus wiedii) or an ocelot (Leopardus pardalis). However, they were too low and it was too small for it to be a jaguar (Panthera onca) or a puma (Puma concolor). My best guess is that it may have been a juvenile jaguar or puma.

Tree with scrapes
Indentation in ground

After a couple of hours, we finished setting up our traps and went back to Las Cuevas for lunch, After lunch, Scott and Adrienne sent us out to look for some leaf cutter ant nests in the clearing that surrounds the station. Elena and I didn’t find any, but we did hear something in the brush that kind of sounded like a monkey. We know that it wasn’t a black howler monkey (Aloutta pigra) because it sounded nothing like a black howler monkey, so we think it may have been a spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi), but we couldn’t see through the brush, so we have no idea. After we heard it, though, someone called out that they had found a leaf cutter ant nest, so we went over there to check it out. Scott told us that it couldn’t be more than a year old, which is exactly what we were looking for. We began to dig right next to it so we could see the fungus garden. After a while of digging, major ants came out to defend their home. Ava and Elena kept trying to pick it up, and eventually they did! I’m proud of them. After a while of digging, we saw the fungus garden, which is gray, and then Scott pulled out the queen, which we each held. After achieving our goal, we went to a new nest that was older. However, after a while of digging, we couldn’t find anything ­– there weren’t even any ants. Before we gave up, though, we saw a Mexican Burrow Toad! We thought that it would be impossible for us to find this frog, but we all really wanted to because it’s so ugly (but in a cute way). I’m really glad we found it. Anyway, we went to a new leaf cutter nest after we put the toad back. This nest was much larger than the last, and it had soldier ants, which are much larger and bite harder than the major ants. After a while, we were able to get to the fungus garden and Elena and Ava picked up the soldier ants!

Mexican Burrowing Toad

After the leaf cutter ant nests, we had lectures, then we had dinner. After dinner, we went on a night hike! The night hike was crazy. We saw two Morlet’s Tree Frogs, which are endangered, and we say nine snakes. It was really cool seeing all the snakes because we would think that we had found them all and then someone would find a new one. We were fixated on one of the snakes for 20 minutes, which we saw eat some red eyed tree frog eggs, which are also endangered. After we watched the snake eat those eggs, we went back to Las Cuevas, worked on our blogs and field notebooks, and went to sleep.

I’m really hoping I see more mammal-related stuff tomorrow, but I know for sure that I’ll keep you guys updated!

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First Day of Hiking!

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Hey y’all! It’s Michiel again : )

I woke up today at 5:45 for my first full day at Las Cuevas. I was planning to wake up at 6:30, but the birds were so loud that I couldn’t stay asleep. Also, last night there was a black howler monkey (Aloutta pigra) right next to the station that was yelling at another black howler monkey elsewhere in the forest. It definitely kept me awake longer than I wanted to be. Anyway, I joined my fellow TFBs on the patio around 6 and we birdwatched together. I saw three beautiful turkeys, and a couple vultures. Later, we had breakfast, then we were tasked to come up with a research question that involved using camera traps. We came up with “Where are different functional groups (large/small predators and large/small prey) most abundant (forest, trail road)?” To answer this question, we decided to set up camera traps throughout forested areas, on trails, and on roads.

We left the station around 10 to begin setting our traps. For the first two hours, we were all so amazed by the surrounding fauna and flora that we only managed to set six traps – one on a trail and five on a road. While we were in the forest, we actually saw Scarlet Macaws! I’ve included a picture of them here.

After setting these traps, we made our way back to the research station for lunch at 12:15. Lunch was kept pretty short because we needed to go back out there and set more traps. When we went back out there around 1, we traversed through a trail with much more hills (it was actually almost completely uphill then completely downhill) than we had experienced on the other trail. We stayed on this trail until about 6:15 and managed to set 4 traps on the trail, 5 traps within the forest, and 1 trap near Frog Pond. While we were hiking this trail, we saw some beautiful bugs that Caio kept picking up, a cave with ancient Mayan pottery in it, and a lot of leaf cutter ants. We also came across a termite nest, and Scott told us to take termites from it and eat them, which, of course, we did. They tasted really fresh – like carrots. We also went up the bird tower, which had some amazing views.

Unfortunately, I did not get to see any mammals. However, we did hear a black howler monkey yelling while we were placing road traps in the morning. I’m expecting that any sightings of mammals will be really rare throughout the next couple of days, but hopefully the camera traps will take a lot of good pictures of them.

The rest of our day went pretty smoothly. We had dinner, had a break to recuperate from the exhaustion we were experiencing, then had some lectures. I’m hopeful that tomorrow I’ll get to see some mammals!

2022

Jumanji: Day 9 (forest day 1) 06/16/22

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Welcomeeee to Jumanji!

Choose your character: trees, birds, bugs, or monkeys…

You chose… Trees! Good choice! Are you prepared? The game is about to begin!

Level One: The Maya Ruins of Caracol 

After a 3 hour drive down an unpaved, bumping and jolting road, you have arrived at your first destination: the found ruins of the classical period Maya People, Caracol.

Let your adventure begin!:

This morning started off at with an early 6:30AM breakfast, and getting on the road by 7:15AM. This was travel day 2 to the Chiquibul. Along the road in the Savannah plains, the Caribbean pine (Pinus caribaea) is still one of the most numerous trees on the side of the road, as well as some palms. Once we arrived at Caracol, we were given a debriefing of what the Caracol site was, its history, the history of the Maya people, and what our trek would be. Only 1% of the entire site of Caracol is excavated for viewing.

We climbed to the top of the temple/place, the largest structure still standing. There were So. Many. Stairs. I honestly don’t know how I made it up. But once on top of the temple, we were at the highest point that a man made structure reaches in Belize, which was crazy to me.  The view was breathtaking.

We also saw the temples used for astronomy, gauging the solstices by the alignment with the temples peaks. We also saw some tombs and a Steele.

At the ruins, we were shown two Ceiba (Ceiba pentandra), and explained the historical significance of the species. Historically, their bark was used for paper, but the fibers of the tree are so strong that they were used in WWII for parachutes, which resulted in the downing of many ceiba trees.

When standing in front of the astronomy temples, I correctly identified a gumbo limbo tree (Bursera simaruba), characterized by its green shiny bark covered in red papery peeling strips. Also known as the tourist tree since it’s always red and peeling. Funnily, around the gumbo limbo was a strangler fig tree (Ficus aurea), which had completely grown around the spot that the gumbo limbo was planted, completely overtaking it. Both of these trees are known to be of the taller variety, but the gumbo limbo was dropping over to get sun from beneath the canopy of the strangler fig. We also saw and were told about the horse balls tree (Tabernaemontana donnell-smithii), which has round fruit that produce a latex-glue like substance.

After our tour, we ate lunch curtesy of our tour guides, Leo and Miguel. Leo was so informative, and even worked on excavation at the site from 1995-1998. 

After lunch, we finally made it to Las Cuevas Research Station in the evening. We caught up on lectures, had dinner, and then continued with the day’s lectures.

Our room was full of bugs, and we had to tape the screen flush to stop them from coming in. We don’t even know if we got them all out, but we eventually had to sleep. And that are our day, day one in the Chiquibul forest!

2022

Rainforest TFB on 2x speed

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Today started off with a clear, sunny morning! Thus far, it has only ever been cloudy or rainy, so an extended period of sunshine was surprising. This really helped today’s morning birdwatch! I was the first one awake and out on the patio, so I got myself a cup of coffee and enjoyed the landscape and bird chorus.

I saw a new bird! Michael and I spotted a very small bird on a bare, exposed branch. It had a mainly brown coloring with a purple/blue shimmer to it on its back. It also had a faint light eyeline and a light-colored throat. Its breast was yellow, and it had small wings with two wingbars and a short tail. When I looked in the bird field guide, I identified it as a yellow-throated euphonia!

After breakfast, we retrieved all of the experiment-related materials that were in the Chiquibul Forest. So within the span of 40 minutes, we collected all of our water and pee tubes. In the classroom, we analyzed our collected data by calculating the abundances of the arthropods in each group (pee/water and canopy/floor). We cleaned and packed up all of the materials for this experiment, and we started our poster.

Then, a small group of seven TFBs and Adrienne left on a speed mission to collect all of the camera traps we placed on the first day. The hike that took us almost 7 hours to complete when setting up the cameras two days ago took us 1.5 hours today! We retraced our steps with incredible speed and were unexpectedly cooled off with the heaviest downpour of rain we’ve had yet.

While I was speed hiking, Liliana took an amazing picture of a keel-billed toucan! This is the national bird of Belize, and while I’ve been seeing them around LCRS, I haven’t been able to get a picture. These massive birds have fittingly massive beaks. Their bodies are black with a yellow mask, throat, and breast, as well as a white and red rump. Their green/yellow beaks also have red, blue, and orange patches, and their eyes are ringed with faint green. Watching them fly is almost comical because they hold their beaks to be directly in line with their body, making them look like they have thick necks and pointed heads when silhouetted by shadow.

Another great day in the rainforest! My rubber boots are now next-level dirty, but the filth is definitely worth it!

– McKenna

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Journey to Caracol and Las Cuevas!

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Hey guys! Once again, it’s Michiel : )

We woke up this morning at the TEC (one of the most beautiful places ever) and quickly got ready for breakfast at 6:30. After breakfast, everyone gathered their luggage near the side of the road and got into vans for our journey to Caracol. On our way to Caracol, I got to sit in the front seat, where I prepared for my topic lecture that would be happening later that evening (spoiler alert). I read a bunch of papers with tiny letters while we were traveling on very bumpy roads. I may have gotten a little carsick, but it was only a little headache, and I was committed enough to presenting a wonderful lecture that a headache wouldn’t stop me. I managed to read everything I needed to by the time we got to Caracol. There, we saw a HUGE Ceiba tree, Mayan middle-class homes, and a beautiful pyramidal temple. We climbed to the top of that temple, looking in ancient bedrooms and tombs on the way up. Once we finally got to the top, we got a truly amazing view of the Chiquibul Forest. While we were there, we also saw white lined sac bat. After the pyramidal temple, we saw their place of astronomical observation, an area where they played a ballgame, and an aquifer. After all this, we had lunch, during which we were able to hear Black Howler Monkeys (Alouatta pigra) screaming throughout the forest. I, unfortunately, wasn’t able to get any pictures of these monkeys, but here is a picture of us on top of the temple and me next to a Ceiba tree!

After lunch, we left Caracol and continued our journey to Las Cuevas Research Station. On our trip, we saw three turtles crossing the road, two scarlet macaws, and a toucan! Once we finally reached the station (around 4:30), we were shown around. The station is really nice; I think I’m going to really enjoy it here. After our orientation, we began catching up on lectures that we had fallen behind on. After two taxon lectures, we had dinner, then I presented! I presented on life in the rainforest canopy, and I think I did really well, but we’ll see. After I presented, there were a couple more lectures, then we worked on our blogs and field notebooks and went to bed.

I’m really excited for everything to come. I’ll be sure to keep y’all updated!

2022

Day 10: Bird Observation Tower + Cave + Lots of Taxa!!

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For our first project was designed to monitor mammals using Morrison sensor cameras to collect data about the relative abundance of species on roads, trails, and the rainforest around Las Cuevas Research Station. So into the forest we went!

Inside of Cave! See the stalagmites and stalactites? The Maya used to perform ritualistic sacrifices here.
The red paint is still on a piece of Mayan pottery which is thousands of years old!

In a small cave, we saw giant spiders, went through a cave and got to pick up remnants about Maya  pottery!

Top of the Bird Watch tower after an long hike

 We got to witness the beautiful view of the heart of the Chiquibul forest from the bird watching station.

We also saw some tree frog eggs.

I was incredibly excited to see a beetle species called the darkling beetle tenebrionidae hegemona. Adrienne pointed it out on wood. It was incredibly good at climbing and I held it for 15 minutes! I loved the iridescent elytra and exoskeleton.

Darkling Beetle

I also saw some earthworms (oligochaetes).

Michael is showing me an earthworm on the rainforest floor helping to recycle nutrients back into the soil!

 Caio also managed to find a leech in the middle of the rainforest He was brave enough to hold it and told everyone when it bit him three times!

Rainforest leech? Definitely didn’t expect to find here!

Overall incredible day! Loving Las Cuevas!

~Maegan

2022

Forest Cano-pee & Meeting the Queen!

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Day 2 in the rainforest started off early with a lot of sightings during the morning birdwatch. I saw two crimson-collared tanagers, which are black with a red head and rump, as well as a black mask. I also say a blue-gray tanager, which is a bit smaller and flies by sporadically flitting its wings. One bird that I had to research in my field guide to identify was a white-collared seedeater! This bird was small (like the size of a finch), had a black head, light-colored wingbar(s), brown/white patchy body, and a white band laterally around its throat. I spotted it in the grass, which makes sense if it was foraging for seeds. I also saw a pale-billed woodpecker, which is a very large woodpecker with a black body, bright red head, and a white line down both sides of its neck that meets on its back. One bird that I managed to get a photo of was a social flycatcher! It was brown with a yellow breast and belly. Its white head had a black eyeline and crown, and its wings had a light wingbar.

Then, we started another experiment testing the nutrient attraction of arthropods and their abundance on the forest ground versus the forest canopy. We chose methodology to place pitfall traps of both water and a nutrient solution to test our question. The nutrient solution that was the most widely available was our own urine, so we all peed in tubes. We ranked our pee in hydration by comparing color. A huge shoutout to Rusty for having crystal clear pee and being my TFB hydration idol. Then, we put our water and pee tubes on the floor and hung them on trees!

Right by my pitfall tree, we spotted a jumping pit viper! Luckily, Phoenix saw it before anyone got too close, so we were all safe.

We also saw an eyelash viper curled on a nearby log! Rafael, the LCRS station manager, said that he had never seen an eyelash viper in all his 12 years here, so we were super lucky to see one! I didn’t get a photo, but a lot of my classmates did.

We also did a leafcutter ant activity where we dug up their nests. We started with a 1-year-old nest, and we took turns digging with a shovel. We found the fungal gardens, and it looked like spongy, white honeycomb. After some more digging, Scott uncovered the queen! She was huge and was being protected by smaller ants, but she didn’t try to bite anyone. I got to hold her! I feel so lucky to have met the queen.

We moved onto another bigger nest, but there were too many rocks and roots to dig it up. Right when we were about to find another nest, Michael shoveled one last scoop and initiated another lucky find! Sitting in the mound was a Mexican burrowing toad! This toad is black with orange markings and very round in shape. Its head is very small and is basically missing a neck. When Rusty gave his amphibian taxon briefing last night, he said that he really wanted to find one of these toads. So another shoutout to Rusty for his toad-finding dreams coming true, I’m so happy for him!

I gave my topic lecture on neotropical plant-insect interactions, and I think it went really well!

After sunset, we went on a night hike! Before leaving, I spotted a red-rumped tarantula on the deck! It crawled out of a space between some of the wooden planks.

Then on the actual night hike, We had so many amazing sightings! We saw two Morelet’s tree frogs, as well as their eggs. It is extremely rare to spot Morelet’s tree frogs because they are critically endangered, so we were really lucky to see them! Then we spotted small snakes on the tree branches above us. We witnessed one snake eat tree frog eggs!

The theme of today seemed to be pure luck, and I feel so fortunate to have experienced it all. Maybe tomorrow Ava will catch a blue morpho butterfly!

– McKenna

2022

The Ruins of Caracol!!! (Day 9)

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Hi all, it’s Faith with Day 9 updates from the 2022 Belize trip!!!

Today we left the TEC to visit Caracol, one of the largest Mayan cities. I got kind of car sick on the way there, but it was OK because we sighted a Morelet’s crocodile (crocodylus moreleti). While I couldn’t get the exact size, it was obviously a younger crocodile. It even had the black tail bands that characterize young morelet’s. We saw it sunbathing on a rock near a freshwater river in the Chiquibil. What an exciting find!

After that, I fell asleep and awoke at Caracol. This ancient Mayan city was home to over 200k people at one point and spans over 7 miles. The temples are in a pyramidal shape and come in groups of threes and sixes. The property had a wide variety of trees. One of them produces fruit that are locally called horse balls, and the fruit have a sticky glue-like sap. We also saw a gumbo limbo tree wrapped in a strangling fig. The last cool tree we saw was a Ceiba tree. They can live for over 200 years, and they dominate the emergent layer of the rainforest (highest portion of the canopy). We all looked so small compared to the twin ceiba trees! The highlight of Caracol, for me at least, was seeing a bat! I love bats, so I was the first and last person out of the Mayan cave-room! He was so small (pictured below)!

After Caracol we made the 2 hour drive to Las Cuevas research center. On the way it began to rain, and the gravelly- dirt roads became faint puddles. In those puddles, we saw three turtles! One I identified as a red cheeked mud turtle (K. scorpiodes). I determined his species by noting his habitat and appearance.  I even saw a glimpse of his bright red cheeks! Because of the speed we passed them with and their small sizes, I wasn’t able to identify the other two turtles we passed. They were also living their best life in road ponds. I also couldn’t get pictures of these turtles because of the moving car 🙁

Las Cuevas seems cool for now, but I guess I have all week to figure that out. I’ll let you know what happens next!

Till Tomorrow!

QOTD

““You guys are gonna make me touch the horse balls?”

“Micheal pees! How could he?”

This is the site we saw a morelet’s crocodile! It is in this picture I will add a close up of the crocodile once I receive is from Dr. Solomon
The Giant Ceiba Tree!
THE BAT!!!
Morelet’s crocodile sunbathing!
2022

Smile! You’re passing a camera trap :)

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Day 1 in the rainforest was fantastic! It started bright and early for some morning birdwatching, and I saw and heard so many of my taxa! I saw a lot of black vultures, which are large black birds that can be seen perched in groups in sparse trees. I saw a plumbeous kite, some oscillated turkeys, and some type of parrot. There are so many types of parrots that can be extremely difficult to tell apart, but I knew they were parrots because of their frantic style of flying. I also saw keel-billed toucans and collared aracaris! These are both large-billed birds that can be spotted gliding into tall trees. The most spectacular sighting of all was seeing scarlet macaws! There were two pairs of them in tall trees. I could tell that they were the Northern sub-species because they had a blue coloration on their wings, as well as yellow and the dominant red. These birds were breathtaking, and I am so happy to have gotten a picture!

We spent the rest of the day hiking to set up camera traps for an experiment pertaining to mammal functional groups and their abundance in certain areas of the forest (trails, roads, dense cover). We each had a camera trap to place, and it took the whole day to set them all up. During the setup for this experiment, I experienced so many things!

I held a butterfly net in my jungle outfit and felt like an Animal Crossing character!

I climbed up the bird observation tower! I didn’t see any birds clearly, but the view was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

I briefly went into a cave and saw Mayan pottery fragments and cave spiders!

I also ate termites (they tasted like carrots), saw a huge leaf cutter ant nest, and found red-eyed treefrog eggs!

Today was a long day, but it was packed with so many unbeatable moments and sights. I am excited to see what our cameras capture!

In the meantime, I can’t wait to go on more jungle adventures. However, I can’t say that I’m excited to put my rubber boots back on. Though my feet are in a state of achy torment, my thirst for exploration gives me plenty of inspiration to tough through the more difficult parts. What I do for science!

– McKenna

Rice University