Tag Archives: ants

Is it really already over?

So…this is my course summary and wrap-up blog. I’m writing it from the comfort of my own bed after a hot shower, and yet, somehow I’d rather still be sticky, stinky, and sandy in Belize. I’m still processing everything that happened on the trip– every day was jam packed with lectures, discussions, projects, travel, fun, and new places and faces.

 

The transition between the ‘surf’ week and the ‘turf’ week was difficult for several reasons, but the reef and rainforest are as similar as they are different. For one thing, the soil of the rainforest is derived from limestone, which was made from the shells of ancient reef creatures. Additionally, both rainforest soils and reef waters are relatively nutrient poor, yet they support unmatched levels of biodiversity. This is possible because of the highly three-dimensional spatial heterogeneity of reefs and rainforests. Creatures adapt to specialize in a certain space and they compete for access to nutrients. This space partitioning and competition are strong drivers of diversity!

 

I think my favorite- most unforgettable- part of BIOS 319 was the opportunity to coexist with rare and endangered species. I’m thinking specifically of the moment when a Morelet’s Tree Frog jumped onto my hand, but I also cherish our brief sightings of Scarlet Macaws, Acropora corals, and the sounds of Howler monkeys. Recalling my pre-departure mantra of ‘enjoying every moment’, I tried very hard to not have a ‘least favorite’ part of the course. But, if I had to pick something to dislike, I would say the bugbites (although I found them quite manageable with topical benadryl and calamine lotion!)

 

In all honesty, I learned a lot more than I initially thought I would, and a lot of that learning came through first-hand experience! I thought my taxa (sponges and ants) were a little boring at first, but there is complexity, wonder, and value to be found in everything. I was amazed to learn that leafcutter ants account for up to 25% of devegetation in tropical rainforests and that a mature leafcutter colony has the same appetite as a cow. And I didn’t just learn about my taxa: I have never been good at birding, but now I don’t think I can ever forget the cacophonous squawks of a scarlet macaw or the iconic teardrop shape of an Oropendola nest. But I think more than any factoids about the reef or rainforest, the longest-lasting lesson I’ll be taking from BIOS 319 is confidence in myself and my abilities. I had many doubts throughout the course, but I consistently surprised myself. I doubted that I could be comfortable snorkeling and diving down in the open ocean. I doubted my ability to hold an audience’s attention and communicate effectively. I doubted my ability to hike rainforest trails or even be outside for extended periods of time… but it all came so naturally to me. Despite (or perhaps, in part, because of) my quirks and idiosyncrasies, I am incredibly adaptable and resilient in new environments and capable of facing the unknown.

 

Thank you to everyone (in-field and behind-the-scenes) who played a part in making this experience possible. I’m so grateful.

 

Speedy Hikes and a Slow Drive

Today we traced our steps along the Maya Trail to collect our pee tubes from yesterday. Some of the tubes were surprisingly difficult to find, especially the ones on the forest floor, even though we had  tried to standardize their positions.

After collecting, it was time to analyze! I personally, did not collect many (any) arthropods in three of my tubes, but one of my pee tubes had a caterpillar and a roach!

Next, we had to go out to collect our camera traps! We retraced our steps from the research station to San Pastor Rd and then up and down the Bird Observation Tower. We eventually got them all, and I hope there is a good opportunity coming up to view the images together.

After a late lunch, we all piled into the van and came to the Midas Hotel in Santa Elena and San Ignacio (the twin cities). I did not see any ants today 🙁

Pee tubes, Fungus gardens, and Weird frogs

Today we started a project exploring nutrient limitations in the forest canopy and on the forest floor. We are investigating this by peeing in tubes and strapping them to different trees (I promise there is real science behind this). We are going back out on the trails tomorrow morning to collect the pee tubes and count the number of arthropods we find in them.

While we were walking the trail to place our pee traps, Phoenix spotted a jumping pit viper in the middle of the trail and then Rusty spotted an eyelash viper on a log off the trail. The eyelash viper was especially exciting, because Dr. Solomon said he had never seen one in his twelve years of visiting Chiquibul. Later on down the trail, Ava spotted what they described as a “Spiky moth” on the trunk of a tree, but when they said it was dead, I suggested that it was actually infected with the Ophiocordyceps fungus, which turns arthropods into ‘zombies.’ Almost immediately after that, I spotted another, more decomposed Ophiocordyceps moth on a leaf on the forest floor. I still really want to see an ant infected with Cordyceps, but the moth was still really cool.

Moth infected with Ophiocordyceps

After lunch we searched nearby the research station for some leafcutter ant (Atta cephalotes) nests of differing ages to dig up and compare. First, we found a young (~1 year) ant nest with a single entrance ‘chimney’ or ‘turret’, and we started digging about a foot away to try to break into the underground fungus chambers. Dr. Solomon told us that the very young nests do not have big soldier ants for defense and that the individual worker ants are shinier than the ants in older colonies. After a few rounds of everyone taking turns digging into the nest, we finally broke into the fungus chamber, which looked like a whitish gray spongey honeycomb. Dr. Solomon started scooping out the fungus to look for the queen, and when we finally found her, I got to hold her and have my picture taken with her :’) When we tried digging up a slightly older nest, we kept digging and digging, but no ants were coming out, which made us think that the nest was abandoned. When I got my turn with the shovel, I dug down super deep and pried up a huge chunk of soil, and I exposed a Mexican Burrowing Toad (which we had learned about literally just yesterday)! We gently picked it up and it was SO gelatinous, we couldn’t believe that it could burrow into the hard packed clayey soils, but it had strong hind legs that it uses to burrow backwards!

My picture with the Queen!

After dinner, we went on an optional night hike to the frog pond, which was unforgettable. At the frog pond, we saw not one, but TWO endangered Morelet’s Tree Frogs. We got quite a few good pics and vids, and they even jumped and crawled on a few of us. One jumped onto my hand!!! A critically endangered species reached out and touched me! We also saw not one, two, three or four, but FIVE arboreal snakes in the branches and canopy above the frog pond hunting for the gelatinous globs of tree frog eggs plastered onto the underside of leaves. At least one was successful in getting a mouthful of frog eggs, but hopefully there are still enough for a new generation of frogs.

Tree frog eggs!
The critically endangered Morelet’s Tree Frog

Totally psyched that we hiked

Today was our first (and hardest) full day of hiking in the rainforest! We started with an early-morning birding session fueled by coffee and awe. We heard melodious blackbirds, and saw black vultures, turkey vultures, ocellated turkeys, plumbeous kites, TWO toucans, and a collared aricari.

After a hearty breakfast, we drafted an experimental design to characterize the habitat use of predators and prey in the Chiquibul, and we suited up for a long hike to set up some camera traps.

Into the jungle (Pre-first hike)
Out of the jungle (Post-first hike)

Dr. Solomon gave me an aspirator to suck up ants into a little viewing chamber for easier identification. I didn’t get to (or need to) use it today on our hike, but it is very cool, in theory, to be like an anteater slurping up ants in the rainforest. I did see a new ant species today: the army ant (Eciton sp.)! At first, I thought it was another leafcutter (Atta cephalotes)  trail, because they were moving in a straight line rather than the carpet-like swarms that are associated with the army ant species that I know of (E. burchellii), but their conspicuous reddish-color and large soldier class still identifies them as army ants.

I also saw the same type of Ponerine/Hypoponerine ant that I saw at Caracol yesterday, and this time I got some really good close up pictures, so hopefully I can consult the ant guide book and get a positive ID.

We also saw an absolutely humungous leafcutter ant nest deep in the rainforest on our hike (we set up a camera trap there, so we have an excuse to go back in a couple days). The mound was probably four feet tall and several meters in radius with dozens of entrance tunnels and ventilation shafts! Dr. Solomon said that the entire biomass of the colony was about equivalent to that of a cow, and that they probably consume about the same amount of vegetation per day.

A superhighway of leafcutters

Caracol and Chiquibul

Today was chalk-full of adventure, history, and changes. We woke up early at TEC and made three field-ID’s before breakfast! First, I spotted a Shimmering Golden Sugar Ant (Camponotus sericiventris) and I told everyone that would listen to me about golden ant butts. Then, I let McKenna borrow my binoculars and she identified both a Great Kiskadee and a Social Flycatcher flitting about high up in a pine tree. Lastly, on our way into breakfast at the dining hall, we spotted an agouti (which promptly ran away from us).

We left TEC after breakfast and were on our way to Caracol Archaeological Reserve and then to Chiquibul National Forest.

Caracol was absolutely stunning. I have never visited any ancient ruins, and it was incredible to learn about the Mayan civilization and culture. The site of Caracol is vastly underappreciated  and under-documented. Archaeologists have excavated several huge temples and astronomical buildings, but the entire complex is a seven mile radius with more than 35,000 individual structures (at its peak). I think the most fascinating building at the site was the ‘E-group’ astronomical building, whose three peaks align with the position of the rising sun at three key points throughout the year! As I climbed up the opposite building to see what the ancient Mayan astronomers did, it started to pour down rain (our first taste of Belize’s wet season), which made the uneven mossy steps even slipperier.

Slippery stone steps

We saw some very large leafcutter ant (Atta cephalotes) colonies (more than a meter in diameter) and also a very small one! Dr. Solomon said that the small one was probably a year or two old, because it only had two entrance holes to the nest.  I also saw a very large ant with mottled/spotted coloration that I didn’t recognize. I asked Dr. Solomon and he theorized that it could be a Ponerine or Hyperponerine ant.

Ponerine (?) ant

No time for Reef-flection, too much to T-E-Cee

This morning after breakfast, we had to say goodbye to Glover’s Reef (and Ruth). I had really started to get comfortable at Glover’s. The food, the views, the reefs, the hermit crabs and blue land crabs, the pelicans and frigate birds, iguanas, the snorkel shed, poster sessions, Clivus, and even the mosquito mangroves of death…. I’m grateful for it all.

After a 3.5 hour boat ride, we (quite fittingly) made our transition from ‘surf’ to ‘turf’ by dining on the shore at Calypso, a restaurant on the marina. After lunch, we all piled into two white vans and hit the road for the Tropical Education Center (TEC). On the drive, we passed a couple Police Security Checkpoints and got to see the dominant landscape features shift between developed cities, thick twisting mangroves, karstic mountains, and savannah peppered with palmettos.

At TEC, we received a lecture from Dr. Boris Arevalo, a conservation biologist who studies northern scarlet macaws. These macaws are a flagship species for several countries in Central America, so Dr. Arevalo wanted to better understand their nesting preferences on local and regional scales. The main points that I took away from his presentation was the importance of having a holistic understanding and management of BOTH breeding and foraging habitat, and that collaboration and communication are the most important tools for scientists. Some of my favorite quotes from Dr. Arevalo’s presentation:

  • “Conservation is a human issue”
  • “Scientists are professional beggars
  • Conservation is a business”

After dinner at TEC, we got a night-time tour of the Belize Zoo! We saw more animals in an hour than I can recount here, but I’ll try to list as many as I can remember. We saw three types of owls (spectacled, mottled, and barn), four types of cat (puma, jaguar, ocelot, margay), coatimundis, a paca, white-lipped peccaries, a tapir (which we got to touch), a four-eyed possum, a termite nest, an anteater, and most importantly…. I finally saw leafcutter ants (Atta cephalotes)! My excitement at simply seeing their little nocturnal parades across the paths bodes well for this trip. I’ll probably fully lose my mind when I get to see their fungus gardens.

Day One: Adventure’s Just Begun!

Today was about as good of a first day as I could have hoped! Of course it wasn’t perfect- we had a few hiccups checking into the airport and an exceptionally long, but eventually we all made it to our first study site, Glover’s Reef Research Station.

After a full day of travelling (2 hours), a bus (half an hour), a plane (2.5 hours), a van (about an hour), and a boat (4 hours!), finally arriving at our home for the next week was a relief, to say the least! We gathered our luggage and settled into our rooms for a bit before being treated to a delicious dinner of chicken, salad, and rice. It’s taking all of my remaining willpower to type this blog post before I pass out from exhaustion.

At first impression, Glover’s is truly tropical paradise. Lapping waves, lush greenery, colorful bungalows, and scuttling crabs greet you as you walk from the docks. But the smiling faces and friendly attitudes of the resident researchers and crew is was really makes this oasis feel like a home-away-from-home.

My favorite part of today was during the boat ride, seeing colors that I never thought could come from water. The deepest, most intense blues of open ocean and the green and turquoise of seafood breaking on shallow offshore reefs; it was like something out of a dream. The murky browns of Galveston Bay will officially never satisfy me again!

12 Hours and 1000 Miles Away

Hi everyone, I’m Michael, and this blog will serve as a record of my experiences over the next two weeks in Belize!

I’m going to do my best to put into words how I’m feeling:

In a word? Paradoxical. Simultaneously excited and nervous, fully-packed and somehow unprepared, ready to start, but unsure of what’s to come. Tomorrow my day starts at 3:30 AM. I need to drive to campus, meet the group at 6:00, bus to the airport, and catch a flight by 10:00.

I think I’m most excited about being able to apply, reinforce, and expand my knowledge about tropical ecology with actual experience. I’ve had countless lectures about the vast importance of rainforests and coral reefs. They’ve been the flagship ecosystems for conservation efforts for decades (anecdotally evidenced by this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4bNrIIe0bk ‘Rainforest Rap’ that I remember from elementary school). I’ve dedicated my academic career to studying and protecting the environment— and yet, this will be my first time actually coming face-to-face with these dazzling bastions of biodiversity.

To prepare, I’ve gone over the packing list and syllabus (several times), read books, scientific articles, watched TedTalks and documentaries, and pored over notes from previous classes. Practically, I’m still a little intimidated about identifying my taxa (Sponges and Ants), but theoretically, I’m ready to share and apply what I know.

I have some limited experience being in the tropics and doing field work (separately). I’ve spent six weeks in Hong Kong during the wet season, so I know what sticky heat and torrential downpours feel like. I have field experience in Brazos Bend, Laguna Atascosa, and West Virginia, so I won’t be completely unprepared for physical exertion and scientific rigor. Hopefully these separate experiences have prepared me for their intersection in ‘Tropical Field Biology’

I asked a friend who took this course for any sage advice… she said to “enjoy every moment.” That will be my mantra for the next two weeks.

Whatever happens, I know this will be unforgettable.

Tropical Field Biology Presents… Brendan’s Final Blog Post

spoiler alert: I have decided to become a sea turtle

I remember sitting in the first interest meeting and hearing past participants talk about this trip. At that time, I was definitely hesitant how a trip can be so influential and eye-opening. Few months later, we had our first group meeting as the 2019 cohort. I wondered what the workload would be, how the group would interact with each other, and what we will be seeing in Belize. 

When I chose ants and sponges as my taxonomic groups, I merely picked them because of familiarity. However, as I started to look into these groups more, I realized they shared many similarities. Ants and sponges are both often overlooked because they can easily blend in the background, but they are actually crucial in maintaining the health of the rainforest or reef. They both serve an important role of recycling nutrients in their respective ecosystems. Not to mention, to identity them to the species level is pretty difficult because they can appear so differently amongst each other. 

More broadly speaking, the rainforest and reef also share many similarities with each other. These ecosystems are able to host such diverse life. Both of these ecosystems have organisms that continuously cycle nutrients back to its environment, allowing other organisms to develop. These ecosystems have food webs and food chains in place to ensure there is a balance between predator-prey relationship. In many cases, removing top-predators, like big cats and big fishes, can disrupt the ecosystem greatly. 

One thing I also realized is to just avoid anything that begins with “fire.” In the rainforest, we avoided fire ants. In the reef, we avoided fire corals, fire sponges, and fire worms. I wrote in my first blog that I expect to be challenged when it comes to naming specific organisms. Of course, I ended up being challenged in all different ways. For instance, one challenge I did not expect was waking up at 5 or 6am every morning and struggling to stay awake past 9:30pm. 

A difference that I noticed between the ecosystems is actually the way in which research is conducted. In hindsight, being able to stand on the ground definitely is a lot easier than needing to stay afloat. Perhaps we were just out of our element, but I noticed that so many variables, such as wind condition and wave action, that dictate when we can go out and do research.

My favorite part of the trip was being able to capture photos of everyone. Watching everyone’s facial expression and their sheer amazement has been such a fun part of the trip. I, too, was amazed by all the things we saw, but I found shifting perspectives and observing people in the context of nature can be equally rewarding. 

 

Everyone taking photos of the “sticky butt cockroach”

My least favorite part of the trip was definitely the bug bites. By now, you have probably heard of everyone complaining, but those bugs are evil! In my packing list, I remembered to pack bug sprays to prevent getting bitten, but I totally forgot to pack medicine for AFTER getting bitten. I had to continually restrain myself from scratching the insect bites. 

Here are my three key takeaways from this course: 

  1. Importance of contextualizing our trip. While learning about Belize’s natural beauty, we were also able to understand Belize’s ties to Mayan culture. Thanks to Herbert, we also understood the overarching history and future of Belize. Though we came to Belize to learn about the environment, I think we also have to acknowledge the environmental impact of traveling to Belize and all the places as well. My hope is that we can translate this experience and inspire more sustainable practices. 
  2. Don’t forget the small things! I used to have this mentality of eliminating all ants in sight. After this trip, I realized just how amazingly complex ants can be. Seeing ant colonies and leafcutter ants traveling down the highway carrying freshly cut leaves have opened my eyes to these organisms. 
  3. The bug bite trade-off. As I am writing this final blog post, I am also trying not to scratch my bug bites. In the future, I will still not use insect repellent with 99% DEET, but I will remember to bring some anti-itch medicine for these nasty bug bites. The good thing is bug bites will go, but these memories will last forever. 

TAXON 

ants department: 

common name: 

fire ants

genus: 

Pseudomyrmex sp.

Azteca sp.

Dolichoderus sp. 

species: 

Atta cephalotes

Strumigenys ludia

16 morphospecies:

ant morphospecies from Project P

 

sponges department: 

some type of rope sponge

Ailochroria crassa

Aplysina fistularis (Yellow Tube Sponge)

Callyspongia vaginalis (Branching vase sponge)

Callyspongia plicifera ( Azure vase sponge)

Chondrilla nucula (Chicken liver sponge)

Cliona delitrix (Red Boring sponge)

Xestospongia muta ( Giant Barrel sponge) 

Day 8: Beyonce: “Okay ladies, let’s look at formations”

Today’s general agenda: leave Las Cuevas —> ATM Cave —> tropical education center —> Belize Zoo 

I am very tempted to use words like “amazing”, “incredible”, “jaw-dropping” to describe my experience today, but I think I should unpack my thoughts to give you a sense of why I am feeling exactly that way. Specifically, I am referring to our expedition into the Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) cave. 

As our pitstop between the rainforest and coral reef, we visited the ATM cave. Even before getting to the entrance of the cave, we had to cross three rivers. Certain parts of the cave required us wading in the shoulder-deep water and some climbing up tall, complex structures. 

I remember I audibly gasped as I looked at the cave formations all around me. When light is shone on these formations, they look like thousands of crystals all glistening back at you. At one point, I even lost a sense of where I was because I was merely taken aback by the view.

As we venture deeper into the cave, we got a better understanding of how caves play a role in Mayan culture. Historically, priests of mayan societies were in the caves performing rituals. Since we were the last group to explore the cave that day, we were able to switch off our lights and just listen to the cave. There was absolutely no light, so my eyes could not adjust to anything. We switched our lights back on, and one of us went missing! I’m just kidding- everyone got out of the cave unscathed. And the craziest thing of it all? Turns out, we only explored about 500m of the 5.3km cave.

Unfortunately, we were not able to document anything with cameras, so hopefully you have been well convinced to go explore the cave yourself. 

lunch at 2:40pm after a 3 hour cave expedition
night zoo with a boa constrictor

Brendan Wong

Belmopan, Belize

5/21/2019