Tag Archives: Day 4

2022, Uncategorized

Lionfish: 4 TFBs: 1

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Another early morning and right onto the boat! We went to two different marine protected areas. After laying out our transects and quadrats and collecting our data on live versus dead coral we did another sea urchin hunt. The first area I was only able to find one dead urchin skeleton, but as a class we got 52 sea urchins and a sea egg named Harry. The second site I had a little better luck, I managed to find one sea urchin, but with it was a bonus brittle star! I also found 2 crabs while searching for urchins but I couldn’t see any of them aside from colors before they scrambled away. Best guess is that they’re either green porcelain crabs, or emerald crab/green clinging crab. I didn’t see any lobsters, but Ruth, one of our water safety officers, found a ton and took some photos on my camera (her photography is miles better than mine!) that I’ll add here after I figure out how the camera works. We also caught another lionfish on this trip out, it’s in the freezer now waiting to be eaten. Everyone is saying we’re going to make ceviche at the end of the week with the fish, I’ve never had it before so hopefully it’s good!

Our post lecture snorkel took us to a reef just a little off of the island, this reef had lots of fish and even a stingray and reef squid! We also saw 4 lionfish around the reef but since they were small they were hard to catch and we didn’t manage to get any of them. Hopefully we’ll have better luck tomorrow. This reef was much more bleached and dead then the other patches we’ve visited, and there was a lot of algae on the sea floor decaying and suffocating the coral with their decomposition. Despite that the living parts of the reef were amazing and the fish were huge! I can’t wait for tomorrow, I’m really hoping conditions are good enough for us to visit the fore reef.

2022

TFBs: 1 Lionfish: 0

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My life goal has finally been achieved, but we’ll get to that soon.

This was a great morning for crustaceans. It was too windy to go out to the fore reef so we stayed closer to shore and went looking through the seagrass for organisms to bring back to the wet lab to examine. We found lots of algae, snails, and other organisms, but I don’t care about those, I’m here for the crustaceans. Can you spot how many crabs are in this bucket? I don’t actually remember how many we caught, but we got plenty of aquatic hermit crabs, a green clinging crab or emerald crab (Mithralculus sculptus) who was very well behaved and let me pick him up without pinching me.

We also found several brown crabs that I haven’t been able to identify yet, who were not as nice and tried to take a chunk out of my thumb when I went to move them 🙁

We also saw a spiny lobster! One of our water safety officers picked it up in the seagrass and plopped it into a bucket for us to examine.

It was pretty small for a lobster, but still big enough to be intimidating to those unfamiliar with lobsters.

We also found several mantis shrimp, which I had no idea were even in this area!

After an afternoon boat ride we went to a large reef patch and spotted a lionfish! It was the biggest lionfish I’ve ever seen and luckily this time our professor brought the lionfish spears and was able to impale it and bring it back onto the boat for us. It was almost perfect timing after my presentation yesterday about the lionfish invasion of these reefs and how my life goal was to eat one. It’s been years of me searching for a lionfish, and soon I will finally be able to eat one.

I will sleep soundly tonight with the promise of lionfish tomorrow.

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Day 4: The vials of death

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Today I woke up late and missed the bird sighting which was sad since they saw two toucans. As I was enjoying one of the best breakfasts I have had here in Belize, Scott comes in and tells us to take two vials. Then he tells us that we have to pee in these vials without telling us why. We thought he was kidding but nope, we all collected 50mL of our urine, which we found out will be using as pitfall traps for our experiment.

Along the Maya trail and the 50-hectare plot, I saw bromeliads, lianas, lichens, strangler figs, long roots along trees, and mosses. Bromeliads that I saw today were bigger than other bromeliads I have seen yesterday. These tank epiphytes had long leaves and they were filled with water and even some arthropods! The lichens that I have seen today were everywhere and seem to be found everywhere on other plants. It’s pretty great to see epiphytes everywhere you go in the Chiquibul region.

We got to explore the cave that lies underneath a Mayan site here at Las Cuevas. I did almost slip a few times, but I had rocks to grab on to for safety. Today’s lectures were given in the caves and that was a great experience since we were at nature’s natural air conditioning unit. We all sat around on the rocks and listened to the lectures given.

After dinner, we all went on a short night hike and I can say it was an adventure. We saw this cockroach that has this glue-like substance near the rear-end. Very cool and we got to “play” with it. As we were walking towards the pond, Brendan pointed at a stem and told me he thought it was something. It turned out that something was in fact something and that it was a stick bug. It blended in so well it took lots of “work” to see this stick bug, and I got to hold this little guy. And that wraps up this blog. See you guys tomorrow!

Picture: My reaction to nature’s air-condition unit (the cave at Las Cuevas)

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Day 4: Las Cuevas name rings true

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5/17/19: In class today, we peed. Yes, you heard me right, we peed. For the love of science, we peed in vials that will act as nitrogen sources for our new field experiment. Our 2 questions for the experiment were: Is there a greater species richness and abundance of arthropods on the forest floor or in the canopy? And, is nitrogen limitation more severe on the forest floor or in the canopy? Currently, my pee sits awaiting arthropods in the middle of the Chiquibul forest. I’ll keep you updated as to how it goes.

Aside from that, I think my favorite part of the day was visiting the cave near Las Cuevas Research Station. It is crazy to me how something so beautiful can even exist all on it is own. It is not man-made; it just exists by the natural world. I went on the cave field trip in the second grade and that was the end of my cave-going days, so it was nice to see it as an adult to appreciate it more fully. We even had lectures inside of the cave which was very cool.

The entrance to the cave near Las Cuevas Research Station

Today, I had a few interesting sightings of arachnids. Along the Mayan trail, I saw a wolf spider (genus: hogna) and a harvestman. The wolf spider was carrying an egg sack. The harvestman was red, black, and white. I saw quite a few red-rumped tarantulas today along the trail near their underground burrows. They are always a cool site.

The most intriguing find I had was on a night hike down the Mayan trial. Even with some research, I am unsure of the species of this spider. It was a beautiful orange color with black stripes; it had a thicker abdomen and legs than most spiders I have seen in the canopy.  I nicknamed it the tiger spider. Check out the picture and let me know what you think!

“Tiger spider” sitting above us in the forest canopy during our night hike on the Mayan trail

Check in tomorrow because guess what? We are going to extract our pee. Cheese Belize!

Wish me luck!

-Bella

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The Cave!

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After birding today, Scott and Adrienne asked us to pee in 2 vials so we all started chugging our waters for some unknown experiment. We later were told we were going to be using them as pitfall traps for insects to test nitrogen differences in the rainforest canopy versus the rainforest floor. Urine contains nitrogen so we were able to use it to design the experiment.

 

While setting up the pitfall traps we came across a Tailless Whip spider, which actually is the spider Mad Eye Moody uses in the 4th Harry Potter movie (Hp reference!!). Also, Sam spotted a coral snake under a rotting log in the middle of the trail. I was only able to catch a look of the very end of it as it slithered away, but I think it may have been the Central American Coral Snake, and the most venomous snake in this rainforest.

After lunch, we suited up to go explore the Las Cuevas cave, aka: The Caves Cave. Pedro was our guide through the muddy and usually slippery cave. He explained to us the difference between stalactites that were “alive” and still growing versus “dead”. If someone touched a stalactite that was still growing it would stop, so tried to avoid accidentally hitting one with our hard hat.

Once we reached further into the cave and couldn’t see the light from the entrance anymore we saw our first bats hanging from the ceiling of the cave, and as we moved further we saw at least twenty baby bats hanging from one stalactite and then they began to peel off and fly to a higher and more hidden spot. I actually think that bats are adorable and I was super excited to be able to see so many of them. A few of us went with Pedro to a smaller cave, and we had to crawl through a bunch of bat guano and mud to get there, but on the way, we saw a white crab which had died but was still cool to see.

 

Later in the day during presentations, I saw a gecko on a post in the restroom that was brown and had 2 white stripes and then a grey gecko later near a light that looked spiny and had a thick tail but crawled under the wood before I had a chance to get a good look.

 

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Caves, Cavewomen, and a Few Cavemen

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Day 4: May 18th 2018, Las Cuevas

Bird watching started at 5:30 today, so that means we got those 30 extra minutes of sleep!  I thought I heard male howler monkeys calling this morning, and loudly raced out of bed.  Unfortunately, there didn’t appear to be anything, and I woke up my roommates in the process but at least we were up.  During bird watching, we saw Red Lord Parrots, Oropendola, and a pair of Scarlet Macaws. Then, breakfast was at 7, and we were off to the lab for our second experiment. 

For our second experiment, we created two sources, water and urine (nitrogen source), one set for the canopy and one for the forest floor per student.  The sources will act as traps as organism fall in them, allowing us to collect and analyze them.  We aimed to test the effect of limiting nutrient (nitrogen) differences between the canopy and forest floor on insect biodiversity.  We are expecting to observe nitrogen as a greater limiting nutrient in the canopy as compared to the forest floor. We placed each of our vials in 10 different locations as to test this with the understanding that the water would help to understand the richness of species in the canopy vs the floor, and the urine would act as a nitrogen source drawing proportionally more organisms into it the urine trap the water on the same level (canopy or forest).  We will go back and collect the traps in two days and analyze our results then.

We had lunch around noon which was a great soup and rice.  After we got to our surprise activity… caving! We got all geared up and headed down to the cave with our guide, Pedro.  At the massive entrance their were swallows fling about, that I almost mistook for bats.  It was explained to us that the Mayans used to use this cave, believe both that Chaac, the water god, live in the caves, and that the caves were the entrance to the underworld.  As we entered, we saw amazing stalactite and stalagmite formations.  The ground was muddy with bat guano, but areas with high concentrations were full of life when you look closer.  There were many cave insects, including millipedes and pill bugs.  The organisms here often lack significant pigmentation, eyes, and have longer appendages, making for some very interesting sights.  We also saw several bats! I believe there was at least two species, one that eats insects, Glossophaga soricina, and one that eats fruit that I could not identify.  They were flying and screeching about as we shown lights on them.  We even saw a cluster of baby fruit bats hanging from the ceiling with the adults flying around them.  As we went deeper into the caves, we saw also saw an ant nest and a white cave crab.  

After dinner, we had our lectures including Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), Orthoptera (crickets, grasshoppers, etc.), and Biodiversity in Cave which I presented.  After that, we observed a frog, a gecko and a long-nosed beetle insect that actually played dead!  It was a thoroughly engaging day.