Tag Archives: Elena

Last Blog :(

Well, readers, this is it-the final blog post for this trip! I had such an amazing experience, and I was definitely sad to leave! It was really weird getting to the airport and seeing the other people leaving, knowing that they probably had a very different experience in Belize than we did. Namely, I did not see anyone else not belonging to our group with as many bug bites! Although I’m sure that the other tourists also got to enjoy Belize’s natural habitats, I really appreciated the in-depth look we got at different organisms in both the reef and the rainforest.

One important thing I learned from the course and had the opportunity to observe myself is how similar the rainforest and the reefs are. For example, both the rainforest and the reef had a huge amount of biological diversity, which as we learned in the course, is paradoxical with the deficiency of available nutrients. What we learned is that in both ecosystems, the nutrients are held in living biomass, and this scarcity creates organisms that are evolved to live in super specific niches within the ecosystem, or they specialize such that they are completely dependent on one particular interaction. One example of this is the symbiotic relationship between the coral animal and the zooxanthellae that they host, or that between the leaf cutter ants and the fungus they cultivate. Another similarity is the competition for light. In both ecosystems, organisms must do photosynthesis to produce nutrients, leading to a competition between the different photosynthesizing organisms to access the sun’s rays. The trees in the rainforest will grow taller so that their canopies can extend above those around them, while corals in shallower areas will grow wider to maximize the limited space.

One final, and more grim similarity is the theme of climate change and human activity. In the reef, the once-healthy coral reefs had become algal gardens with sparse patches of often diseased coral. In the rainforest, we heard about changing weather patterns, deforestation, and poaching, which interfere with the natural breeding patterns and life cycles of different organisms. While the effects of human activity was more evident on the reef, it was disheartening to hear first-hand accounts from the native Belizeans about the effects climate change has already had on the wildlife.

Honestly, I was not expecting how amazing this class would be. I was of course excited and expecting that it would be fun and informative, but getting to be in the rainforest and reef ecosystems was even better than I thought. Learning about specific taxa and interactions through the presentations was especially helpful as they turned a bigger puzzle into identifiable, specific pieces, giving me a new appreciation for the complexity of each ecosystem. On the science
side, I loved learning about different data collection methods in the field, and actually creating research questions, collecting data, and analyzing it and presenting it was such a great experience. I’m not sure yet, but the experience has made me reconsider my career path. I also really enjoyed learning about the culture and history of Belize! The people were so excited to share, and being so immersed makes me want go visit again. Finally, the people on the trip were so much fun. It was great to be surrounded by like-minded people, especially those that are passionate about wildlife and science.

Some specific highlights for me were the Morelet’s tree frog and the Mexican burrowing toad, the coral graveyard, the view from the bird watch tower, Caracol, Sea Grass Euphoria, and honestly everything else-this whole trip was a highlight. I can’t say I had any least favorite parts, but some things were harder than others. For example, I struggled with the lasting feeling of being on a boat (even when on land) and the itchiness of my bug bites.

This class has changed the way that I see the world. One of the things that I think will have the most lasting impact is the importance of using non-single-use plastics. The amount of plastic bottles, shoes, and other trash that had washed up on the beach was really sad, and has helped inspire me to pursue more sustainable goods. Another important thing was in the talk from Boris Aravelo. He mentioned that science for conservation is for the good of the planet, not ourselves, and that collaboration is imperative, which was something that I hadn’t heard from other scientists before. Finally, on a much lighter note, I will never think about houseplants the same. Turn out a lot of the popular house plants are actually epiphytes, or non-parasitic plants that grow atop other plants! It was cool to see monsteras, philodendrons, orchids, and bromeliads in their natural habitats. Those plants get huge if you let them!

Anyways, that’s about it from me! Thank you, Adrienne and Scott for such a great experience! Shoutout Michael for coming up with most of the titles for our presentations, Phoenix for the illustrations, Caio and Nayala for the coconuts, and the rest of the Belize Babes for making the trip a blast! I hope to see everyone again soon!

-Elena

surprise taxa sighting at the airport!

Rubber boots>hiking boots

Today was mostly one big recon mission to gather all the pitfall traps and camera traps we had set along the trails near Las Cuevas. We left at about 9 to gather all the pitfall traps, which involved cutting the wire we had used to strap the vial on the the tree, somehow unsticking the tubes from the ground, and of course, gathering all the flagging tape. This was a relatively short mission, especially compared to setting them up yesterday.

We got back to the research station, and began to collect our results and analyze our data. We didn’t finish the poster, so I’ll briefly explain what we found. Overall, we saw that there were more arthropods in the ground pitfall traps, and more arthropods in the the pee traps than in the water traps. This suggests that there are more arthropods on the ground than in the canopy, but that they are more attracted to nutrients.

our athropods!

We then left for the camera recon mission, which was also a shorter excursion than the one to set them up. We still have yet to look at the footage from them, but I’d image a lot of it will be pictures of us trying to set up and take down the cameras. Also, I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, but rubber boots are actually great for hiking!

I unfortunately did not see very many orthoptera today. I saw several small crickets, but they were too speedy for me to get a picture. One of them was really tiny, no more than 5 mm long. It was sitting on the dinning table, but it hopped away before I could invite it to stay and eat lunch with me.

I’m not sure how the next few days will look, but I will try to keep everyone updated!

-Elena

cool leaf

Team Frog

Every day here is one for the books, but today was especially special.

We started the morning with a surprise. We would be performing an experiment to measure the abundance of bugs in the canopy vs the forest floor, as well as how attracted they are to nutrients. We are going to take our data based on how many of the bugs fall into these “pitfall traps,” which is liquid in a vial that the bugs get stuck in. We had a water control vial, and a nutrients vial. But here’s the surprise-guess what we were using for nutrients? Our pee! It was definitely weird, but sometimes that’s what you have to do for science!

don’t look too closely at the vials…

We then headed out to set up the pitfall traps. We each had four vials-two controls (water) and two nutrients (urine). We would put a water and a urine vial on a tree to catch bugs from up there, and then one of each buried up to the brim in the ground to catch the bugs from the forest floor. We spread out our vials, so each tree with a pitfall trap was about ten feet apart. Setting up the traps took up the rest of the morning, so we came back for lunch. Along the way I saw some crickets-there was a small brown cricket with beige legs in the leaf cover of the ground, and a dark brown cricket under a rock. We also saw a small jumping pit viper in the middle of the trail and an eyelash viper coiled on a log! The eyelash vipers are very elusive, so it was exciting to see one.

jumping pit viper
eyelash viper

For the afternoon, we were focused on leaf cutter ant nests! We found a young (<1 year old) nest in the clearing by the research station. We dug next to the nest, and we came upon the chamber below the ground that contained the fungus garden! The leaf cutter ants bring the leaves they cut up to the fungus garden to feed, it, and it in return grows nutrient-rich so the ants can feed upon it. Professor Solomon scooped out some of the fungus and found the queen! She was huge-almost the size of my thumb! After we took a look at her, we put her back and sealed the nest.

the queen ant

We then went to look at a bigger nest, to see how it was different. We were digging in one spot, but no ants were coming out. The trip was not fruitless, in fact quite the opposite! We found a Mexican burrowing frog, which is usually hard to come by because they live underground.

Mexican Burrowing Toad!

We then moved on to another nest, which had no frogs, but was teeming with ants. We saw that there were more types of worker ants, and that the fungus garden chamber was bigger. I caught one of the biggest ants-the soldier ant, which is specialized to protect the colony. I wanted to see how strong she was, so I let her bite me, and her long, sharp mandibles drew blood even through a callous! The nest was really cool to look at, but we sealed it up and moved on.

Ava and I with our soldier ants!

We had to do a bunch of presentations before dinner, but afterwards, we went on a night hike! We walked to the Frog Pond, a dried-up pond where we had seen red-eyed tree frog eggs the day before. Tonight, we saw two Morelet’s tree frogs, which are critically endangered! We also saw a ton of northern cat eye snakes, one of which we watched feed upon the tree frog eggs ☹ The rest of the snakes were in the canopy, which brought the day’s snake count up to nine.

top ten pictures taken before disaster (pic cred: Sophia)
Morelet’s Tree Frog!

I also saw some cool orthoptera! There was a giant grasshopper atop a palm frond, with beige and brown coloring. It was really high up, so it was difficult to identify. There was also two different medium sized brown orthopterans-one was sitting atop a leaf, and one was hanging out with the Morelet’s tree frog! The one on the ground sort of looked like the white kneed king cricket, and the other like a brown dead leaf katydid, but it was hard to tell. There were also some tiny crickets, but I didn’t get a good look at any of them.

big grasshopper!
possible brown dead leaf katydid
possible white kneed king cricket with the Morelet’s tree frog! a taxa crossover episode if you will

The rain forest has been super cool, and so far I have managed not to get as many bug bites as I did at Glover’s Reef. I will keep you all updated about what we get up to tomorrow!

-Elena

Bug madness

I know I said yesterday was the first day in the rain forest, but today was the actual first day in the rainforest!

We started out the day by figuring out how we were going to conduct research with the camera traps. We decided to look at the abundance of different types of mammals on different passageways, including the main road, the trails, and forest. Once we had our methods figured out and a plan for which path to take, we were on our way! We set six camera traps in the morning-all five road traps and one trail trap. We returned to the station for lunch, and then set out for the afternoon to walk another trail and set the other ten traps (four more trail traps, five forest traps, and one for-fun trap at a pond). We were out in the rain forest from 1:30 until 6:15, which was absolutely amazing. We got rained on a bit (which is always exciting for me because I’m from CA), and the forest was super lush and full of so much life.

Sophia lost her boot in the mud

We saw a lot of amazing things. I actually saw a bunch of orthoptera, which I wasn’t entirely expecting, since they’re so good at camouflage. I saw some tiny crickets in the grass, possibly a pygmy mole cricket, and a small green katydid on the branch of a tree.

I saw a group of black grasshoppers with red heads on the branch of a small tree as well. I thought it was odd that they were in a group, as grasshoppers and other orthoptera are usually solitary. I also saw a small-ish brown cricket that looked almost like the the jerusalem cricket.

The most amazing orthoptera sighting for me was at night during the post-dinner presentations! I got to see a huge leaf mimic katydid (shoutout Michael for grabbing it for me)-it was probably about 3 or so inches long! In order to grab katydids, you have to grab their wings and their femurs because their back legs are so strong, they can push against your hand and make you lose your grip. We also saw a smaller katydid, maybe two inches long (shoutout Rusty for catching it). Both were a vibrant green, and their wings really did look like leaves! Too bad they were in a classroom, so their camouflage didn’t work so well.

Overall the day was jam-packed with excitement. We saw a bunch of other really cool organisms, such as birds, beetles, cockroaches, and ants, as well as countless trees and epiphytes that we had only just read about in the text book. We got to try eating termites (which taste sort of like carrots!), and we climbed to the top of a bird watch tower to see the amazing view! We also saw a cave that had maya pottery and a wall in it, and a giant leaf cutter ant nest, that was probably about three or four feet in diameter.

from the top of the bird watch tower!
scarlet macaws

I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings, since today the main focus was just setting the camera traps!

-Elena

Welcome to the jungle!!

Today was our first day full day in the rainforest! We drove from the Tropical Education Center to Caracol, an archeological site full of Maya ruins! Along the way, we saw a Morelet’s crocodile laying on a rock in a stream. Once we got there, our guide, Leo, who had worked on the excavation of the site in the nineties, explained to us the relevance of the site. He told us that it was a large Maya civilization, home to about 200,000 people at its peak, and the pyramid at its epicenter is actually the tallest building in all of Belize. We got to climb the pyramid, which is both a temple and a palace, as the king built his home atop the temple to show his divine right to power.

Group photo on top of the Caana

We saw some other structures, including an astronomical observatory, a ball court, middle class homes, and a reservoir. The ruins were extremely impressive, and it was cool to imagine people living in that city hundreds of years ago.

We also got to see the ceiba trees, which although they were only about 200 years old, were already over one hundred feet tall! In the plants on the ground around the trees, Faith found a small lime green grasshopper. I think it was some type of nymph, as I didn’t see any wings on it. It promptly hopped away, but it was very cute, and I managed to snap a photo of it.

tiny green grasshopper!

We got rained on towards the end of the tour, but we took refuge in the abandoned houses that were used for the archaeologists. We then had lunch, during which we got to hear howler monkeys. Their howls were a lot lower than I had anticipated. Some other cool things we had gotten to see were leaf cutter ants and their huge nests, as well as a wild cilantro plant, which is more potent than the commercially available cilantro.

After lunch, we headed to Las Cuevas! On the drive over, we saw some scarlet macaws flying overhead, a toucan in the canopy, and multiple turtles that were crossing the road. When we got to the research station, we were welcomed by Rafael, the manager, and then we enjoyed dinner and our class presentations. I’m excited for tomorrow and getting to truly experience the rain forest!

-Elena

view from the top!

wild cilantro!

Pumas, Ocelots, and Jaguars, Oh My!

Today was the first of two travel days between Glover’s Reef Research Station and Las Cuevas Research Station. We started out the day by travelling via boat back to the mainland. I had taken dramamine, so I slept for almost the entire ride, although I woke up for a brief period of time, and saw a flying fish and some dolphins. I also counted all my bug bites before I fell asleep. I have roughly 374. We had lunch at the marina, stopped at the super market to stock up on anything we had run out of, and then we were on our way.

We travelled to the Tropical Education Center, located just outside Belize City. We got a tour of the lodge, and then enjoyed a talk by Dr. Boris Aravelo about his research concerning the conservation of the scarlet macaw. Afterwards, we had dinner and headed to the zoo. The Belize Zoo is a conservation zoo, as in it only takes animals that were confiscated, or can no longer live in the wild for some other reason. All the animals there are native to Belize/Central America.

We got a night tour of the animals, which was super cool. We saw quash, an anteater, two jaguars, a crocodile, a puma, ocelot, and margay, several types of owls, a kinkajou, white lipped peccary, and a tapir. The animals were super cool! We learned that jaguars are super smart and can learn to do tricks, that ocelots growl when they greet each other, and that tapirs are related to horses and rhinoceros. The peccaries were very smelly, as they have a scent gland on their posterior that helps them identify members of their own herd.

I also saw a little cricket-it was tiny, maybe a centimeter long, with antennae that were maybe three or four times its body length. I wasn’t able to identify it, but I plan on looking it up tomorrow. We also saw lots of leaf cutter ants! They were working very hard, carrying their leaves.

tiny cricket
Indy the tapir (pic courtesy of Ava)
Lindo the jaguar

By dinner time tomorrow we should be at Las Cuevas! We have a big day before that, and I’m hoping to be able to write about it here although I’m not sure about the internet situation. If you don’t see any updated blog posts, don’t worry!

-Elena

We ate what??

There was a lot to do today, since it was our last day!

We started out by going to a non-MPA to collect our last data set for our research question from three days ago. We used the transects and quadrats for the last time, which was very bitter sweet. The reef was very sparse, with very few live corals. There was a decent amount of brown algae, mainly the saucer leaf algae, covering the rubble. We saw some Caribbean reef squid though! There were six or seven of them, and they were all in a row in the seagrass bed that surrounded the reef. Doing what, I don’t know.

Afterwards, we went to a reef in the MPA, which they call “The Aquarium.” There were tons of fish, including parrot fish, angel fish, damsel fish, and others that I couldn’t identify. There was also a lot of brown algae! Yay! It was mainly saucer leaf algae and funnelweed, intermixed with some white scroll algae and y-branching algae. I saw a really cool blue variety of the y-branching algae, which I believe to have been dictyota menstrualis. It was right in the middle of a patch of saucer leaf algae.

dictyota humifusa with saucer leaf algae
squids in a row! (to the right)

After lunch, we compiled and analyzed our data, and presented it to the professors. You can read about it below! The poster doesn’t include in the discussion that there may have also been a difference in the non-MPA sited due to environmental factors that we couldn’t take into account, such as differences in the amount of fishing in each area.

We enjoyed some presentations from our fellow classmates, and then had a lovely dinner, which included friend conch! It was actually quite tasty. But it wasn’t until after dinner that the real fun began! We performed dissections on the three lionfish that were caught by Prof Solomon this week, and added our data to the list of lionfish data from the previous years of the BIOS 319 trip. Once we were done, Prof Solomon filleted the lionfish, and put them into a mixture of lime juice, tomato, and onions to create a ceviche. It turned out quite delicious! I would definitely recommend eating lionfish! Although I think I still smell like fish.

their names, from top to bottom: Main Course, Appetizer, and Snack

Anyways, today was the last day on the reef! It’s amazing that the time passed so quickly! Tomorrow we will be taking a boat back to the mainland, and starting the land portion of the class. See you all then!

-Elena

Prof Solomon fileting the lionfish
Performing the dissection on Main Course
Sophia and I

 

Mondays are trash

Contrary to this blog’s title, today was an exciting day! We went out this morning to the fore reef, which is the area of open ocean that’s right outside of the atoll. There, since the waves are stronger and the water is deeper, the organisms are typically much bigger, as they need to be stronger to withstand the greater wave energy, and they have more room to grow upwards. We saw some really cool organisms from a distance because the bottom was maybe 70 feet below the surface and none of us (except the water safety officers) could hold our breath long enough to get to the bottom. Some of the cool organisms we saw included comb jellies, which were floating near the surface, and if you looked really closely, you could see that their combs were lit up with electricity. We also saw a school of medium blue fish that we weren’t able to identify, a sea turtle, most likely a green sea turtle, that was just sitting on the bottom, and a huge barrel sponge. Unfortunately, I did not see any brown algae, as it is too small to see from 70 feet above the reef. surprisingly, I saw minimal sargassum, which I think was due to the fact that the waves were so choppy.

a comb jelly! (picture courtesy of Phoenix)

possible green sea turtle!

Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t really cooperating with us, so we had to head out pretty quickly. Lucky for us, that meant we could get the nightly presentations done in the morning in anticipation of a possible night snorkel.

The afternoon was a whole other ball game. Last night, we heard from the Belize Fisheries Department manager, and he spoke a bit about starting beach cleaning efforts on Middle Caye. Today, we did a beach clean up, but being TFBs, we had to incorporate science somehow! You can read about our research below 🙂

our poster

I was doing clean up in the mangrove area behind the kitchen, and there was a lot of trash! It was sort of sad because even though we had two giant trash bags overflowing with trash, we had hardly made a dent. We spent the whole afternoon doing the beach clean up, sorting the trash, and weighing it, before putting the trash back into the bags so they could be properly disposed of. The people at the Coral Graveyard also found a box fish skeleton!

box fish skeleton
trash party! -unfortunately I did not get any pictures during the actual trash sorting, since I didn’t want to touch my phone

After the trash shindig we finished the last presentation, and then, courtesy of Nate, we got to watch a hermit crab change shells! I had seen videos of it yesterday in Lilliana’s crustacean presentation, but it was cool to see in real life. We then went to dinner, and since the weather wasn’t looking good enough for a night snorkel, we hung out and talked to Ruth, the water safety officer, about her experiences as a native Belizean, as well as the natural history of the country.

While most Mondays may be trash, today was certainly a good day! Tomorrow is the last full day on the reef, and we have a lot to do, so I will keep you all posted!

the boat in the open ocean above the fore reef
Sophia diving

urchins upon urchins upon sea eggs

Today, in contrast with yesterday, did start out with urchins! Bright and early in the morning we headed out to a patch reef in the MPA to collect data for our research question. Afterwards, we collected urchins for the urchin hunt, and gathered a whopping 52 urchins at the first patch reef, plus one West Indian Sea Egg that I named Harry. We had three slate pencil urchins and 49 E. virdis urchins. We went to another MPA and collected more data, and more urchins. This time around, we got 57! All of them were E. virdis. I also found another sea egg, which I named Sally. I have faith that the two of them will cross the atoll and find each other eventually 🙂 Overall, it was a great morning for echinoderms (the species including urchins, sea stars, sea cucumbers, etc), as we also came across multiple brittle stars and two sea cucumbers!

Harry the west indian sea egg
Sally the west indian sea egg, covered in sea grass

In both MPA patch reefs, I was on the lookout for brown algae. I saw a lot of the saucer leaf algae (turbinaria tricostata) and white scroll algae (padina jamaicensis). I also saw some really cool y-branching algae that had some vibrant blue branches, which I believe to be dictyota menstrualis. Also, I finally figured out what the brown algae clumps were that I couldn’t identify! I believe it to be padina gymnospora, a species related to the white scroll algae. This variety had been covering the reef patch in the MPA that we saw yesterday, so it was nice to figure that out.

dictyota menstrualis (the brown y-branches and the blue y-branches toward the center)

In the afternoon, we went on a “for fun” snorkel in the reef flats. We came across a reef that was mostly algae, but had some sparse coral and lots of fish varieties! We came across three lionfish, but none of them were caught, unfortunately. We did spear one earlier, bringing the current lionfish count to two. Also, fun fact lion fish catching is the only kind of fishing allowed in the conservation zone, since it is an invasive species!

There were also several giant lobsters, yellow jacks, damsel fish, parrot fish, and angel fish! One of the areas was like a fish highway, which was cool to see, in spite of the reef not really being a true coral reef anymore. As I mentioned, the reef area was mostly algal-dominated, and there was rotting sargassum covering a lot of the reef floor. As the sea weed rots, it releases nutrients in the water, which actually promotes more algal growth, rather than coral growth. The fact that there was healthy coral there at all was quite impressive.

But that was about it for today! Tomorrow, we will most likely be either going to the forereef or a non-MPA to do more research, and then we will be doing some sort of land activity. I will let you know tomorrow!

-Elena

a whole lotta brown algae
Sophia taking data from the quadrat

i thought the urchin was my friend…but it was anemone

Unfortunately, the day did not begin with urchins, but they will enter the scene soon, don’t worry!

We started off the morning by planning out another experiment. We knew we were going to be visiting preserved reef patches and non-preserved reef patches and collecting some sort of data with the quadrats, and that we would be doing urchin scavenger hunts. From there, we developed a research question that we could answer by gathering this data. We decided to investigate the correlation between live coral coverage and urchin prevalence, and how the amount of each changed between protected areas and non protected areas. We did not finish collecting data, so stay tuned!

Before we went out to the reefs, we waded in the sea grass bed and collected specimens to look at more closely in the outdoor lab. Some notable finds include a Caribbean spiny lobster, mantis shrimp, damsel fish, several varieties of crabs, lime urchin, anemone, corallimorph, conchs, and our favorite-brown algae! We found some sargassum natans, and some of the saucer leaf algae!

Afterwards, we went to the reef patches. We went to the non-protected area first to collect our data. It was difficult conditions, since the waves were strong and it was hard to stay in place. The urchin hunt was also difficult, since they like to hide in little burrows, so one could not easily get them out without harming them. We then went to the protected reef to snorkel for fun.  Entering the protected area, I felt like I had died and gone to brown algae heaven (although maybe that wasn’t a great sign for the corals). There was saucer leaf algae, white scroll algae, and sargassum everywhere! They were intermixed with another type of algae, although I couldn’t identify it. The algae was growing all over the old, dead corals so densely I couldn’t even see the sand. Exciting stuff!

We also found a damsel fish garden, which was super cool. The damsel fish have little gardens where they cultivate their favorite algae, and protect it from other fish. And finally, the group spotted a lionfish, which was promptly speared (lionfish are invasive, and their capture is actually encouraged!) and brought aboard so we can use it for activities later this week.

When we got back, we counted, IDed, and measured the diameter of the urchins we collected, and then settled in for the night! Tomorrow, we are going to be collecting more data for our research, and maybe we’ll even have an answer. See you all then!

-Elena

some of the algal friends we collected
a slate pencil urchin
the damsel fish garden ft. the gardener itself
saucer-leaf algae and the unknown algae
free the homie
…but like don’t cuz they’re invasive 🙁