Today was just another day in the field. We were investigating the interactions between two different species of ants with their respective environments, Cecroppia trees and the Azteca ants, and leaf cutter ants (Atta cephalotes). I didn’t really expect to see any roaches today, since the only roaches I knew that had some affiliation with ants are of the genus Attaphila, meaning ant loving. These guys are about 2-5 millimeters long and can often be seen hitching a ride on flying queen ants, which emerge right before the first rains in Belize. As we are coming in right at the end of the dry season, it may be possible to find these Attaphila, but I doubted whether we could spot a creature as small as a few millimeters in the midst of a giant ant nest.

One of our activities involved digging up leaf cutter ant nests to find their fungus chambers (see below!). During one of the digs, one of my colleagues spotted an inch long roach like creature in the midst of the angered ants. It appeared to have been actually living in the nest, a characteristic of Attaphila! Unfortunately we accidentally lost the roach as we were unable to stop digging, but after some in depth roach profiling with my colleague I learned that the creature was an inch long, lacking wings, shiny, and quite oval shaped (1 inch length, .5 inch width). This was clearly longer than any other Attaphila I had heard described in Belize or in other parts of the world. It may even be possible that this is a different ant loving (myrmecophile) species altogether. But without a picture I can’t verify, so hopefully I may be able to find another one during our activities!