Monthly Archives: June 2017

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Day 3 (5/18): Quadrats are love, quadrats are life.

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Today was packed. The day started at 6:45AM for me, with breakfast at 7AM and discussion and testing for crab density on the Middle Caye starting at 8:15AM- we basically chose a certain portion of the island (Isaac and I chose a trail) and test for the number of crabs in that specified area using the quadrat we made yesterday.

After that was done, we did the same exact type of testing on seagrass beds next to port. This time, we were looking for the density of species diversity in a certain sector of the seagrass beds. Unfortunately, my partner and I did not find much- we were only able to report an upside-down jellyfish, a small crab, and some sea anemone in our area of the bed. That did not discourage us though, because those kinds of results are common within the confines of this experiment. I snorkeled around a bit after the species density testing and managed to see a family of piscivorous yellowtail snapper (Ocyurus chrysurus) and a lot of upside down jellyfish about 100 feet west of the dock. Adrienne told me that a lot more piscivorous fish should be available out in the fore reef region of the Caye as opposed to the back reef, so I’ll patiently wait my turn until that day comes.

Crab density quadrat project

We came back to land, ate lunch, had some free time, and then jumped on the boat Koolie Gial to the back reef located in the Marine Protected Area. We again performed quadrat testing (this time looking for species diversity of coral in the back reef) and collected urchins which we’ll test tomorrow as a part of our ongoing lab on reef health. In the 25 minutes we had to find urchins, I managed to snag two under a rock and inside a coral crevice. Tomorrow we’ll collect more urchins from an unprotected area and compare the health (size and shape) of the two samples of urchins we had.

Me with a Diadema antillarum urchin

I’m tired, but content. In the words of Vivekanudeep, good night.

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Day 2 (5/17): Yep, this is paradise.

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I woke up at 5am today. The last time I did that was [INSERT DATE HERE]. It wasn’t too bad though because I crashed at 10pm in a really comfy bed. After our PB&J sandwich breakfast, we loaded our luggage and ourselves into the van and headed for the port. By 7:55AM, we reached port and were speeding away from mainland Belize in a small boat to Middle Caye (Glover’s Reef). We saw some flying fish and a giant sea turtle on the way, but the real sight was the view of Glover’s Reef as we floated into port- turquoise and yellow painted buildings sprawled on white sand surrounded by turquoise blue water greeted us warmly.

After sorting luggage into our rooms, the island manager Kenneth gave us a tour of the place, telling us we will be “working in paradise”. Shortly after a lunch of potatoes, chicken, and a vegetable medley, we put on our snorkeling gear and swam out to a patch reef to identify reef organisms.

Taxon wise, I had some luck seeing piscivorous fish. I was able to spot a group of yellowtail snappers (Ocyurus chrysurus) cruising around some corals on the patch reef. I had a glimpse of the tail of a flat needlefish (Ablennes hians), but it swam away before I could take a picture of it. Outside of my taxon, I saw a Christmas tree worm and a variety of branched and brain corals. There are still some facets of snorkeling I need to get used to, but it was an awesome first experience.

Yellowtail snapper I saw

Around 4PM, our professor Adrienne led us on a trek to the edge of the island where there is a huge pile of fossilized coral and got really really really really excited when she started explaining the different species of coral. It was great- I can successfully name 6 species of coral because of that 1.5 hour excursion. Then, we ate dinner, listened to presentations on stony coral and echinoderms, and then learned how to make quadrats. It’s currently 9:59PM and my eyes kept   shutting as I write this last paragraph. Must be getting old.

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I am Going to Miss Belize an Ocelot (Day 14)

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Today, we repeated the long hike we did a few days ago to go and retrieve our camera traps. Since we were all tired after setting them up, we unanimously wanted to walk much more efficiently and get an earlier start this time. Overall, I think everyone felt in much better spirits this hike.

During the hike, I saw four Western Horse Lubber Grasshoppers, which was exciting because that was the Orthoptera species I had wanted to see the most. They were all nymphs, so they lacked their distinctive yellow mesh-like wings. They were still pretty cool though. I also saw a large cluster of really large Orthoptera nymphs which looked like they might have just hatched because there were so many congregated together.

A Western Horse Lubber Grasshopper nymph. Fully grown, it will have cool yellow, mesh-like wings.

Reviewing the camera trap pictures was super exciting. We got two pictures of ocelots, one of a Red Brocket Deer, one of a Great Curassow, one of a group of peccaries, and a couple of pacas. I wanted to see a tapir the most, but an ocelot had been a close second, so it was exciting to get two pictures of them. One turned out really clear.

The ocelot captured on one of our camera traps set along the 50 Hectare trail.

Tomorrow we are leaving to go back to Houston, and the day after that I’ll be back home. It feels like this whole trip went by fast, but I felt like the rainforest section went by especially quick. It’s sad that we’re leaving Belize in less than eighteen hours and that we won’t see each other again until fall semester, but it will be nice to have light after 10pm and more variety in food again.

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Our Lecture Spots are Cooler than Yours (Day 13)

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Today was probably my favorite day we’ve had at Las Cuevas. In the morning we sorted through the arthropods that had fallen into our pit traps and analyzed our data. No orthoptera species fell into the traps, which bummed me out a little, but there were plenty of ants and arachnids.

In the afternoon, we went to the Las Cuevas cave. The cave is closed this year because a team of archaeologists are here excavating it, so we couldn’t go as far in as they do most years. We could still go in the entrance and pass through to the second chamber.

The constriction built by the Mayans dividing the first and second chambers.

 

This cave was used by the Mayans for religious ceremonies, so there are still platforms in the cave they built, as well as constrictions between each chamber. Once we went into the second chamber, we had Ellie and Isaac’s Amphibian and Reptile presentations. It was funny that we heard Isaac’s presentation in the cave because on the way out we saw a snake in the Twilight Zone. It was crazy because it slithered up the wall and disappeared into a crevasse. Also in the cave, I saw a Mayagryllus apterus cave cricket.

A snake slithering up the wall of the cave.

In the evening, we hiked up to the Bird Tower to watch the sunset. The hike there was short but steep, and once we climbed the tower we were way above the canopy. The mountains in the background were all such beautiful shades of greens, blues, yellows, and oranges.

The view of the sunset from the observation tower.

To add to the day’s theme of unusual lecture locations, we all sat down on top of the tower for Therese to give us a talk about the research she is doing for her PhD about the effects of defaunation, which is the loss of large vertebrates like gorillas and elephants.

After we finished the lecture, we climbed down the tower and scaled its sides and hung out for a bit. Then we started back to the station. Since it was dark, a lot of cool animals were out. We saw a mouse, scorpions, a Tailless Whip Scorpion, a huge cockroach, and a lot of Orthoptera. It’s crazy how much the community of a place changes from day to night.

A Nocturnal Cricket.
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Random Drug Test Day (Day 12)

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Today we experienced Scott F. Solomon in his true element: digging up leaf-cutter ant colonies. We went to three different-aged colonies to dig in to and see their tunnels and fungal gardens.  With his tiny shovel and stolen spoon, Dr. Solomon pulled out two of the three colonies’ fungi. It was cool to see how complex the colonies can be and how their complexity increased with age (a single queen can keep her colony growing for 25 years!), but being that close to so many ants was a bit unpleasant.

The other main thing we did today was set up an experiment to test abundances of arthropods and nutrient availability on the forest floor versus in the canopy. This involved each of us filling two viles with our pee and two with water and then tying half to trees and burying half in the ground. Tomorrow we are going to examine the arthropods that fell into the viles.

The day after tomorrow is when we are going to have to go and retrieve our camera traps. I’m excited to see the pictures they’ve taken, but I’m not looking forward to the hiking it will involve. Although the hiking yesterday felt fine, the minimal hiking we did today was pretty painful and quite laborious because I cut my foot on a conch at Glover’s a little over a week ago. As a reminder of our time on Middle Caye, four pieces of shell came out of the cut today. I’m hoping that was the last of it (spoiler: it wasn’t) and that it won’t be as painful in the coming days.

We spent not much time in the woods today, so I did not see any Orthoptera. However, I’m hoping we’ll find lots in the viles. The highlight of today was the Scarlet Macaws we saw. Two of them flew over us and then stopped in a tree nearby. It was a hard to get a picture that did them or their colorful plumage justice, but I don’t think it’s something I will ever forget.

Two Scarlet Macaws spotted in the Chiquibul.
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Final March of the Dive Booties (Day 10)

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Today was the second to last travel day of our trip. We reached Las Cuevas and will stay here until the 30th when we’ll head back to the airport in Belize City.

The drive was mostly through the Pine Ridge Forest and the Chiquibul Rainforest. To break it up, we stopped in the Rio-On pools midmorning. This was for us to get an idea of the karstist geological features of Belize and to swim and enjoy ourselves.

At Rio-On, there were a lot of granite rocks with small pools and waterfalls between them. It was fun to scramble around on the rocks and try and slide down the waterfalls. We stayed there about twice as long as we were supposed to, but nobody seemed to mind.

Rio-On Springs. It was really fun to swim and climb around here.

When we got to Las Cuevas, we learned that the cave here is closed. The worst part of this is that we all brought caving helmets and we aren’t going to ever use them. At least we got to see the ATM cave already. We also learned that there isn’t Internet here, which is why all these posts are going to go up at once.

Shortly after arriving, we went on a short hike on a trail near the station. We saw ceiba, cedar, acacia, sapodilla, Gumbo-limbo, and prickly yellow trees. We also saw fish tail palms, a plant that is often illegally extracted by Guatemelons for the floral business.

I saw two species of Orthoptera, which surprised me. One I think was a species of Leaf-mimic katydid (Mimica spp.) The other one I couldn’t confidently identify yet but it might have been Amblytropidia trinitatis.

A Leaf-mimic Katydid.

Tomorrow we are forming a question that we are going to answer with camera traps, and we’re going to spend most of the day setting them up throughout the forest. I think it is going to involve a lot of walking, which I am not looking forward to because my foot still hurts from when I stepped on a conch.

 

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Urchin Hair Don’t Care (Day 3)

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Today was an incredibly full day. We put the quadrats we made last night to good use by first estimating crab density on the island, then taxons represented within the seagrass beds, and then finally advancing to quantifying reef health on a patch reef within the conservation zone. Tomorrow we are going to repeat the procedures for quantifying reef health within the general use zone to see if there are observable differences between the two zones.

Therese swimming along our transect.

 

Another way we are going to compare the two zones is by urchin size. Today on the patch within the MPA, 16 of us collected as many urchins as we could for 25 minutes. I saw Diadema urchins but I did not collect any because their spines are the longest and they seemed to be hidden deeper than the other two species. I only found one Slate Pencil Urchin but lots of Reef Urchins.

A Slate Pencil Urchin collected within the Marine Protected Area.

Today I encountered two weird issues. First we drifted away from our quadrat within the seagrass, and it took about 20 minutes of frantic searching before we found it again. The other issue happened during the urchin hunting because somehow I got four urchins stuck in my hair really badly. For a good while I thought we were going to have to cut them out but eventually they let go.

Adrienne pulling the urchins out of my hair.

Since we were doing the work with the quadrats today, I had less time to find green algae. I did see more Acetabularia calyculus and Rhipocephalus phoenix again. I also saw what I think was Caulerpa cepressoidea and maybe some Chaetomorpha.

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A DEER

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Today was a great way to end our time in Belize and Las Cuevas! I woke up early and took a very cold shower and did some birding. There were several scarlet macaws very close to the station, and seeing them through Scott’s scope was surreal.
We spent the day out on the trails picking up the camera traps, but I wasn’t really paying attention to epiphytes. Whoops. We sped through the first trail; we did it in almost half the time it took us to set them out! The two big hills were not any easier to climb.
We got back to the station early, so we did lecture before lunch. I’m relieved to be done presenting!
After lunch, we went back out to the Monkey Tail Trail to pick up the last of the camera traps. We got lost again at the 3 km spot, like we did setting them out. I don’t know what it is about that spot, but it is disorienting! That trail took us almost 5 1/2 hours.
Sacrificing Scott to the Mayan Spirits Before We Ventured into the Woods
We got back to the station in perfect time for dinner, and after we ate, we got to look at all the photos from the traps. We caught some really great stuff on camera, including a Great Curassow, five Paca (big rats), a group of Peccaries, a DEER!!, and two ocelots! It was very exciting to see the pictures appear on the screen as they loaded.

Ocelot Captured by our Camera Traps!
We’re going to have a relaxing night here because we’re leaving early in the morning. I’m sad to leave Belize, but lucky for you, I still have two more blogs to write 🙂 I’ve learned soooo much on this trip, but somethings will never change: I still need to pack.
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Master Spelunkers Return to the Caves

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Today was super cool! In the morning morning we collected our pit falls from the forest and analyzed all the arthropods we collected. We got a lot more than I expected! Our results were complicated and inconclusive for the most part, so I’m not going to discuss them here.
After lunch, we walked down the the cave! This is the cave that all our water at the station comes from (maybe that’s why it’s so cold), and it is the cave that Las Cuevas is named after. It was amazing!!

Entrance to the Las Cuevas Cave from the Inside
The archaeologists are coming next week to work on excavation, so most of the cave is closed. We got to see more than expected though! We walked through the huge first chamber and then squeezed through a restriction point into the large second chamber. In there, we did two of our lectures for the day! That was a really cool experience, and we’re the first 319 class to present inside the cave.
After the cave, we listened to another lecture back at the station before we went out for our night hike. We hiked to the bird tower, which is a slightly sketchy observation tower on top of a large hill. It swayed a little bit in the wind, but the view was stunning. There, we listened to our fourth and final lecture of the day. Before we left, we took some cute photos by the tower! No new epiphytes here though.
Slightly Sketchy Bird Tower
We came back to the station and ate a late dinner. After dinner, several of us played cards. We went out to look at the stars, and it was one of the most beautiful views ever. I’ve never seen that many stars!
While we were out there, some howler monkeys started grunting and growling. At first we thought it was Scott snoring, but it got very loud very suddenly. That spooked us, so we ran back to our rooms and locked the doors. Now it’s bed time!
Tomorrow is our last day in the Chiquibul 🙁 We’ll be picking up the camera traps, so it’ll be lots of walking. I’ll let you know how it goes!
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Urine and Fungus

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Day 12 was great! We got to sleep in a little (6:30 haha). During breakfast, Scott handed each of us two 50 mL vials and said “go to the bathroom and fill these halfway up”. That was very awkward at first, but we needed the nitrogen to run today’s experiment.
We went off into the trails and left our vials along with two water vials in the trees and on the ground to test if arthropods (insects/spiders/etc) prefer 1) nitrogen or water and 2) the trees or the ground. We’ll collect and analyze that data tomorrow.
In the afternoon, Scott took us out to dig into several leaf cutter ant colonies. We were looking at the colony structure at various ages of maturation. It was pretty cool! We were very grateful for our rubber boots.
Fungus Farm from a Leafcutter Ant Colony
As wonderful as skipping lecture was last night, today we had to make them up, so we had seven lectures to listen to! It was a lot, but they were all very interesting.
After lecture, a few of us put our boots back on and went searching for tarantulas! We found a few small ones on our own (and a very surprising bird!). On our way back to the station, we ran into the arachnid specialist who is staying here as well, and she helped us find many more tarantulas, including two very large ones! She even let us “help” her look for jumping spider samples.
Today’s last treat appeared as we were heading back to our rooms for bed. I looked down and spotted a Black Orchid! Otherwise known as Prosthechea cochleata, it is the national flower of Belize! I was very eager to see one, and Adrienne told us to report back if we see one. Hopefully she continues to read the blogs!
Prosthechea cochleata
The lights just turned out for the night, signaling that it is time for me to go to sleep. Tomorrow we are picking up our urine experiment and hopefully hiking to see the cave entrance. Our time in Belize needs to slow down!