Daily Blog Entry 3: 



I am absolutely exhausted and it feels like I’ve been here for a week but I’ve only been here for 3 days. It’s wild that on the third day we already saw so many cool things: several scarlet macaws, dozens of fish tail palms, a boa constrictor, 7 meter long ant hill, an unknown colourful beetle, and many cool ants.

Today was a great day for TFBs! For the ant department, we saw a lot of acacia ants. The acacia trees were usually immature and had a lot of thorns for the ants, so it was alarming at first to see a lot of ants on a small plant. However, after figuring out that the young plant was actually an acacia, I was pretty excited.

We happened to see an almost 10m long leaf cutter ant nest, and it was incredible. The entire nest looked like a hill, and I would not have guessed that it was an ant nest if it weren’t for Adrienne yelling out “LOOK AT THIS NEST”. This nest was a bit overshadowed by the boa constrictor next to it, but it was still amazing.

On the way back to the research centre, we came across a hollow tree trunk with a swarm of ants. Scott described that the swarm of ants were a part of the mating swarm. I learned that winged ants are called alates and that they were being protected by the worker ants because the alates were preparing for the mating season now that the start of the rainy season is approaching.

Finally, we saw an ant with the cordyceps fungus growing out of it! Incredible! Ever since a EBIO319 alumni told me about seeing an ant with the cordyceps fungus, I was really excited to see one, so I am so glad that Kristen saw it. It was incredible that the mandibles of the ants bit onto the leaf so well that the infected ant was on a slanted plant leaf. The cordyceps fungus was growing straight from the head and it was definitely an interesting find.