Today was a VERY long day of field work and quite frankly I’m exhausted. In the morning we sampled plants in disturbed and undisturbed areas of the forest and compared the diversity we found there. After making our poster presentations and eating lunch, we went back out to the disturbed habitat to take measurements of the leaf toughness of the trumpet tree leaves that do and do not contain ant colonies to defend them, and in the process I got bit on the hand by a number of ants.

Because these measurements took so long, we went right into hiking uphill to the bird tower to try and catch the sunset, but alas it was a cloudy day. We hiked back after the sun went down and I walked right over a Mexican Jumping Viper before Pierce noticed it (Yes, it’s venomous, but no, I did not get bit). We also saw a cute tree rat, the biggest cockroach in the world (literally, they are one of the largest cockroach species in the world), and a bird with reflective eyes that we all thought was a jaguar until we got closer. And THEN, it was time for all our lectures for the night.

I didn’t see any amphibians today, which I would assume is because we did our field work in the drier sun-exposed disturbed area, so the amphibians were probably deep under the leaf litter to keep from desecrating, if they were there at all. Phew, I’m tired, so that’s all the words you get today.