Hello everyone!

My name is Maggy, and I am a rising senior at Rice!

Coming into this trip I am so excited to get to learn even more about Belize’s biodiversity. I learned about this class my freshman year, yet due to Covid-19 I thought I wouldn’t be able to participate during my time at Rice, yet thankfully I was wrong! Going to a whole new country and getting to learn about its great biodiversity seems like a dream come true.

One of my goals of this trip is to become much more acquainted with both of my taxon groups: piscivorous fish and bees! Both of these groups have so many amazing organisms, I hope our group gets to see at least some of them up close.

I can imagine that this trip, in addition to being fun, will also be challenging at times, yet I’m looking forward to working with my classmates to overcome these challenges, just like researchers do out in the field! One personal challenge that I am a bit nervous about is swimming. I have never been a very fast swimmer, yet I hope that a few days in the water will help me improve my speed! Another personal challenge is working out in the field and putting to use my research skills. To me this is a challenge because most of my research has been lab-based, with me spending lots of time working with my laptop or at the bench. I believe that with just a bit of practice I’ll be able to quickly adjust! I think some of the classes I’ve taken at Rice will definitely help, for example I took a Conservation biology lab in which we worked with transects to estimate the biodiversity of the Harris Gully Natural Area at Rice. Another class I think can come in handy is a Plant Diversity course I took; since this course took place a few semesters ago I am not too sure how much I remember, yet I think seeing things first hand will help jog my memory. 

Regardless of the challenges all of us will probably encounter, as a group or as individuals, I am sure that this trip will be a success and that we will all learn a lot more about the great biodiversity of Belize!