This was the first day in Belize! We landed around 11:30 and, after about an hour going through customs and getting our bags, were on our way.  Even after our flight, most of our day today was travel, but that didn’t stop us from seeing some of Belize’s awesome biodiversity. It was especially good for me because my rainforest taxon was trees, which were plentiful and immediately visible outside the car window once we landed. It was immediately so green, even right outside of the airport. After we stopped for lunch, I was able to get my taxon ID sheet and better identify the species I was seeing outside the window of the van. We ended our day at the Crystal Paradise Ecolodge, where I was able to spend some time attempting to identify the species we saw.

Two particular families of trees stood out to me and were extremely common. One of them was palm trees—there were many more than I was expecting to see. I talked with Dr. Solomon about why that might be, and he noted that it might be due to the fact that palms are able to colonize disturbed areas, so they might live in regions closer to towns and cities. When I was doing my research, I focused more on the types of families you would expect to see in the rainforest, so  while we’re near towns it makes sense that we would see different types of trees. Unfortunately, they were not highlighted in my taxon briefing presentation. There will be opportunities to see the species I highlighted in the coming days, though.

Some final interesting things I noted on our ride were several different types of tree management regimes. These included measures to protect trees from pests, like painting the bases white, as well as some tree farms or commercial tree-growing operations. Overall, I was able to make some solid initial observations of trees. I expect these will be slightly different from the trees I’ll see outside Las Cuevas Research Station in the coming week, and I’m excited to see what’s in store!