Hi! Day 3/5 in the jungle! Today we listened to a lot of presentations. One was by the head of FRC where we got to learn more about their mission and role they play in LCRS and the surrounding areas. The other was about the caves here in LCRS and the cultural importance of them.

Then we did a leaf cutter nest extraction. We found  young leaf cutter ant that looked to be about 1.5 years old and had few ants. We got to see the queen on the fungal garden and see how big she was! This nest was young enough that the hive had no army ants yet. We then extracted an older leaf cutter nest that was about 20-25 years old! That one definitely had army ants. We were stomping our boots left and right. This nest had a guest cockroach and was absolutely massive. We dug in through the side to find the fungal garden of that nest as well. That fungal garden was huge with multiple chambers.

We then went on a night hike to finish the day. We put on our head lamps and headed out. Unfortunately we didn’t see much but a few cockroaches, tarantulas and other insects. We did see a lot of beetles though! There was one during dinner and a few during the various hikes throughout the day. The beetles we found were dung beetles and herbivores beetles.