This morning started with seeing (and hearing) howler monkeys from the station. It wasn’t the first time we’d heard them but it was the first time I was able to spot them so that was exciting. After breakfast, we were treated to a tour of the cave system right by Las Cuevas by the karst team, a group within FCD who map and manage the cave. It was super cool, both literally and figuratively. We saw Maya artifacts and beautiful cave formations. One thing that made it especially special was that the cave is only open to researchers, and there are active research projects going on, so we had an especially unique opportunity. That also meant that we weren’t allowed to take pictures, so you’ll just have to trust me when I say it was stunning.
The next thing we did was collect the pitfall traps. It went pretty quickly, since we knew exactly where they were and only had to fish them out of the ground and take them down off the trunks. It took us about an hour in total, only fifteen minutes of which was actually taking down the traps. They seemed to have worked pretty well, although for me my ground traps had collected a lot of leaf litter as well. I suppose it’s par for the course in the rainforest.
After lunch, we analyzed number and diversity of different species in the traps to test our initial hypothesis. We ended up having a wide array of different types of insects in our traps—mainly ants, but also crickets, flies, spiders, and more. It took us a while to sort through all the traps, but at the end we found that the differences between the nitrogen traps and the water traps were more stark in the canopy, indicating that nitrogen was more limited their and confirming our initial hypothesis. There were some limitations, of course—the traps weren’t all buried or hung the same, for example—but I would say pretty good for a pilot study!
In the evening, we hiked up to the bird tower to watch the sun set. The bird tower is watchtower built back when the camp was first established which overlooks the rainforest. It’s on a rise, so it has a great view of the surroundings. We saw the vibrant colors of the sunset from the tower and also got to see an unrivaled perspective of the rainforest. It’s the largest intact stretch of rainforest north of the Amazon, and it shows—you truly cannot see any sign of humans except for Las Cuevas. It was an incredible sight. On the hike there , we also saw a breadnut tree, which was exciting for me—that’s one of the interesting edible & medicinal trees that I researched before the trip. We spent a while around the bird tower and then hiked back to Las Cuevas in the dark.
Tomorrow’s the last full day at Las Cuevas! The rainforest portion of the trip is nearly over. I can’t believe how this trip had flown by.
