All posts by Sam Forman

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Day 4 (LCRS Day 2): Pee, Cecropia Trees, and even more ants!

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May 19, 2025
Hey hey hey! Today was, like yesterday and the day before, a fantastic day. We worked on two projects today, the first being a pitfall trap experiment to assess nitrogen limitation in arthropods in the canopies versus the forest (underlying assumption: canopies have less nitrogen. Hypothesis: arthropods of the canopies will exhibit more signs of nitrogen limitation (be more attracted to nitrogen-rich fluid (human pee) than arthropods of the forest floor.) In the afternoon, we began an experiment with Cecropia trees. This was exciting for me, because I am the ant man. These trees, like the Bull’s Horn Acacia mentioned earlier this week, are protected by a colony of Azteca family ants living inside them (except Bull’s Horns have Pseudomyrmex ants in them.) The experiment considered whether young Cecropias found other ways to protect themselves from herbivores before they were inhabited by ants, so the experiment didn’t directly involve ants, but that didn’t stop us from studying how the colony moves about the tree.
The first tree we found was inhabited by a whole colony, and it was so cool to see them swarm to protect the tree and to see the tree’s structure to provide a home for them. The second tree we found, after a long search, was much younger and had only one inhabitant: the queen. She was laying larvae, and the tree was not yet colonized, so we sued it for our experiment and called it day there.
However, throughout the day, we saw many cool ants. In the morning, doing the nitrogen-limitation pee experiment (where we peed in tubes to see if arthropods would be more attracted to our nitrogen-rich pee compared to water,) we saw a leafcutter ant colony that must have been 30-40 feet long across the trail. SUPER cool. Right next to the colony (or right above,) there was a Bull’s Horn Acacia Tree coexisting with the Leafcutter colony. We decided to run a fun experiment by putting a leafcutter soldier on the acacia tree to see what would happen. Unfortunately, while attempting to rouse the ants who lived on the tree, the leafcutter soldier fell off so the experiment was cut short. We got to see it run away from one of the Pseudomyrmex guard ants though, which was pretty cool.

In the afternoon, when looking for a cecropia tree, we naturally ran into the cecropia ant inhabitants. Our afternoon experiment will test whether or not young (not colonized by ants) cecropia trees will develop alternate (chemical, physical) defenses to herbivorous predators before they are colonized by ants and benefit from that defense. When we happened upon an adult cecropia tree, we got to see how they swarm out when it falls, and how the tree has evolved a hollow structure inside of it for the ants to live. The structure is an akin to the ants having high-rise apartments, because that tree is tall! Cecropia ants all fall under the Azteca family, and I think we saw Azteca alfari based on the looks. After we saw the big cecropia tree & colony, we set out to find the young uncolonized tree. While we searched, we happened upon two more really cool ant phenomena. The first, we saw a young leafcutter ant colony. We could tell it was young for two reasons: a) the colony entrances were small. there were multiple, indicating an age greater than one year, but still relatively small and therefore young. b) the ants were bicolored (red head and abdomen and a darker thorax.) Dr. Solomon did some inconclusive research as to why leafcutter ants may be discolored, but he discovered that ants were bicolored when the colony was young, which is how I know that colony is young! After the young colony, we saw an ant I hadn’t seen yet or even researched: theCamponotus sericeiventris, or Carpenter ant (but it directly translates to “Golden butt” ant, which is more fitting.) After we saw these two ants, we found the young cecropia tree, which was supposed to be uncolonized, but the one we found had one singular inhabitant: the queen! It was super cool to see her working in the little tree before her colony and her tree grew (her colony and tree did not grow because we cut it down unfortunately.) Overall, it was another fun and interesting day to be the ant man, and I know tomorrow will be even better as we are to spend the afternoon investigating leafcutter ant colonies! What a treat!

Ttylxox,
Sam
Images:
Me with my Pee tubes for the nitrogen limitation experiment:
Huge leafcutter ant colony
Bull’s Horn Acacia directly next to/ on top of huge leafcutter colony
Colonized Cecropia tree filleted open
Bicolored leafcutter ant (Image from https://leafcuttingants.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=531&start=10)
Golden butt carpenter ant (Image taken by Dr. Solomon) (I know it doesn’t look gold, the gold part has mostly fallen off)
Young Cecropia tree filleted open showing only the queen inhabitant
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LCRS Full Day 1 and First Big Project! (And, as always, ants!)

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Day 1 at Las Cuevas (May 18)
Today was another great day here at Las Cuevas! We began our first big project for the class, and the prompt was to use motion-detection cameras in some way. We decided it would be best to use them to assess animal motion on man-made trails (disturbed area) versus undisturbed area. We settled on the research question: How does the presence of man-made trails influence the biodiversity of the vertebrate animals in the immediate vicinity surrounding the LCRS (Las Cuevas Research Station?)
We decided to set up cameras both on trails of all sizes (Small Mayan and Bird Tower Shortcut Trails, Intermediate Monkey Tail Trail, and along the overgrown San Pastore Road and the more maintained main access road) and for each camera set up on a trail, there was one ~50 steps into the woods to monitor undisturbed animal activity. My camera was set up in the woods near the Monkey Tail Trail, at N 16.73019, W 088.98109, in case you were interested.
It wouldn’t be my blog without this next part: the ants of today! The morning was fairly ant-less. There were ants, but I didn’t see anything too noteworthy. The afternoon, though, was quite fun. Early on (first 5 meters of the Bird Tower Shortcut Trail) we saw a leaf cutter ant pathway breaking up leaf litter. I thought it was cool how the leaf litter was broken up in their path, that shows often they walked it & how many there were. After that, we saw a leaf that had been cut up by a leaf cutter ant, which was really cool! Dr. Solomon shared that these ants have zinc-lined (really really hard) mandibles with which they clamp on to the edge of a leaf, vibrate (like a jigsaw,) and rotate their bodies to carve out a semi-circle shaped piece of leaf roughly the size of their bodies. In the image below, the size of the semi-circle gives the size of the ant! After a bit of time, I was bored while people were setting up their cameras, so I went and caught a leaf cutter ant with the pair of forceps (pictured below!) This was the first of what I assume will be many ants caught this week. After that, I found a Pseudomyrmex family ant on a flower. I was initially puzzled because this was a less likely species to see, but when I realized the large silvery eyes, I could tell it was a Pseudomyrmex. If I had to guess specific species, I would guess Pseudomyrmex gracilis. That’s all I got ant-wise for today.
What a great day, and I can’t wait for the adventure tomorrow will bring!
Images:
Defined ant path in leaf litter
Leaf cut up by Leafcutter ants
Me holding the leafcutter ant I grabbed with forceps
Image of Pseudomyrmex ant found on flower. Apologies for poor quality.
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Caracol and LCRS Night 1!

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May 17 – First Full Day, CPE —> LCRS Travel Day, Caracol Visit, and Inaugural Hike
Hello! Today was yet another great day here in Belize. When we woke up, we were met with a lovely breakfast from the Crystal Paradise Ecolodge before we hopped in the van for a ride to the Caracol Maya Ruins. Caracol was one of their larger cities, with a 5 mile radius of the site, 35,000 structures, and an estimated population of 200,000! Visiting the site and seeing the ruins, along with the beautiful Cotton Trees (pictured below with large above-surface root systems called Buttress Roots) was so awesome!
In addition to the ruins of Caracol, we arrived at Las Cuevas Research Station (our home for the next week) and had our inaugural hike! This was a short hike along the Mayan Trail, where there was no shortage of diverse ants! I saw some stray ants on leaves and the ground, but the real excitement came early on: we saw army ants! They were marching along the path, and marching back the other direction with objects they to bring back to their bivouac, a temporary colony home (as opposed to a traditional ant colony) that is in place for only one reproductive cycle. After the cycle, the entire colony will move to a new place with new forage-ables. When we moved on, after a lull in ant-spotting, we came upon a Bull’s Horn Acacia tree. I know what you’re thinking: what does a tree matter to the ant man? Well, this tree has a secret (unless you disturb it, then it is not a secret.) The tree is protected by ants through a symbiotic relationship! The tree provides shelter in its hollow thorns to the colony, while also providing both carbohydrates and protein, making a full meal. The ants never have to leave! Their rent? Protection. If someone even messes with the tree, the ants will attack that individual (person, animal, rock maybe?) So, for just a 30 minute jaunt in the woods, there was a pretty great amount of ant-stuff to see!
Images:
Cotton Tree
Caracol Ruins
Bull’s Horn Acaciaarmy ants,
Maya Trail Sign
Army ants marching
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Day one – Ants, Arkansas, and Awesomeness!

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What a great first day we had! Waking up at 4:30 was rough, but if it meant getting to the beautiful Crystal Paradise Ecolodge and embarking upon these amazing two weeks, it was worth it. We had a great day of travel, beginning dark and early (earlier than bright and early) at ABL, heading to IAH, then Belize City, then the 2-hour ride to the Ecolodge, with stops at Cheers Restaurant for lunch and a supermarket for last-minute supplies before heading off into the tropical rainforest tomorrow (among a swimming stop and ruins of the Mayan city Caracol, one of their largest cities!) The travel day, while exhausting, was great. I was excited to meet/ get to know everyone better, and I can’t wait for these next two EEPS with his group! We also met another class group from a University in Arkansas staying at the Ecolodge, so that was fun to meet and chat with a couple of them.

Ok, Ant-man suit on, I was skeptical of my ability to see ants today. I was wrong entirely! I saw some unidentifieable ones crawling along a pipe at the Cheers Resataurant (where we had lunch on the way to the Ecolodge from the airport.) When I couldn’t pick them out, I was discouraged, but luckily Dr. Solomon brought some tools to make identification easier when we get to Las Cuevas Research Station tomorrow for the week. At the Ecolodge, I was lucky enough to find ants on two occasions, despite being outside for not too long: first, I saw leaf cutter ants transporting their leaf cuttings to their fungal gardens (did not see their garden though 😔) and second, I saw ants making a little highway along the trail from the Ecolodge to the Macal River. I wonder if they trampled down that whole path. Both of these instances are pictured (in not so high quality) and attached below. Here’s to another day of fun, friends, and ants!

Sam Forman

2025

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Off we go!

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Hey hey hey! My name is Sam Forman, and I’m a  rising Junior at Jones College! Some facts about me: I’m from Tampa, FL, I like to swim (good thing we’re spending a week at Glover’s!) and I am an Environmental Science major with a minor in Business!

In November, I heard about this class, applied, and made my friends apply too. In January, we were accepted. In February, we met to assign taxa and topics and introduce the course. In April, we met to look at snakes and check that our equipment worked. And now, in May, we depart for Belize tomorrow!

My expectations for this course, in truth, are limited. I expect to have fun, and beyond that I barely know what to expect. I have experience in the tropics, as I took a vacation to the Galapagos in 7th grade, but I am also fully aware that this will be about 1-5% like that trip. I also have visited the Florida Keys as part of a 6th grade school trip and done some snorkeling and marine biology exploration there, but nothing to the level of what we are going to do in this class. I know I will see things I’ve never seen before and do things I’ve never done before, and I’m excited about that. That’s pretty much all I’m expecting. I’m expecting to be wowed, the mechanism by which this will occur I cannot foresee.

A lot of this course consists of things I have generally heard about. I have heard about tropical rainforests and studied them in class, and I have extensive experience snorkeling around coral reefs. I’m excited to marry the two. The course has us learning in depth about the ecosystem through lectures and primarily through experience. I have not experienced experiential learning to this degree, so I’m quite excited about that. Accomplishments-wise, I see great potential for this course beyond tropical field biology-related educational growth. I am going to live in a rainforest with no AC and many other things I operate daily with. There will not be a Target 10 minutes away if I need anything. These two weeks will be an accomplishment in the sense that I will have lived without these things I “need.” That’s an accomplishment in and of itself. Tropical Field Biology-related foreseen accomplishments include extensive fieldwork, among others. The most fieldwork I’ve done has been in BIOS 213. Time wise, BIOS 213 Labs were probably 5-10% of the time we will spend in the field in Belize. And it will be condensed much more. I’m excited to run field experiments, (as the ant-man I have to look forward to the pee one, right?)

Pee-gets us into the “what I’m nervous about” section of the post… I’m nervous about accomplishing what I described above. It seems like it will probably be fairly difficult. The bathrooms, among other things, will likely not be similar to what I’m used to. I’m also nervous about my 3 presentations, on Ants, Wrasses, and a longer lecture on Wrasses, but that is likely the same as any pre-presentation nerves. I feel well prepared, as all of the prep work for this class has indeed felt like a full time job this past week. Between actual coursework (Taxon ID Cards, slideshows, reading) and the many shopping/ pharmacy trips, the course preparation was quite intense. Even just packing was intense, as I tried my best to finagle everything into the waterproof luggage & water-resistant backpack I have while leaving room for the helmet and sleeping bag. And, in general, I’m just jittery. So, after cautiously but hurriedly packing my bags and setting things out for myself for tomorrow (pictured below,) I’m gonna go to bed and…

…see you tomorrow for the DAY ONE RECAP!!!

<3 Sam