I am surprised that I have never seen a firefly before. The fake green light in the TV is nothing like the shimmering calls of the fireflies. Their segmented orange bottoms flashed in the dead dark trail of the night rainforest. The fragile light of the firefly was a tear of the nature that cannot be shed in urbanized roads.
Today we went up to set up camera traps to capture the species composition and richness in human-influenced and natural trails. Man it was a long hike but I got to find two more ant species. First I found Camponatus ant commonly called the “golden butt ant.” They were huge, almost ~2cm and had hairy gold butt (abdomen). They were found in the trail up the 50 hectare ecological experiment site, walking along a dried vine.
Another one I found was Pseudomyrmex gracilis which has symbiosis with acacia tree. It was pretty smaller than what I expected but could clearly see the wasp-like long eyes which is not common in ants whose eyes are mostly small. I caught them but dared not to touch them because they are known to have nasty stings. They were found in the western part of the site.
In the afternoon to evening, we hiked the monkey tail trail to set up more cameras. There I saw some more Leaf-cutter ant colonies and trails. Interestingly, one of the colonies had different species in it. Scott told me that the mound itself is Leaf-cutter’s. I am not sure what happened. Maybe the colony was abandoned and new ant species occupied it. On the way back, night came and Leaf-cutter ants were very active that the once empty trails were bustling highways. Maybe they are more active at night.
