Hi friends,

It’s the last full day in Las Cuevas! We spent the whole day collecting camera traps at the trails. In the morning we went to the 50 hectare plot where we had 6 camera traps and it took faster than we expected as the off-trail cameras were easy to find as they were straight into the rainforest from the trail.

After lunch, we went into the Monkey Tail Trail to pick up the rest of the camera traps. This first off-trail one turned out to be really difficult to find as we did not have a marker for it in our GPS tracker and it was really deep in the woods. After 50 long arduous minutes we managed to find it and we were all so relieved. The rest of the camera traps took the whole afternoon to find, though we managed to return Las Cuevas before dark. As we were really into finding the camera traps, we did not focus on looking out for animals and so did not find many. Though we saw a bunch of baby grasshoppers on a single plant which was cool:

After dinner, we checked out the images that we collected on the camera traps and it was amazing! We got clear images of two ocelots, several pacas, a red brocket deer, a herd of peccaries, and a great curassow. They were all mainly taken from a particular off-trail spot in Monkey Tail Trail, so I guess now we know where the party’s at. It was cool to observe that the peccaries were in a huge group, while the pacas were in a duo and the other animals were solitary.

So in one day I managed to see so many animals from my taxon ID which was awesome! What a great way to end the final full day here. On to the last day in Belize… feeling nostalgic already.

Till tomorrow,

Damien

Hi friends,

When we got to Las Cuevas, we were told that we won’t be able to do caving as the cave was closed for archaeology excavation. However, of course nothing deters Scott and he was able to arrange for us to visit the caves, albeit only the entrance of it.

We spent the morning collecting our vials that we placed in the forest the previous day. We then analyzed the data and made a poster for it. After lunch, we checked out the Las Cuevas caves. The entrance was beautiful and apparently the cave was used in the past as a sort of temple where Mayans go to undertake a spiritual journey. There were supposedly nine chambers in the cave, each leading to another through a small opening that requires crawling through. As the individual crawl through the opening, they were supposedly bowing in humility to the Mayan gods and I found that the engineering of the hole to achieve this effect was pretty cool.

We explored the caves and entered the first chamber which was completely dark when we turned off our headlamps. We took some time to soak in the atmosphere and it felt weird to be deprived of my most important sensory organ but at the same time it was quite calming too. We then had our daily taxon lectures in the cave chamber which was a fresh change of environment. On our way out, we saw a green snake which was slithering in and out of the holes in the cave and that was interesting too.

In the late afternoon, we went on a hike to the bird tower which wasn’t that long by distance but it was a steep climb. The tower was a sketchy simple tower that looked like construction scaffolding with a wooden platform on top. However on closer inspection, it looked pretty stable on the bottom which gave me a peace of mind. At the top of the tower, the view was spectacular! Pictures below:

We had a lecture by Therese at the top about her graduate research and it was interesting to listen to her stories of being in Gabon and the field work she had done there. The environment was also great for the lecture and the sun was setting as she spoke which hilariously made it look like she talked for a really long time. On the way back to the camp, some of the group saw a Desmarest’s Spiny Pocket Mouse (Heteromys desmarestianus) which escaped before I could take a look at it. That’s all I have for today.

Till tomorrow,

Damien

Hi friends,

Today before breakfast ended, Scott handed us two vials and told us to pee in them. What a great start to the day! It turned out that we will be using the vials as traps and we will be studying the preference for nitrogen and the abundance of organisms on the forest floor and the forest canopy.

We went out to put half of the vials into the ground and another half of them on trees. It went pretty quickly and we didn’t really get to see any organisms around that area because most of the trees had fallen from last year’s hurricane damage and the canopy was sparse.

In the afternoon we spent some time on the lectures before going out to dig for leaf cutter ants’ nests. This is Scott’s specialization so I was really excited to see what’s in store. He first brought us to a small nest that was about a year old. We quickly dug down to its fungal garden which Scott extracted using a teaspoon. The fungal garden looked unlike what I was expecting and it was cool seeing all the larvae being carried around on it as the worker ants try to rescue them as the fungal garden was being carried away.

The second ants’ nest was slightly bigger, about 4-6 years old, and it wasn’t that difficult digging into it either. When we got to the last one however, the first thing that surprised me was the size of it. From Scott’s description, it was about 10-15 years old, seemed to be about the size of 8 parking lot spaces, and it had multiple entrances. We started digging down from near the tree roots, as the nest was sloping from there and it was easier to dig. The soldier ants came out in no time to defend their home and they were significantly larger and greater in numbers than the previous two nests. It was a constant battle trying to excavate the nest and I was glad to have the rubber boots on as I could just shake the ants off as they tried climbing up my boots. I did get bit by an ant on each knee but the pants protected me well. It was a testament to their mouth grip strength that their heads stayed on attached to my pants even after I pulled off the rest of their bodies. Eventually Scott took charge and dug out the rest of the hill, but still did not find the fungal garden. He told us that it was probably because they decided to place their fungal gardens deeper to protect them, having their fungal gardens removed annually by Scott in the past few years.

At night after the presentations, Jordan, Deepu, Ellie and I decided to go tarantula hunting. We managed to find a couple of medium-sized tarantula holes and saw a few tarantulas that quickly disappeared back into their holes. We also found a roosting Common Pauraque through its eyes which reflected in our headlamps. That was pretty cool as it was camouflaged well in the leaf litter that it took us a while to figure out what it was.

After looking around for a while, we decided to go back to our rooms. However, we met Aimee from Loyola University who was just about to go find some spider specimens and asked us if we wanted to help her. Naturally, being the helpful and caring students we are, we volunteered to help. Before we did however, she decided to show us a couple of tarantula holes that she found. THEY WERE HUGE!!! And she showed us a technique to fish out tarantulas which was really awesome. We managed to get out some of them and took close-up photographs of them.

We then went into the forest (at night!!) and looked for a certain species of spiders under palm leaves. I managed to find a couple and I hope that this small contribution will help her out in her research work to document this new species of spiders. I want it to be named after me thank you!

As a side note, I didn’t see any mammals today which was disappointing. Maybe tomorrow!

Till next time,

Damien