Today was our first full day at Las Cuevas and my first day I ever thoroughly ventured into the rainforest. Let me tell you, it was not what I expected. We spent a solid 8-9 hours in the in the Mayan thickets, walking on and off trails to set up camera traps for our tropical field biology project.
In the morning, we travelled on a path called the 50 Hectare Plot- it was really steep with two large hills and really large Mayan structures we had to climb over. On that trail, I saw a black jumping spider (Paraphidippus aurantis) and a small wolf spider (Hogna spp.). Also, we saw a mammal! It was climbing up a tall strangler fig and I pulled my camera out too late to get a good picture of it- it was identified as either a common possum or a type of Mexican porcupine.
Black jumping spider on 50 Hectare Plot Trail
We travelled on the Monkey Tail Trail after lunch, which was mostly flat with a few felled trees we had to climb over. It took us about 5 hours to navigate the trail and come back to the field station. The walk was interesting- we saw a scorpion snake, possible deer bones, and a fer-de-lance! Also, after our last off-trail camera trap setup, we were walking back to trail and did not get lost. I repeat, we did not get lost at 6PM in the Chiquibul Rainforest. We simply took a 40ish minute detour off trail before we thankfully reached trail.
Overall, today was a good experience- there were a lot of smells, sights, and sounds that I have never witnessed before. The forest is an environment I am not used to, so I was on edge the first hour or so. But, it’s actually a pretty serene place to be- once you forget about the venomous snakes, insects, and large cats roaming around.
We left Crystal Paradise Resort today. The moment was sad yet sobering. Nobody wanted to leave that cushy eco-lodge with an attached bathroom and outdoor thatched dining area, but we all knew that it must be done in the name of science. Scott and Turiez took us to a beautiful nature-made water park called Rio-on Pool before lunch. The place was magical- one can have his/her back massaged underneath the 20-foot waterfall and sunbathe in the shallow freshwater pools.
Rio-on Pool
Afterwards, we reached Las Cuevas two hours after we left Rio-on Pool, ate lunch, got briefed by the field manager Pedro, and then set off for our first forested path: the Maya Trail. Forest biodiversity is fascinating- the first forest species I saw was the bird Oropendullum montezuma. It is black with a yellow tail. Taxon-wise, I saw a wolf spider (Hogna spp.) and a green jumping spider (M. penicillatus) on the trail. There were a lot of spider webs attached to tree branches, but none of them had spiders- only food materials like a baby flies.
Green Jumping spider on a leaf
As we were walking through the Maya Trail, Scott paused, shoved his hand into some brush, and just casually pulled out a lizard. All of our jaws hit the forest floor, but little did we know that him pulling random organisms out of the brush would become a common occurrence.
We saw three Mayan structures today: a pyramid, a low wall, and a ball court. The pyramid was 40-50 feet high and really steep, but we still managed to climb it. There was nothing at the top- for some reason I thought there would be a secret tunnel into the pyramid. Oh Deepu, you dreamer you. The low wall structure is suspected to be some sort of pathway to a cave, which Mayans regarded as sacred sites. The ball court was pretty cool- the walls to it rose up about 15-20 feet on two opposite sides and the game played in the court often ended in one team getting sacrificed.
Las Cuevas gives off a feeling of mystique and excitement which I’ve never experienced before. Tomorrow we set camera traps!
Last day! We didn’t really do much other than travelling on the van so there isn’t much to write about. More will come on the final wrap-up post.
In the morning we all woke up early for birding. There wasn’t much activity really which made us feel pretty bummed out. However, after breakfast just when we were about to head out, a flock of scarlet macaws flew over us as if they were bidding us farewell. That was awesome!
We took the van to a souvenir shop and then to a restaurant for lunch. Ordered a steak as I like to try out steaks in different countries to see the difference. This steak had shrimp with some interesting orange sauce on it which was pretty cool. Had a jumbo sized watermelon juice with the steak and it was awesome!
After lunch we went to the airport and checked in. We then took the airplane back to Houston and some people left from the airport while Mikey, Jordan, Tian-Tian and I accompanied Turiez and Scott back to Rice. Got to meet Turiez’s boyfriend Nick which was cool after hearing so much about him over the past two weeks. Didn’t get to see any mammals by the way.
Well that’s it, the end of an amazing two weeks in Belize. I felt like I just stepped out of a dream when I got back to Houston. I’ve learned so so much and would definitely continue pursuing my interest in wildlife and conservation whenever I get the opportunity to do so.
Today was a day of tourism. The destination was the Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) Cave in San Ignacio. Around 8AM, we left the Tropical Education Center for the last time, stopped at Benge’s Cost Less general store to drop off our luggage trailer, and reached the ATM Cave by 9:40AM. Our guide took us on an hour hike through the rainforest towards the cave, which was devastated from a hurricane last year- the guide told us that at least 15-foot water waves ripped through the trail we were hiking on, damaging a lot of the trees there.
The cave is a wet cave; when we reached the cave’s mouth, we swam through refreshingly frigid waters and continued to hike/swim through the wet part of the cave before we scaled a tall rock face on a sketch ladder to the cave’s dry part. On the way to the dry part, the guide pointed out stalactite and stalagmite formations that looked like curtains and dresses- all naturally created by water over millions of years.
The dry part was ridden with ancient Mayan ceramics and 14 human skeletons, of which we saw five. These remains are said to be from Mayan sacrifices done in conjunction with bloodletting ceremonies to appease the rain god Chaac and other deities in times of drought or hardship. Speaking of bloodletting, I scraped my knee on a rock and it was pouring rain once we exited the cave. Coincidence or did I just unintentionally appease the Mayan rain god Chaac with my type A negative blood?
I only saw one unidentified spider today in the cave- it was large, brown, and motionless on a rock. It very much looked like a wolf spider but the legs were more spindly and longer. After the ATM Cave, we drove to San Ignacio downtown and spent time strolling through shops and the fruit market before heading to our eco-lodge for the night, Crystal Paradise Resort. Everything about that resort was rustic and grandeur: thatched roof, huge rooms, and an attached bathroom! I was really excited for that attached bathroom. After dinner, I presented on the geologic and biogeographic history of Belize, strolled around the eco-lodge for a bit, and finally crashed in my bed at 10PM.
Wow! This was an amazing experience! I am so grateful I was fortunate enough to take this class and am so happy I chose to! To anyone considering taking it, do it! I learned more in this class than in a semester-long one because this is experiential learning, which at least for me, helps me learn and enjoy it so much more.
I learned a lot about rainforest and coral reef ecosystems. They are both so diverse and can host such a large range of creatures. Before, I may have only thought about rainforests as trees or coral reefs as hard corals. Now, I think of them as the entire flora and fauna body that thrives from its structures. A lot of their similarities in hosting many trophic webs stems from the fact that they are so diverse. I think it was easier to notice how diverse the coral reefs were because you could see better all the different creatures. The rainforest is more dense and larger animals can hide easier, so it was harder to notice this. Also, both ecosystems are threatened by global warming, pollution, human interactions, or other interferences. This was more noticeable in the coral reefs as well because you could see all the dead corals and compare to the non-protected site, while you could not see that as easily in the rainforest.
This course was so much better than my expectation. I was nervous that I may not fully understand everything since I have not taken any other EBIO courses, but it easily laid out how to conduct field research and taught me so much about the ecosystems in play. My favorite part of the course was the comparison of the marine protected area site and the not marine protected area site because it was interesting to see the differences. I also loved looking for crustaceans and identifying them because they are easier to see up close than birds. OH AND SHARKS. My least favorite part was just how exhausted I was at the end of the day and probably all the bugs, but that is to be expected and is outweighed by all the positives.
The three most important things I learned in this course are how to design my own question and analyze my data, different methods of research (quadrant/transact, camera traps, pitfall traps), and how to make meaningful observations. I’ve taken labs before (biochemistry labs) but this class really helped me design a significant question and learn how to follow through on it all the way to a poster. I also had no idea how to do any EBIO methods until this class and it was an interesting contrast to all my normal lab work. Finally, using my field notebook and taxon cards helped me learn to keep my eyes open and observe what is around me because even small details matter.
The most surprising part of this class for me was how close I became with everyone else on the trip and how much fun we could all have while still learning! TAKE THIS CLASS!!!!
Today was the day I was looking forward to the least out of this whole trip, the day where we set up the camera traps. I had read some of the blogs from last year, and they said they hiked thirteen miles. Luckily, we did not go that far
We decided to use the camera traps to test whether there was differences in the abundances of big cats and of big cats’ prey on the trails versus in the forest. We did this by placing three traps on the 50 Hectare Trail and four on the Monkey Tail Trail. Also, for each camera we placed on the trail, we placed another one 300ft into the forest for a total of fourteen camera traps. Scott Solomon did not tell us until we set the last trap that no group had ever used that many before.
One of the fourteen (!!) camera traps we set.
As we were finding our way out of the forest after setting the very last trap we got a little bit turned around, and dusk was just starting to fall. A large portion of the trek back to Las Cuevas was really dark. We saw a small tommygoff snake in the dark, which was a little spooky because I would have not noticed it had Damien not pointed it out, and it is the most dangerous snake in Belize.
Other things we saw on the hike were a Mexican Porcupine, Scorpion Eater Snake, Blue Morpho Butterflies, a mantis molt, a wheel bug, and a mammal skeleton. We also saw some cat scratch marks near where we set the traps, which seemed like a good sign.
A cool Wheel Bug we saw this morning.
I saw a few Orthoptera species today. One was the same Leaf Mimic Katydid that I’d already seen. The other hopped away too fast for me to identify it.
We are all tired and ridden with ticks from walking through the forest, so these traps best capture some really cool pictures. I want to see a tapir the most. Out of the cats, I’d like to see an ocelot the most, probably.
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:
Grasshopper party!
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.
We’re back on the mainland and I’m not too sure how to feel about it. I was dreading the marine portion of the class the few weeks leading up to the class because I have never swam in the ocean before, much less snorkel in it. The whole environment was new to me, I did not know what to expect, and was not sure of my abilities in the ocean. However, after a week of constantly snorkeling, performing experiments on marine life, and gulping in large amount of seawater, I came to fall in love with the beach life. The refreshing coolness of the Caribbean Ocean and the sense of adventure enticed me like no other. Unfortunately, it was violently ripped away from me just as I overcame my previous self-doubts. Such is life I guess.
As every other day, today was packed- we loaded the boat at Glover’s Reef around 8AM to visit the Smithsonian’s Carrie Bow Island and the mangroves in Twin Caye. Carrie Bow Island, like Glover’s Reef, was a piece of paradise- it was much smaller than Glover’s Reef, but was covered with coconut trees, soft white sand, and had 360° views of sparkling blue water. All in the name of research, of course. A man named Clyde was the field station manager on duty and he gave us a briefing of Carrie Bow’s history while showing us around the station. Excellent bathrooms, I tell you. Excellent.
At 10AM, we left Carrie Bow to go to the mangroves and SAW A MANATEE AT THE MANGROVES!!! Get excited because that is completely ridiculous. Scott and Adrienne said it was the first manatee sighting in this course’s long history. The mangroves were another universe- unlike the ocean, it was calm and serene with magnificent knotted red mangrove roots and turquoise-green water. Oh yeah, the class saw a small yellow seahorse too. Just putting that out there.
We arrived at Belize City around 1PM, ate lunch at a restaurant called Calypso, and reached the Tropical Education Center (the same place we stayed one week ago) at 4PM. Then, Scott took us on a trip down a TEC trail, where I saw an unidentified spider with yellow spots on its abdomen hanging on a web with small fly in mouth (maybe G. cancriformis). I also saw a gray/brown wolf spider (Hogna spp.) hiding in an epiphyte’s leaves. It was about 2 inches long and was not moving at all.
After dinner, we went to the Belize Zoo for a night tour and saw so many animals- coatimundi, an ocelot named Rayburn who made really loud purring noises while eating meat, a jaguar, a puma, and even a Morelet crocodile. Oh, I also fed a Baird’s tapir some carrots. No big deal. All in all, it’s been a pretty noteworthy day. Bye-bye surf and hello turf!
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.
The hole to the next chamber of the Mayan underworld.
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:
Bird’s eye view of Chiquibul.
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.
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.
Fungal garden on a servery spoon.
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.
Turiez chilling on a branch away from the leaf cutter ants.
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.
Fished out this big boy!
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!
