This morning at bird watching we saw a lot of the same birds we’ve been seeing all week. We also finally saw a keel-billed which was beautiful. We saw one chachalaca and heard three in total. They kept calling loudly over and over again and we could hear them all across the Las Cuevas clearing. I also finally got a great picture of one of the scarlet macaws.
We designed an experiment to look into the effects of hurricane-caused tree falls on the diversity of plants in the understory. When we went out to the tree fall gap though, we found that the gap was too thick to do our original plan. We wound up testing the richness (number of species) of the undergrowth near the trail in the gap and in the normal forest. We didn’t find any difference between the richness of the two areas which was surprising because of the clearly observable difference in density of the plants in the two areas. Along the path, we did come across a really cool crowned iguana just chilling on a tree.
We went on a night hike last night. We didn’t go very far, but we saw lots of cool stuff. There were some turtles in a pond, tons of cool spiders and katydids and crickets. We also found a gecko and an anole which were both pretty cool. I kept looking in the trees to maybe see some mammals or birds but there were none. It seems that the only time to see my taxon is in the morning.
(These are the pictures I took on the night hike.)
We left Las Cuevas Research Station right after breakfast, around 6:30. We were all very exhausted, so we pretty much slept until we arrived at ATM Cave (Actun Tunichil Muknal). This means the Site of the Stone Sepulcher. It is a Mayan Archaeological site that you need to swim into, and then wade through differing levels of water. Once you get to the dry part (after a good climb up the rocks), there are several perfectly preserved artifacts, including several types of pottery and even human remains. These human remains were most likely victims of human sacrifice-which, as we were told by our tour guide Edward- were offered to the Mayan Gods as an appeasement so that they would send rain and fertile soil to the earth.
After the ATM cave, we headed towards the Tropical Education Center (TEC) across the Belize Zoo, which we will be staying at tonight. On our way, I saw a mahogany farm, a teakwood farm, and an orange farm. In addition, I was able to see a traveler’s palm for the first time, which I was really excited about. Many Belizeans seem to use coconut palms as a type of fence in front of their homes- about 3-4 palms in a row.
After dinner at the TEC, we went for a night visit at the Belize Zoo. All of the animals at the zoo are rescues- take from illegal pet owners or animals that have been found shot or injured. Additionally, all of the animals are native Belizeans.
There were several jaguars, which the zookeeper fed with raw chicken, a porcupine, an ocelot, peccaries and many caotimundi (relatives of the raccoon). We feed a large rodent called a gibnut (aka the “royal” rat) with unripe bananas. In the wild, they live at the base of the Cahoun palm and eat its nuts. We were able to feed a baird’s Tapir with carrots and they are a lot larger than I expected them to be. We also got to hold a boa constrictor! It was even cooler because we were able to see one in the wild, but this one was obviously a lot friendlier since it is domesticated. Its skin was absolutely beautiful.
A big boi
While this whole experience was amazing on its own, I found it a lot more meaningful because we were able to somewhat see most of these animals in the wild via camera traps. I learned to appreciate that the animals we see in zoos really do have a home in the wild and are able to thrive- once humans disrupt their natural habitats, they are unable to survive and then become dependent on us.
This morning I got up early to bird again and saw a lot of similar birds to the day before. The scarlet macaws are still gorgeous and the Montezuma oropendola call is still really cool. We heard a few toucans but couldn’t see them.
This morning we had to pee into falcon tubes for an experiment. The first time I overfilled it, but then I poured too much out which was pretty tragic. I had to chug a liter and a half of water so that I could fill up the rest of the tube (chug team practice actually comes in handy?!). We placed the tubes along some of the trails along with water tubes to compare how many bugs we catch in a nitrogen-rich environment in the canopy and on the forest floor. Along the way, we saw a coral snake which was really cool and thankfully just slithered away from all of us.
This afternoon we went into the Las Cuevas cave. On the way in we saw a bunch of cave swallows. In the cave, we saw a few different bats and lots of tiny arthropods around the cave. A lot of the arthropods were white as you’d expect in a cave with no light. There were also a few smashed pots and other Mayan artifacts. The mix of biology and archaeology and geology found in these caves is really cool.
After caving, I sat and watched the birds. We saw a big king vulture as well as a bunch of turkey vultures. The social flycatchers were sitting on a rope and flying out to catch bugs and then returning to the branch which is a really cool behavior I read about before coming. Apparently, I didn’t care to actually take a picture of them though.
Veronica, Ceyda, and I walked back to where we found the colorful bugs to return them this evening. The bugs I work with are host specific, so it doesn’t seem impossible that these ones could be too. Sadly I can’t keep them in a jar forever and I definitely can’t take them out of Belize, so instead, we took them home. We did see an amazing sunset which was, as usual here, surprisingly early (6:30).
We went to the supermarket, which was weird. The ability to buy things I needed was a foreign concept after five days in the jungle. The promise of a dry towel, the consumption of packaged snacks—all forgotten from a life past.
Leaving Las Cuevas was a bittersweet experience: on one hand jungles are the best places on earth, on the other I would like to be dry and not surrounded by insects for at least some time. I think I will definitely miss Las Cuevas in the future, but for now the change of scenery is welcome.
After the supermarket stop, we headed to ATM cave and did some more spelunking. I am learning quickly that I absolutely love caves. There were human remains and stalactites and calcified rock, and we spent three hours entirely entertained by the formations of the earth and the artifacts of a fallen civilization. There was also one singular cave cricket, Raphidophoroidea, which was a good find for the Orthoptera crowd. I couldn’t take a picture of it because we weren’t allowed cameras inside the cave.
Afterward, we arrived again in Belize City at around 6, where we are staying at the Tropical Education Center, near the Belize Zoo. After some time to get settled, we headed out to the zoo. It was amazing, and very distinctively un-American. The first thing we did was put a boa constrictor around our necks.
Me as the boa was placed around me. PC: Sam
We were allowed to feed exotic animals and touch them. It was a great experience, especially since I kept imagining how absolutely horrifying it would’ve been to have encountered them alone in the jungle, when no set of electric wires could’ve kept them from us. Civilization is a very different world, indeed.
Today was definitely a day of travel, from Crystal Paradise, to Caracol (a Mayan ruins) and then to Las Cuevas.
On the road we kept seeing animals we weren’t exactly experts on. Our guide described the animals we saw on the road side as we drove through urban and rural Belize: free-range dogs, free-range chickens, horses, dairy and beef cattle. There were trails on the side of the road for horse riders, and also cattle just hanging out. Dogs in Belize are kept as kept as pets, but not usually as indoor pets. Most owners feed their dogs in the day and at night, but either keep them on a leash in the yard or let them freely roam if they’re in a rural area.
At Rio on Pools (which translates to River on Pool) we encountered leeches that none of us expected to. When we found them on our skins and inside our swimwear. If left undisturbed, they would chew an opening into our bloodstream and feed on our blood until they expand and grow circular. Because of the pain-killers they release when they chew into human skin, they can be undetectable to us. Also, amidst natural water slides formed by granite and water,
At Caracol, we walked through the ruins that were the housing, playing grounds, and political meeting places for the Mayans. Before they abandoned this site, a whole kingdom met periodically in a rectangular plaza to hear the announcement of a king. The construction of the plaza reflected this purpose, where a hushed whisper from one of the pyramids can be heard in the plaza hundreds of feet away clearly and loudly.
Now in the abandoned plaza, a species of Stingless bee live in 30+ mounds that are evidence of underground nests and tunnels. These bees do not have a different castes, whereby one’s job may be to reproduce or to collect nectar, and live in small colonies no larger than 10-20.
We started the day early with birding and we saw so many birds. There were plumbeous kites, social flycatchers, Montezuma oropendolas, melodious blackbirds, and Red-lored parrots. This is a picture of the tree most of the birds chill in, or at least the one closest to the station.
We went out hiking before and after lunch to set up camera traps. We put half of them on trails and half of them off trail which was difficult, but also pretty fun. I spent a lot of the hike whistling at the birds. I had a great time imitating the calls often rather poorly and hearing them seem to whistle back even though they were just repeating their call regardless of me. It was amazing to see how quickly the forest became super difficult to get through. Along the way, we saw a bunch of these small red bugs that looked like the bugs I work with in my lab red-shouldered soapberry bugs). They were very small and bright red, but we had no clue what they were because we don’t have any books or someone in charge of knowing stuff about true bugs (Hemipterans – an order of insects).
At one of the camera traps, we saw this huge leaf cutter ant colony. It was maybe 20 feet long. We were busy gawking at it when all of the sudden we realized there was a giant boa constrictor behind us. We stood watching it for a while, it was definitely very uncomfortable.
At the last camera trap before lunch, we found these two big bugs on a leaf. They seem to be true bugs (like what I study in my lab at school) but they were way bigger than any bug I’d seen and super brightly colored. I asked everyone who works here if they knew what it was and they all said no which makes me very excited about how rare they are. Sadly the only insect book we have doesn’t even include the order these bugs are in and without internet, I have no way of finding out more about them. For the time being, I’ll just have to settle for measurements and pictures with Sam’s really nice camera. (I have been unofficially anointed as the Hemipteran taxon expert.)
Tonight we had a lecture from Raphael Montenaro, the head of FCD, the NGO that runs Las Cuevas. He talked to us a bunch about how they protect and monitor the forest. It was crazy how much work his group was doing that normally would be expected of the government. I also gave my lecture on tropical soils tonight which I felt better about than expected.
We got up around 5 this morning to get headed towards Las Cuevas. I was reminded at breakfast that fryjacks (a sort of fried dough thing) are a-mazing. We left Crystal Paradise Ecolodge soon after breakfast to head to Rio-On Pool and then Caracal.
The Rio-On Pools are a series of small pools connected by small waterfalls and rapids. They were beautiful. We easily spent an hour swimming around in the various pools and slipping down the rocks with the water like a slide. It was gorgeous and picturesque and reminded me of that one episode about the chakras from Avatar the Last Airbender.
From there, we headed to Caracal to see some Mayan ruins. We walked through the rainforest to find ourselves in front of the tallest building in Belize, an old Mayan temple. Climbing up the steps was difficult, they were sooo tall! Coming down was a bit scary, but the view was unbelievable. We could see layers of rolling hills and mountains, far more exciting than the endless flatness back home.
Surrounded by the gorgeous Mayan ruins we saw a ton of birds. There was an entire tree full of Montezuma oropendola nests. Their call was so cool, like a mix of musical scales and water falling onto metal. Their nests were also super cool. They weave their nests out of various fibers and wind up with this mesh sack that hangs from the tree they live in
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A ton will nest in the same tree so it’s almost decorated like a Christmas tree with these brown woven nest-bags. There was also a swallowtail kite circling above us, it was especially apparent because of its scissor-shaped tail.
When we got to the research station, we saw so many more birds. There were social flycatchers, black vultures, and turkey vultures flying around. We also saw a few scarlet macaws. We went on a hike when we got here and could hear a ton of birds, but couldn’t see them through all the trees.
We found out that we wouldn’t have any internet while here, so as you may have noticed, these blogs aren’t going up on time. But family and friends (mom) I promise you I’m doing just fine.
Today we did a total of four things, each one more exciting than the last.
In the early morning, we hiked up a very steep hill to the bird tower, a two-story wooden structure that looks out across a huge expanse of raw rainforest. The hike was difficult, but the view absolutely worth it, especially since it was morning and blue mist settled over an endless horizon of canopy. We stayed for a while, then hiked back, stopping at a small cave along the way.
The view from the bird tower. PC: Sam
In the late morning, we set out to collect our camera traps. Though the hike was long and strenuous, I found three hatched light-blue eggs under a tree slightly off-trail, which was new. Orhoptera wise, I didn’t see as much as I usually do, but I did see one very large and bright green grasshoppers at the base of the bird tower. Though I didn’t see its wings, I assumed it to be a red-winged grasshopper from the size.
In the afternoon, we went out to excavate leaf-cutter ant hills, led by Scott. The Mississippi group of college-age kids staying with us at Las Cuevas came with us, too. We all watched Scott as pulled out a queen from the heart of a one-year-old leaf cutter ant nest. It was a large and disturbing version of ant that I wasn’t used to, but the whole excavation process was really interesting. We also excavated a much larger (25 feet or so) ant nest, hit a dump tank, and instead got to touch warm, decomposing fungus. During this hike, I did in fact see an actual red-winged grasshopper very up close, since the guy I was walking with saw it and picked it up. It was huge–likely 10 cm across, and flew away almost as soon as it was picked up so I couldn’t get a picture.
In the evening, we finally checked our camera trap cards. Already on the first camera we found a Baird’s tapir, and then, amazingly, a jaguar. All of us collectively screamed at the sight of the rosette patterning. The unbelievable part came later, however, when we caught yet another jaguar on a separate camera trap. Both were absolutely stunning, and I think I screamed louder on the second than the first. We also found three pumas, an armadillo, a coral snake, curassows, and a variety of other animals we hadn’t seen yet. But the jaguars were really the crown jewel of the whole piece.
We walked 9.49 miles today, the most we have walked in a day thus far. Our morning started off with a very intense hike up to a bird tower, were we got an amazing view of the maya mountains and the chiquibul forest. I noticed a lot of fiddlewood trees had been knocked over, possibly because of the really hard rain yesterday. I was pretty surprised to see this because fiddlewood trees have buttressed roots to help support them and they are supposed to be pretty strong.
Wild Owls spotted from the top of the bird towerNot a fiddlewood tree, but an example of buttress roots
In the afternoon we went to dig up leafcutter ant colonies with another student group from The University of Southern Mississippi. In one young colony, we were able to see a fungi “farm”, which the ants feed the leaves the collect too and raise the fungi as their food. We were also able to take the queen ant out of the colony, who almost looked like a large beetle.
Fungi farm on a spoon. Yum!
In the bigger colony that we saw a few days ago, we dug up a trash or “compost” chamber, where the ants throw away old fungi, general waste and dead ant bodies. In order to provoke the solider ants to come out so that we could see them, we tapped the trunk of a poisonwood tree growing right in the middle of the colony, so that the vibrations would stir the ants up. I noticed that as the tree was being hit, the bark peeled and exposed the blood red, fleshy inner bark underneath, seeping with white poisonwood sap ( see picture). I wonder why the ants decided to build their nest around something so dangerous, not to mention that there were multiple poisonwood trees growing out of the colony.
Bark of the poisonwood tree
FYI if you ever get poisonwood sap on your skin, the cure is the inner bark of the gumbolimbo tree, with is usually located in very close proximity to the poisonwood trees. I have yet to come up with an explanation as to why this is.
The gumbolimbo tree has reddish bark, antidote to poisonwood sap
After dinner, we took a look at the pictures from the camera traps that we set up on our second day here at Las Cuevas, since we will be leaving this beautiful place tomorrow morning. We were all ASTOUNDED to see 2 jaguars, a tapir, 2 pumas, many peccaries (which are like wild hogs but meaner), an armadillo and several other mammals. Rafael the station manager said that there were so many animals around because the breadnut tree is fruiting, which is a very important source of food for many of the herbivorous and omnivorous animals around here.
A jaguar picture from my camera trap :’)
I am going to miss this place and its vast expanses of more than 320 different species of trees that are able to support all the life in the Chiquibul. All I can say is that I really hope that we as scientists and as beings on this earth realize that majesty and worth of this forest and all its organisms, and that we are able to conserve it for generations to come.
Today we got to go and retrieve our pit fall traps from the forest and see how many insects crawled into the vials. The collecting took a short amount of time- it seems as though we have gotten fitter within the past few days and are now able to trek through the forest swiftly with apt agility. I only stopped to catch my breath twice every ten minutes. Progress!
On our way out, I saw a tree I have never seen before called “Jobillo” (Astronium graveolens). I saw several of the growing along side the main road San Pastor. They are frequently used for wood, like mahogany. We found a brown anole on one of them, and I got the chance to catch it.
A lot of my taxa in LCRS were already labelled
Later in the lab, we needed to inspect the contents of our vials and see if our hypotheses were correct. We assigned each group such as ants, spiders, beetles, etc., to one “expert” (i.e one of us students) who would be able to divided them into “species” based on what they looked like. We came up with 52 unique species across all our samples, including many very large beetles about the size of a half dollar coin.
Our morpospecies chart
We took a lovely break from data analyzing and stood in the afternoon rain. It is only that we get rained on in the rainforest at least one time. Right afterwards, I looked into some field book and decided that the spherical shaped fruit that I talked about earlier are breadnuts. They are eaten by many animals, such as the peccary, several different birds and deer.
Inside of the spherical fruit I mentioned are these smaller nuts called breadnuts, loved by both people and animals
In our vials, we found more insects in the ground vials than in the canopy vials. We also found more insects in the *hem* nitrogen source *hem* than in the water source in the canopy vials. In the ground vials however, we found more insects in the ground water than in the This indicates that canopy insects are more limited by resources such as nitrogen that ground insects are. The leaf litter and other decomposing matter on the forest floor probably provide the insects and other living things with a source of nitrogen. Later in the evening, we presented the data from our experiment to a student group from the University of Southern Mississippi.
