I had so much fun today setting up pitfall traps and visiting the caves that give Las Cuevas its name.

In the morning we learned about nitrogen limitation in the canopy, and how most decaying matter falls to the forest floor. This lead us to hypothesize the animals in the canopy would be more attracted to a nitrogen source than animals on the forest floor. We used our own urine as the nitrogen bait for arthropods in the canopy and on the forest floor in our pitfall traps.

Later in the day we visited Las Cuevas (the actual caves), which was an amazing experience. I got to see some Mayan pottery, a peccary skeleton, and a long bone of a human skeleton.

In the caves I got covered in bat guano and actually saw the bats it came from. They may or may not have been vampire bats, but that was not confirmed. We definitely saw some species of leaf nose bat.

Arachnids were very exciting in the cave. I got to see the whip scorpion today, which is my new favorite species. I will have pictures to come of that. We saw the large darker colored whip scorpions and also the very light colored (white) tiny whip scorpions. I also got to see a cave spider.

After our hike Pedro (who works at the camp) found a very tiny tarantula on his shoulder. He says he thinks its a cave species because he’s never seen it before. I took detailed pictures of its eyes, back, and legs. Sophia and I are gonna call it the Little Boots Scorpion (Sophia claricus) if it is a new species.

We heard a fabulous talk by Boris Arevalo (the head biologist at FCD, which manages the Chiquibul). He talked about the limitations of conservation and the opportunities the Chiquibul presents.