Tag Archives: Bay Cedar

2019

Day 4: Getting Our Rainforest Legs

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Scott said that after a few days of hiking in the rainforest, we would start to feel more energetic and less exhausted. This despite our full days. I think a few of us are starting to feel this. Today started with more bird watching, for everyone else. I slept through bird watching and went to breakfast at 7 instead. Right after breakfast and until lunch we set up an experiment to determine nitrogen limitation on the forest floor versus in the canopy by using human urine. Where did we get human urine? Guess.

We set up vials of urine and water along a straight trail every 200m. We also saw a cave full of what might have been Leaf-Nosed Bats, another Cedar tree (Cedrela odorata), and a Bay Cedar (Guazuma ulmifolia). Liz still has yet to catch a Blue Morpho butterfly, but we can identify them well from a distance. They are an iconic rainforest animal.

The bark of the Spanish Cedar (Cedrela Odorata)

In the afternoon we went to a cave and held the day’s lectures in it. The cave was home to an ancient Maya religious site, and walls and platforms built by the Maya for ceremonies are still standing today. On some platforms Mayan pottery remains. We also saw either swallows or some other bird nesting in the entrance. There were cave crickets and a millipede, and many interesting formations, in the cave.

In the evening we went on a short night hike (not too far from the station clearing) looking for night creatures. Much of the fauna of the rainforest is more active at night than during the day. We saw a Central American Tree Snake, lots of colorful beetles, moths, a scorpion, a tailless whip scorpion (not actually a scorpion, though an arachnid), leaf cutter ants, an orb weaver and some crickets. We also saw a Wolf Spider with its abdomen absolutely coated with little baby spiders. This stage does not last long, so we were lucky to see it. What we saw at first was a yellow shine where the eyes of the spider were and what looked like a huge abdomen with green glitter. Those were the eyes of all the baby spiders.

Wolf spider with babies crawling all over its abomen (green glitter = eyes)
2019, Uncategorized

Day 5: A Research Project in a Day

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Rainforest Canopy

Today we spent the whole day on the pitfall trap research project. We had tied some vials of urine and water to trees and buried some in the ground to collect arthropods (briefly, bugs) and compare diversity between the canopy and the ground. We collected the tubes in the morning starting around 7am, finished an inventory by noon, and spent all afternoon until 5pm making a poster and presentation which we then presented to Amanda and Scott. We were all getting pretty tired by the end of the day, and some of us started giggling with I assume relief at the end of the presentation.

We didn’t see any new trees today, but I identified a Bay Cedar (to be fair, it is also marked with a sign along one of the trails) (Guazuma ulmifolia). I found it in a field guide using the fruit. The small, spiky fruits smell like honey and are a source of fodder for grazing animals in the dry season. However, apparently small children tend to eat them, and in large quantities they can lead to constipation, which leads to names probably coined by the parents such as stuck-up-da-butt nut or plugabutt.

We saw some more cedars this morning. They are called Spanish Cedars (Cedrela odorata), but here they are just referred to as cedars. The bark has long vertical ridges and can have darker valleys, an identification similar to that of corals (my reef taxon group!). It is easiest to identify them as large trees, and there are several such along the various trails. We have at least seen them on the “flagpole” trail to the 50-hectare plot and the Maya trail. There is also one in the clearing right in front of the cabin.

This evening we saw a lot of cool stuff. That could describe any day, but today Kaela showed me some nightjars that I identified with the help of a guidebook and Scott’s knowledge of local bird names. Apparently it was a Pauraque, which is pronounced “par-ahq.” I thought it was “pear-uh-quay” or “pear-uh-kay.” I’m learning all sorts of new things on this trip.