Hey yall, Sadhana here! Today marks a long transition day into activity in Belize. We started off meeting at 6 am on Rice campus. Realizing I wouldn’t wake up in time, I ended up pulling an all-nighter, which definitely made lugging my suitcases from my apartment to campus all the more exhausting. We packed in a sleeping bag and I got this really cute Nixon camera as well! We then headed to IAH, took a minute to check in our luggage, and completed the classic Customs and Immigrations rundowns. And lo and behold, we were in Belize!
Unfortunately, there was not a lot of fungi out and about. However, I did spot some lichen on trees when we arrived at the Crystal Paradise Ecolodge around 5:30 pm! These were light green in color and appeared somewhat leaflike, which made me think it could be one of the classic Powdery Medallion species. This was really cool because the species were growing on the bark of some other trees, and definitely could have been attributed to being moss or something else. It does take close observation to see the growth patterns though, which makes it even more worthwhile. The Powdery Medallion belongs to the Dirinaria genus, and Belize is known for having the applanata and picta species within this group, oftentimes coalescing to take on a given bark. The mint-green to grey color appeared to be more consistent with the applanata. But it could have been both lichen—only DNA testing could tell.
We also saw a lot of leafcutter ants in the Ecolodge, scurrying in neat, orderly lines to drop their prized leaf possessions around 6:30 pm, when taking a walk to the nearby river. Leafcutter ants cultivate fungal gardens as a method of digesting the plant material in the leaves. These complex gardens require a lot of symbiosis between the ants and fungi, with specific ants corresponding to specific fungi in this process. While I couldn’t identify the ants due to how quickly they moved, I will hopefully get better at that, potentially pinpointing the associated species from there.
Overall, today’s trip was really worthwhile! It was a super hectic day, and though there wasn’t much of my taxon around, we spotted a nest of these fine, white eggs, enshrined in feathers by a nearby river. We also saw two iguanas! They really camouflaged well into the trees until all of a sudden they would jump into the river and you would hear a large plop! Were they scared of us? Did they just want to cool down (I know I certainly did)? But better luck tomorrow, I’ll be on the hunt!
P.S. some other cool things we saw!
