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Caves, Culture, and Creatures: A Day of Firsts in Belize

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Today was full of adventure, from swimming into a sacred cave to spotting wildlife under the stars. We left Las Cuevas early and made our way to the Tropical Education Center, but not before stopping at the famous ATM (Actun Tunichil Muknal) cave. Getting inside meant swimming through the entrance and squeezing through narrow rock passages. It was intense but completely worth it—I loved every minute.

Inside the cave, we saw ancient Mayan pottery and even human remains from ritual sacrifices. Standing in the same space where ceremonies happened centuries ago was surreal. I’ve always found the Mayan culture fascinating, but seeing these artifacts up close added a whole new level of respect and wonder. It felt like stepping into history.

After settling in at the Tropical Education Center, we ended our day with a night visit to the Belize Zoo. I’d never been to a zoo at night before, and seeing nocturnal animals active under the moonlight was such a cool experience. We saw tapirs, wild cats, snakes, and more—but the highlight for me, as someone studying birds, was an owl that called out and actually attracted another owl in response. Watching that interaction felt like witnessing a private moment in the bird world.

Between ancient rituals and modern wildlife, today was unforgettable. Whether we were deep underground or walking through the zoo at night, Belize continues to surprise me with its history, biodiversity, and magic.

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Exploring Las Cuevas Cave and the Bird Tower Trail

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Today, our group had the chance to explore Las Cuevas Cave, a fascinating natural site full of surprises. Walking near the edges was a bit nerve-wracking because the ground was slippery, but it was exciting to see the cave’s unique formations. Although the cave itself didn’t have many birds, the surrounding forest was alive with bird songs. It reminded me how important birds are in these ecosystems, even when they aren’t always visible.

During our visit, we collected nitrogen and water samples from both the canopy and the trees below. Birds play a major role in this environment by spreading seeds and nutrients through their droppings. This helps plants grow and supports many other species in the forest. Even if we don’t see them all the time, birds are key players in keeping the ecosystem healthy and balanced.

At about 5pm we faced the Bird Tower Trail, which was by far the toughest hike I’ve ever done. The trail was steep and challenging, pushing me to my limits. But reaching the top was totally worth it because we were rewarded with an incredible sunset and a stunning view of the landscape below. Watching birds fly across the colorful sky as the sun set was a beautiful reminder of their freedom and grace.

One of the most memorable moments of the day was spotting the great potoo perched quietly in the trees. This amazing bird blends perfectly into its surroundings by staying very still, almost like a living branch. It waits patiently at night for insects or small animals to come close so it can catch them. Learning about the potoo’s unique hunting style made me realize just how fascinating and diverse birds really are in this area.

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Day 6: Boiling in Belize

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Hi! Today is day 4/5 in the rainforest! And it was definitely a hot one! Today we got a special tour of the Las Cuevas Cave. We were shown the main chamber and you could see stairs winding down to a cenote built by the Maya. We were told the cave represented the border between the living and dead and was an entrance into the underworld. The cave was probably used for religious rituals the maya did. We were able to see remnants of charcoal and pottery from those rituals.

In the afternoon we collected our pitfall traps and analyzed the amount of species and what species fell into which vials. We found that the difference in the tree in the pee vs water vial was greater than the difference in the ground vials. This signified  greater nitrogen limitation further from the ground.

We then hiked to the bird tower for sunset where we got a great view of the rainforest as the sun was setting. Along our treks we saw a few beetle species including a long horned beetle!

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Fight of the Century

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May 17, 2019

Today’s morning hike to set up urine traps (long story) was interrupted when we came upon a large black beetle with a metallic red outline – the same species from my last post that has yet to be identified. This time, however, it was in the middle of a ferocious battle with a millipede. We cheered and enjoyed the drama for almost ten minutes until the beetle finally gave up his meal. This millipede was determined the survive another day.

After lunch, we visited the cave near the research station. It has an incredibly vast opening and was actually the location of many Mayan religious ceremonies. The different chambers of the cave likely represented the layers of the Mayan underworld. Sources of water can be found in caves, so it makes sense that Chaac, god of rain, was thought to reside in the underworld.

Our day ended with a fascinating night hike – I finally managed to spot a darkling beetle (from the Hegemona genus)! These beetles secrete smelly chemical compounds from their rear end, and I definitely witnessed this today.

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Indie, the cutest tapir

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Daily Blog Entry 8:

We woke up for a 5 o’clock breakfast today to leave Las Cuevas. I was glad to leave the mites, chiggers, and the constant fear of insects falling on me. However, I was sad to leave the place where I got to become more comfortable with insects, my fellow TFBs, and lowering my standards of hygiene. I fell asleep until we stopped by a general store at Santa Elena before we headed to the Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) cave. We got there and left the vans at around 10 o’clock. We swam across a river, walked across another river, and had a 17-ish minute walk to finally reach the cave.

The inside of the cave was incredible. We saw multiple ceramic pieces partially swallowed by the ground, and I couldn’t believe that the artifacts were not harmed by looters or removed by archeologists. The most interesting find were the human sacrifice remains, including the near-intact skeleton at the very end of the cave. The other remain had a very neat skull where I could visibly see the slanted forehead and the remaining tooth.

After we got out of the cave and had lunch, I had a bit of a mishap, but it was all good once I got into the van. We were in the van for about an hour and a half, so I bolted out of the van as soon as we got to the Tropical Educaiton Center (TEC) to go pee. I ran around the TEC trying to figure out where the bathroom is when I saw two different agoutis. That was pretty interesting.

Once we finished eating dinner, we rode on the back of the pickup truck to go to the Belizean zoo. I got a boa constrictor on my neck, and her name is Queen Green. (I am scared of Queen Green) I think the most surprising things were how small Central American jaguars are, how funky the ocelots sound, how strange the gibnut looks, and HOW CUTE TAPIRS ARE. I was ecstatic that I got to pet Indie the Tapir. We could tell that he was very excited by the food we were giving him. I’m just happy that I got to pet them.

Ants. We’re not in Las Cuevas but we’re still not in Glovers, so here’s my taxon mojo:
At the end of the tour of the zoo, we saw a lot of small winged insects on the floor. Scott picked up one of the insects and it was a queen fire ant. The other insects were on their mating swarm as well.

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Day 4: You Belong with TFBs: Taylor Swift’s World Tour Brings Her to the Chiquibul

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After a slightly more restful night, I woke up at about 6:15 AM and got ready for the day. I chilled on the birding deck for a while before eating a little breakfast. The main issue with the morning was that we had to chug a ton of water to get hydrated for peeing in two vials for our leaf litter experiment. It took me an hour and three water bottles, but I eventually did it. We discussed our plans for the leaf litter pea traps and set off down the 50-hectare trail for our experiment.

We set each trap 100 feet apart on the two segments of the 50-hectare plot. Each of us handled our own pee and buried one in the floor and one tied to a tree, with a water trap next to each. On the trail we ran into a red-banded coral snake, a tailless whip scorpion (Taylor Swift Scorpion), and plenty of blue morphos. We spent the entire morning setting the traps and came back for lunch, where we had broth and rice. I’m still having trouble eating but I was able to get a more of this down.

The Infamous Taylor Swift Spider

We left at 1:20 for caving, after many warnings about how gross we were about to get. Pedro lead us through the nine chambers of the cave, which was covered in guano and mud. Inside, we saw many troglobites, bats, a few other smaller species of tailless whip scorpions, Mayan pottery, and tree roots. We came back after exploring the entire cave, we headed back, showered, and went for dinner.

After dinner, we had out lectures on butterflies and moths (Veronica), Orthoptera (Andressa) and Cave biology (Kristen) Afterwards, a lot of us headed down to the dining room to work on our notebooks and blogs before heading back to sleep.

Arachnids seen: tailless whip scorpion on log of the flagpole of 50 hectare plot that we picked up with our notebook; 2 smaller species amblypygids (unknown name) in the cave on a rock close to each other; Baby Florida bark scorpion in the cracks of the deck of Las Cuevas; Mexican Red Rump Tarantula in its burrow outside the dorms; Unknown large brown spider outside our door- Andressa caught it in a jar; Very large Florida bark scorpion inside the middle sink of the bathroom- fled into the sinkhole

All of these were pretty expected, though the scorpions and the tailless whip scorpions did kind of spring up on us.

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Red and Yellow Kill a Fellow

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Daily Blog Entry 4:

We are on a lucky streak with animal sightings. Sam spotted a coral snake, and we all watched it slither in front of us and out of a log. It was very nice to see that the most venomous snake in the Americas is actually a very gentle snake that doesn’t want to bother humans.

Today I learned that soldier ants have the behaviour of just swarming in one direction as a colony looking for food and that they don’t have a formal nest for their colony. That is pretty wild and against my understanding because I’m most familiar with leaf cutter ants who are very organised (task partitioning) and have incredibly complex nest structures.

While walking in the rainforest while securing our nitrogen urine viles, Scott pulled a large plant leaf down to show us something. I initially had no idea what it was, but I saw that it was actually a very loosely constructed ant nest, and the disturbance actually caused the ants in the nest to hurriedly rescue the larvae of their colony- there were a lot of ants carrying white specs heading to the stem of the plant.

The most interesting ant finding of the day was cave ants. I was too busy looking at the bats and admiring the geological structures in the caves for me to even be looking at the ground. I didn’t even know that ants were in caves. When we found the ants in the cave we called Scott over and he excitedly joked “oh new opportunity for a grant” with Pedro, who guided us into the caves. Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of the cave ants, but I did take pictures of my art work we left in the most remote chamber of the cave.

pictured below: TFB handling important limiting nutrients

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Lectures in unconventional places

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DAY 13 – Today we set the bar high for future EBIO 319 classes by having two lectures in the twilight/dark zone of a cave and another at the top of a bird observation tower overlooking the Chiquibul forest.

This morning we collected our pee traps and spent our time until lunch sorting and categorizing by morpho-species the arthropods that had fallen into our pitfall traps. Our data suggests that there is greater nutrient availability on the forest floor and greater arthropod diversity in the canopy. 

Type species for our collected ant, beetle, fly, arachnid, wasp, and cricket specimens

In the early afternoon we were able to explore the cave near the station clearing. You could clearly see the modifications the Maya made to the cave, including alter-like structures covered in plaster and constrictions of openings. We saw a cave cricket, and a helmeted iguana at the entrance to the cave. On our way out, we saw a snake slithering up the wall. I’m becoming a big fan of caves.

In terms of bees, today was a pretty empty day. I checked in on the colony on the corner of the research station, which is some sort of stingless bee. Tomorrow, when we retrieve the camera traps, I’m planning on carrying the filter paper for the entire hike. It’s my last chance to see an orchid bee!

To finish off a good day, we hiked up a steep hill to a bird observation tower. The view was incredible. Therese talked to us about her research and her experiences as a graduate student which was really cool, especially because the sun was setting over the mountains behind her.

The view from the bird observation tower just before sunset

To get back to LCRS, we took a short night hike through the forest. We saw some gnarly bugs, like a huge cockroach with a sticky rear end and a longhorn beetle. We also saw a scorpion that was phosphorescent underneath a purple light.

I’m glad we packed a lot into today, time is running short!

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Cold and Fruity (Day 9)

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Dear Adrienne,

Today we went to Actun Tunichil Muknal archeological reserve. Here we hiked into a cave that was used for Mayan sacrifices and has lots of well-preserved artifacts and human remains. I did not see any Orthoptera.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside of the cave, but here’s a picture of the sign!

To get to where the artifacts and remains were, we had to swim and scramble our way through the cave. The guide said I had to wear the top I had been carrying out of respect to the ancient Mayans, so it was real frigid being in the cave because the rivers were so cold and my clothes were so wet.

Nevertheless, it was crazy to be inside of such a sacred place, especially since we could see the vessels and victims of sacrifices all around us and knew that only the most elite Mayans would ever enter the cave. As neat and memorable as it was, I kind of felt like it was inappropriate for us tourists to be climbing around in there, given the religious significance the cave has.

Maneuvering through the cave was pretty complicated because it involved a lot of climbing up tall structures and fitting our heads through small cracks. At some point when we were climbing, Deepu scraped his leg and bled some. When we were in the cave, our guide taught us about bloodletting, a process in which people would slit themselves with obsidian blades or stingray barbs and offer their own blood to the Gods, so we were joking about how Deepu was partaking in bloodletting. It was really eerie when we emerged from the cave to see that it had just started to pour as if Deepu’s sacrifice to Chaac, the rain God, had worked.

After we left the cave, we drove to Crystal Paradise Resort where we are spending tonight before going on to Las Cuevas. On the way we stopped in the town of San Ignacio. There I bought a bag of grapes and tried a baby banana. Also, I made Therese go ask a man with a produce stand if we could have some of the oranges that had fallen out of his truck. I think he took pity on us because he just gave her two fresh ones. These are some of the advantages of having a TA.

The towel swan at Crystal Paradise: They really treated us well!
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Day 9: Immersion (05/24/2017)

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Today’s primary endeavor was exploring Actun Tunichil Muknal, a cave hidden within the Belize rainforest. With its seemingly endless rock formations, the cave was spectacular. Rocks were rounded and smoothed over from the flow of groundwater, coarse and jagged from sparsely dripping water droplets, or even organic-looking like coral or knotted roots. Spaces ranged from the expansive to the claustrophobic, and colors ranged from sparkling green-brown to beige with patches of jet-black to mahogany swirled with gray to stark white. Paradoxically, these robust colors only existed because of the illumination gleaming our headlamps.

The cave was all encompassing. Once you entered, you were in the cave, and you were not leaving until you completely turn around and head back. We had to swim through pools of groundwater, navigate through jutting rock formations, and climb up several stories-worth of rocks to reach the cave’s heart – an ancient Mayan sacrifice site.

The entire experience was a journey. I left the realm of sunlight for a darker, almost sinister, yet breathtakingly beautiful one.

Immediately upon leaving the cave, rain began to pour down. Logically, it makes sense that it would rain in the rainforest, but a sudden downpour was something I did not expect. My class and I hiked through the rainforest, entirely drenched. Concurrently, trees towered above and filled the horizon. In front of me, behind me, to the sides, above, and below, I was fully immersed in the quintessence of the rainforest.

Rainforest canopy surrounding the ATM Cave

“Immersion makes the trip worth it,” I thought to myself as I was wringing out my soaked clothes in the park bathroom after the torrential hike.

And I was right; looking back on my day, I have gotten to see cohune palms (Attalea cohune) and a trumpet tree (Cecropia obtusifolia). The cohune palms were scattered and were abundant with cohune nuts. The trumpet tree, which I noticed on the horizon, had thin light-colored trunks that led up to thin branches abundant with large, hanging leaves. I also saw multiple species of anura in the rainforest, as well as an unknown species of bat (Order Chiroptera), a massive unknown spider (Order Araneae), and an assortment of human remains (Homo sapiens) within the cave.

Immersing myself has enriched my day, and I am excited to continue to experience this immersion throughout my next week of travel.