After hearing a lovely morning lecture from Michael on the importance of tropical soils and their nutrients, we designed a classic TFB experiment: pee tubes. We wanted to see whether arthropods in the canopy or the forest floor are more attracted to the nitrogen in our urine and what that might say about the scarcity of nutrients in these areas. We all peed in tubes, compared hydration levels for fun, and then set out to lay these pitfall traps in the forest. During this I actually spotted a jumping viper on the trail right before we were about to step on it which was a little terrifying, but it never struck. Someone also spotted the adorable and rare eyelash viper curled up on a tree!
BIOS 319 pee gradient
After that adventure we had our very own leafcutter ant expert Dr. Solomon show us the inner workings of these colonies (including their fungal gardens!), which was so fascinating to see! During our search for a suitable candidate, we found so many arachnids! Dr. Correa found a bunch of tiny scorpions under a damp piece of wood, as well as a dead tarantula. We were also able to spot two golden silk orb weaver spiders in their web which was really cool! But the star of the show was definitely the Mexican burrowing toad we found while digging around! He was just such a fun looking guy he was so gelatinous, had no neck, and the most powerful little back legs. He was fantastic.
Golden orb-weaver spiderQur amphibian expert Rusty holding the beloved toad
Then to top off a fantastic day we had an eventful night hike that definitely broke some TFB records! We took a short journey to a pond nearby and along the way saw TWO Morelet’s Tree Frog (which are a rare endangered species) both of which jumped onto some students and hung out there while we tried to photograph it which was so cool! We had to be very careful not to let it touch us if we had sprayed bug spray because they can take in chemicals through their skin, but they were so friendly! And then we saw the insane, documentary worthy event of a snake winding up a tree and eating sticky tree frog eggs! There were snakes everywhere today. It was so insanely cool! I wonder how many more cool species we can find!
The class was up early to collect the pitfall traps we set yesterday. We felt like real TFBs as we were out there because we went out there without a professor to lead us. We were able to pick up all the traps in about 30 minutes. We went back to the station with our tubes, poured out the contents in a petri dish, and picked out arthropods with forceps. We ended up collected five arthropods from the canopy traps filled with water, seven arthropods from the canopy traps fill with pee, twenty arthropods from the floor traps filled with water, and twenty-six arthropods from the floor traps filled with pee. We were able to conclude that there are more total bugs on the forest floor than the canopy, and we believe this is true because the forest floor is more nutrient rich than the canopy due to falling organic matter. We also saw that, in general, the arthropods preferred the pitfall trap with nutrients; however, the data shows that the arthropods in the forest floor may prefer it more than the ones in the canopy. We believe that maybe arthropods in the canopy have adapted to less available nutrients and thus don’t seek them out much, unlike the ones on the forest floor, but we’re not too sure about that reasoning.
After analyzing our data, Adrienne, Ava, Sophia, Elena, Rusty, Michael, McKenna, and I went out to collect the camera traps we had set up the other day. We went through the trails really fast, sweating through our clothing at some points. Eventually, the rain started, which cooled us down, but we were able to get through the trails that took us the entire day on Friday in only an hour and a half. After collecting the traps, we went back to Las Cuevas where we noticed the incessant sound of Mexican Burrowing Toads coming from Frog Pond. A couple of went out to go look at them, but, unfortunately, they all seemed to be hidden in the thicket that surrounded the pond. However, it was really cool to hear the croaks coming from all directions. Here’s a picture of us there!
The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. However, we did get to see a dog on the road! I finally saw a mammal, you guys. My phone was dying, though, so I couldn’t take a picture. I’m sure you all know what a dog looks like. It was brown and white and the breed of dog was indiscernible.
Hopefully, I’ll get to see some wild mammals soon!
The TFBs wanted to set up an experiment to record and assess if the relative difference and abundance in change in arthropods on the canopy and the forest is influenced by nutrients. Our nutrients were… DUN DUN DUNNNN… our own pee.
Our nutrients 😉
We set up arthropod pitfall traps all along the Mayan Trail of Las Cuevas. We spotted a jumping viper and eyelash viper in the middle of the trail! Both are venomous and the eyelash viper is so elusive that the manager of Las Cuevas who has been here for years hasn’t even seen one!
Eyelash Viper almost perfectly camouflaged
I spotted a zombie moth (moth taken over by fungus) and several beetles. I saw two types of longhorn beetles! You can tell these beetles are long horn beetles because they have long antennas.
After lunch we learned so much about ant hills and excavated a 1 year old leaf cutter ant nest we got to see the queen ant and her wing scars!
Leaf-Cutter Ant HillThe Queen Ant! 🙂
We also got to witness major and soldier ants as they tried to protect the fungus! Their mandible were so sharp that they can slice skin! One grabbed onto my finger nail and I could feel it’s strength.
On our second escalation with a more mature ant hill, Michael plunged the shovel into the mud and found… MEXICAN BURROWING TOAD! (it was unharmed by the shovel of course).
Elena holding my new favorite amphibian- the Mexican Burrowing toad!
It was absolutely adorable and it’s very rare to see them in nature this time of year (they come out later in the wet season)! It had very strong back legs for burrowing and it peed on Elena.
For our night hike, I spotted a tree frog which is hard to see during the day and it jumped onto Rusty’s face- I guess it knows that who studied the amphibian taxa!
Morelet Tree Frog- a critically endangered species
We also got to see a snake eating tree frog eggs!!!
Tree frog eggs- before they are eaten
It’s was absolutely incredible and reminds we that we are watching and learning about how animals behave in the wild and it’s such a different experience than learning in a text book! Loving the TFB life.
Today was really eventful. It started off slow with breakfast and a lecture in the morning, but it quickly picked up. At the end of the lecture, Scott had a discussion with us on nutrient availability in the canopy and the forest floor, and he related it to arthropods. Together, we came up with the question “How does nutrient availability influence arthropod abundance in the canopy and forest floor?” After we came up with this question, Scott told us that the way we’d be using nutrients for our experiment would be by peeing in tubes and using those tubes as traps. This was really surprising to all of us, and we promptly drank as much of our water bottles as we could. After we filled our tubes, we went out to the Mayan Trail to set up these pitfall traps. Basically, we each put one tube of pee flush against the trunk of a tree and another tube of water on the opposite side of the trunk. We also put a tube of pee and a tube of water in the soil at the base of the tree. Arthropods are expected to fall into these tubes.
While we were going through the path to set up these traps, we passed by a tree with scratch marks and an indentation in the ground at the base. We believe it may have been one of the cat species using the tree to sharpen/shorten its claws, but the scratch marks seemed to high and the indentation too big for it to be a margay (Leopardus wiedii) or an ocelot (Leoparduspardalis). However, they were too low and it was too small for it to be a jaguar (Panthera onca) or a puma (Puma concolor). My best guess is that it may have been a juvenile jaguar or puma.
Tree with scrapesIndentation in ground
After a couple of hours, we finished setting up our traps and went back to Las Cuevas for lunch, After lunch, Scott and Adrienne sent us out to look for some leaf cutter ant nests in the clearing that surrounds the station. Elena and I didn’t find any, but we did hear something in the brush that kind of sounded like a monkey. We know that it wasn’t a black howler monkey (Aloutta pigra) because it sounded nothing like a black howler monkey, so we think it may have been a spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi), but we couldn’t see through the brush, so we have no idea. After we heard it, though, someone called out that they had found a leaf cutter ant nest, so we went over there to check it out. Scott told us that it couldn’t be more than a year old, which is exactly what we were looking for. We began to dig right next to it so we could see the fungus garden. After a while of digging, major ants came out to defend their home. Ava and Elena kept trying to pick it up, and eventually they did! I’m proud of them. After a while of digging, we saw the fungus garden, which is gray, and then Scott pulled out the queen, which we each held. After achieving our goal, we went to a new nest that was older. However, after a while of digging, we couldn’t find anything – there weren’t even any ants. Before we gave up, though, we saw a Mexican Burrow Toad! We thought that it would be impossible for us to find this frog, but we all really wanted to because it’s so ugly (but in a cute way). I’m really glad we found it. Anyway, we went to a new leaf cutter nest after we put the toad back. This nest was much larger than the last, and it had soldier ants, which are much larger and bite harder than the major ants. After a while, we were able to get to the fungus garden and Elena and Ava picked up the soldier ants!
Mexican Burrowing Toad
After the leaf cutter ant nests, we had lectures, then we had dinner. After dinner, we went on a night hike! The night hike was crazy. We saw two Morlet’s Tree Frogs, which are endangered, and we say nine snakes. It was really cool seeing all the snakes because we would think that we had found them all and then someone would find a new one. We were fixated on one of the snakes for 20 minutes, which we saw eat some red eyed tree frog eggs, which are also endangered. After we watched the snake eat those eggs, we went back to Las Cuevas, worked on our blogs and field notebooks, and went to sleep.
I’m really hoping I see more mammal-related stuff tomorrow, but I know for sure that I’ll keep you guys updated!
Every day here is one for the books, but today was especially special.
We started the morning with a surprise. We would be performing an experiment to measure the abundance of bugs in the canopy vs the forest floor, as well as how attracted they are to nutrients. We are going to take our data based on how many of the bugs fall into these “pitfall traps,” which is liquid in a vial that the bugs get stuck in. We had a water control vial, and a nutrients vial. But here’s the surprise-guess what we were using for nutrients? Our pee! It was definitely weird, but sometimes that’s what you have to do for science!
don’t look too closely at the vials…
We then headed out to set up the pitfall traps. We each had four vials-two controls (water) and two nutrients (urine). We would put a water and a urine vial on a tree to catch bugs from up there, and then one of each buried up to the brim in the ground to catch the bugs from the forest floor. We spread out our vials, so each tree with a pitfall trap was about ten feet apart. Setting up the traps took up the rest of the morning, so we came back for lunch. Along the way I saw some crickets-there was a small brown cricket with beige legs in the leaf cover of the ground, and a dark brown cricket under a rock. We also saw a small jumping pit viper in the middle of the trail and an eyelash viper coiled on a log! The eyelash vipers are very elusive, so it was exciting to see one.
jumping pit vipereyelash viper
For the afternoon, we were focused on leaf cutter ant nests! We found a young (<1 year old) nest in the clearing by the research station. We dug next to the nest, and we came upon the chamber below the ground that contained the fungus garden! The leaf cutter ants bring the leaves they cut up to the fungus garden to feed, it, and it in return grows nutrient-rich so the ants can feed upon it. Professor Solomon scooped out some of the fungus and found the queen! She was huge-almost the size of my thumb! After we took a look at her, we put her back and sealed the nest.
the queen ant
We then went to look at a bigger nest, to see how it was different. We were digging in one spot, but no ants were coming out. The trip was not fruitless, in fact quite the opposite! We found a Mexican burrowing frog, which is usually hard to come by because they live underground.
Mexican Burrowing Toad!
We then moved on to another nest, which had no frogs, but was teeming with ants. We saw that there were more types of worker ants, and that the fungus garden chamber was bigger. I caught one of the biggest ants-the soldier ant, which is specialized to protect the colony. I wanted to see how strong she was, so I let her bite me, and her long, sharp mandibles drew blood even through a callous! The nest was really cool to look at, but we sealed it up and moved on.
Ava and I with our soldier ants!
We had to do a bunch of presentations before dinner, but afterwards, we went on a night hike! We walked to the Frog Pond, a dried-up pond where we had seen red-eyed tree frog eggs the day before. Tonight, we saw two Morelet’s tree frogs, which are critically endangered! We also saw a ton of northern cat eye snakes, one of which we watched feed upon the tree frog eggs ☹ The rest of the snakes were in the canopy, which brought the day’s snake count up to nine.
top ten pictures taken before disaster (pic cred: Sophia)Morelet’s Tree Frog!
I also saw some cool orthoptera! There was a giant grasshopper atop a palm frond, with beige and brown coloring. It was really high up, so it was difficult to identify. There was also two different medium sized brown orthopterans-one was sitting atop a leaf, and one was hanging out with the Morelet’s tree frog! The one on the ground sort of looked like the white kneed king cricket, and the other like a brown dead leaf katydid, but it was hard to tell. There were also some tiny crickets, but I didn’t get a good look at any of them.
big grasshopper!possible brown dead leaf katydidpossible white kneed king cricket with the Morelet’s tree frog! a taxa crossover episode if you will
The rain forest has been super cool, and so far I have managed not to get as many bug bites as I did at Glover’s Reef. I will keep you all updated about what we get up to tomorrow!
Today, during the first half of the day, we went out for a second experiment at the rainforest. We were first told that for this experiment we would use pee. Hearing this I began to mentally prepare myself to literally pee in the rainforest, thankfully our instructors had other plans in mind. Their plan was much more simple, it involved us taking a small flask and peeing into it in the restroom, then planting it in the floor of the rainforest, and placing another flask of pee on the trunk of the tree. By doing this we would be able to estimate the biomass of arthropods in the Chiquibul (at least in the trees we sample!) The use of pee would help us see in what region, whether trees or the ground, arthropods sought out nutrient rich material. This time around our trekking was made really interesting by several sightings! We saw two snakes, a jumping pit viper and an eyelash viper. After placing our containers, we went back to LCRS to get lunch, which was delicious!
After lunch we all headed out again, yet this time our aim was very different, we were all seeking leaf-cutter ant hills! We eventually found one that was about a year old. Using a small shovel we reached the inner chamber of the nest where the fungi is harvested. We even found the queen!
Then we went to inspect a much larger ant hill, yet no ants came out, instead we found a Mexican burrowing toad!
We released the toad and continued our search for a hill!
At the first ant hill I saw one of my taxa, a western honey bee. It became attracted to my backpack and begun hovering around it. I’m not completely sure what attracted it, but I have a theory that it was the Gatorade in one of my bottles. I didn’t get a good photo of the honey bee, yet throughout the day I saw a few others that I was able to photograph! For example, here is a bumblebee that I saw!
And here is a photo of a type of stingless bee not found on my taxon sheet!
