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 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.
Day 2 in the rainforest started off early with a lot of sightings during the morning birdwatch. I saw two crimson-collared tanagers, which are black with a red head and rump, as well as a black mask. I also say a blue-gray tanager, which is a bit smaller and flies by sporadically flitting its wings. One bird that I had to research in my field guide to identify was a white-collared seedeater! This bird was small (like the size of a finch), had a black head, light-colored wingbar(s), brown/white patchy body, and a white band laterally around its throat. I spotted it in the grass, which makes sense if it was foraging for seeds. I also saw a pale-billed woodpecker, which is a very large woodpecker with a black body, bright red head, and a white line down both sides of its neck that meets on its back. One bird that I managed to get a photo of was a social flycatcher! It was brown with a yellow breast and belly. Its white head had a black eyeline and crown, and its wings had a light wingbar.
Then, we started another experiment testing the nutrient attraction of arthropods and their abundance on the forest ground versus the forest canopy. We chose methodology to place pitfall traps of both water and a nutrient solution to test our question. The nutrient solution that was the most widely available was our own urine, so we all peed in tubes. We ranked our pee in hydration by comparing color. A huge shoutout to Rusty for having crystal clear pee and being my TFB hydration idol. Then, we put our water and pee tubes on the floor and hung them on trees!
Right by my pitfall tree, we spotted a jumping pit viper! Luckily, Phoenix saw it before anyone got too close, so we were all safe.
We also saw an eyelash viper curled on a nearby log! Rafael, the LCRS station manager, said that he had never seen an eyelash viper in all his 12 years here, so we were super lucky to see one! I didn’t get a photo, but a lot of my classmates did.
We also did a leafcutter ant activity where we dug up their nests. We started with a 1-year-old nest, and we took turns digging with a shovel. We found the fungal gardens, and it looked like spongy, white honeycomb. After some more digging, Scott uncovered the queen! She was huge and was being protected by smaller ants, but she didn’t try to bite anyone. I got to hold her! I feel so lucky to have met the queen.
We moved onto another bigger nest, but there were too many rocks and roots to dig it up. Right when we were about to find another nest, Michael shoveled one last scoop and initiated another lucky find! Sitting in the mound was a Mexican burrowing toad! This toad is black with orange markings and very round in shape. Its head is very small and is basically missing a neck. When Rusty gave his amphibian taxon briefing last night, he said that he really wanted to find one of these toads. So another shoutout to Rusty for his toad-finding dreams coming true, I’m so happy for him!
I gave my topic lecture on neotropical plant-insect interactions, and I think it went really well!
After sunset, we went on a night hike! Before leaving, I spotted a red-rumped tarantula on the deck! It crawled out of a space between some of the wooden planks.
Then on the actual night hike, We had so many amazing sightings! We saw two Morelet’s tree frogs, as well as their eggs. It is extremely rare to spot Morelet’s tree frogs because they are critically endangered, so we were really lucky to see them! Then we spotted small snakes on the tree branches above us. We witnessed one snake eat tree frog eggs!
The theme of today seemed to be pure luck, and I feel so fortunate to have experienced it all. Maybe tomorrow Ava will catch a blue morpho butterfly!
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!
I woke up this morning not to my alarm but to the rumble of howler monkey calls in the forest. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell if they were near Las Cuevas or not as their calls can be heard for miles. We had an absolutely spectacular display before going off to collect the pitfall traps we had set the day before. Two Scarlet Macaws were flying around the clearing, giving us. A good look at their red, yellow, and blue feathers. At one point of the macaws was feeding the other fruits and they even landed on the roof of our cabin!
While collecting the traps I spotted a Morelet’s Tree Frog, a critically endangered species of frog. They have all black eyes and have spectacular orange coloration on the sides of its limbs. Also on the way, we went past the same shaft that had the bats within it. One almost came right up to me. They seemed to be less active as it was around 7:00am and only one bat came up to me. A little fun fact is that bat’s echolocation is so precise that they can tell the shape, trajectory, size, and distance of an object just based off echoes. There are also 46 species of bats in the Chiquibul, 14 of which live in caves.
We then presented our findings of the experiment with a poster that took forever to formulate and make. The day ended with presentations on amphibians, ants, and Communication in the Rainforest.
I rolled out of bed for 5:00am birding + a cup of coffee. Disclaimer: I am not a coffee-drinker, but early mornings have made it a necessity. The low, breath-like calls of the howler monkey were eerie in the pre-dawn darkness.
After breakfast, we hiked along the Maya Trail to pick up the pit fall traps that had been set up yesterday and left out for 24 hours. Along the way, I caught a butterfly with my hands (swallowtail, same coloration as those at Caracol) granted it was dead.
Swallowtail Butterfly (dead)
Some cool things observed on the hike:
– flock of green parrots that made noises like stormtrooper bullets
-toucan
-THE endangered Morelet’s tree frog! It was adorable!
Morelet’s Tree Frog, endangered species!
I managed to catch a good number of bugs in my pit fall traps—1 beetle, 6 ants total. It’s strange to think that these animals drowned to death in my urine.
We ended the day with lectures on ants, amphibians, and visual and auditory communication in rainforest animals.
Later that night, I was in bed when I was called to the restroom. A moth had fallen onto Bella’s head while she was on the toilet. It was rather large with a wingspan of around 13cm and had the coloration of a speckled yellow leaf. I removed the moth from the restroom and let it crawl around my shoulder. Although moth coloration is limited in vibrancy in comparison to butterfly coloration, I still found the yellow moth incredibly stunning. I have named it Sunshine. Sunshine kept falling off my hand and onto the wooden floor. Moths are hilariously clumsy creatures, falling off surfaces and bumping into them constantly. This may be attributed to their thick bodies. I can empathize with them as a fellow less-than-graceful creature.
