Tag Archives: pitfall trap

Day 6: Boiling in Belize

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!

Rubber boots>hiking boots

Today was mostly one big recon mission to gather all the pitfall traps and camera traps we had set along the trails near Las Cuevas. We left at about 9 to gather all the pitfall traps, which involved cutting the wire we had used to strap the vial on the the tree, somehow unsticking the tubes from the ground, and of course, gathering all the flagging tape. This was a relatively short mission, especially compared to setting them up yesterday.

We got back to the research station, and began to collect our results and analyze our data. We didn’t finish the poster, so I’ll briefly explain what we found. Overall, we saw that there were more arthropods in the ground pitfall traps, and more arthropods in the the pee traps than in the water traps. This suggests that there are more arthropods on the ground than in the canopy, but that they are more attracted to nutrients.

our athropods!

We then left for the camera recon mission, which was also a shorter excursion than the one to set them up. We still have yet to look at the footage from them, but I’d image a lot of it will be pictures of us trying to set up and take down the cameras. Also, I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, but rubber boots are actually great for hiking!

I unfortunately did not see very many orthoptera today. I saw several small crickets, but they were too speedy for me to get a picture. One of them was really tiny, no more than 5 mm long. It was sitting on the dinning table, but it hopped away before I could invite it to stay and eat lunch with me.

I’m not sure how the next few days will look, but I will try to keep everyone updated!

-Elena

cool leaf

Caves and Pitfalls

Life in the canopy is very different from life on the forest floor. There are differences in water, sunlight, vegetation, other organisms, the affects of gravity and access to food and nutrition. Nitrogen is an important nutrient and decomposers on the forest floor are essential parts of the nitrogen cycle. With this in mind we hypothesized that the forest floor would be more nitrogen rich than the canopy. Specifically, that arthropods in the canopy are more nitrogen limited. We tested this using pitfall traps both in the trees and in the ground. We used control traps filled with water and traps full of nitrogen-rich liquid (our own urine). Tomorrow when we collect the traps we expect to find more arthropods in the urine filled traps, and more arthropods in the tree traps than the ground traps.

This afternoon we went spelunking in a cave at Las Cuevas that was used as a ceremonial chamber by the ancient Mayans. The Mayans believed that caves were entrances to the underworld and that at the end of the day the sun turned into a jaguar and entered hell through a cave to battle demons all night until it reached the other side. This cave had nine bottlenecks that represented the nine layers of a hell a Mayan hero fought through in their mythology. We belly-crawled through the mud-guano cave floor to several hard to reach spots. There are many Mayan artifacts in the cave and areas are still being excavated by archaeologists. We found a lot of pottery, but also a human femur and an animal skeleton. Most excitingly, we saw wrinkle-faced bats roosting. Other animal sightings included glow worms and whip scorpions. Of course the formations are almost alive themselves, with huge chambers swallowing you up.

I have been searching for amphibians in damp areas like the cave entrance and inside bromeliads but I haven’t had any luck today. The leaf litter can also shelter cryptic amphibians, like toads, but I haven’t found any so far.

DSCN2573

Sophia Streeter

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