Tag Archives: reptiles

Day 8: Indiana Jones style adventures

Today was an absolutely insane day. It started by leaving Las Cuevas (still sad about that part). We drove for about 2 hours until we got to Actun Tunichil Muknal Cave (or ATM Cave). I had been previously warned that this would be an adventure like no other, but even with all the hype surrounding today, the cave caught me by surprise.

(ATM entrance)

We swam into the cave’s wide open mouth and walked/swam through the cave for about an hour. In the water section of the cave, we saw incredible stalactites and stalagmites, bats roosting together, cave catfish, cave crickets, and cave spiders.

After about an hour of trekking through the watery cave system, we climbed up into a dry chamber. This cave system was used by the Mayas as a sacred ground for praying to gods of rain, corn, and the underworld. This specific cave was used as a location of often human sacrifice during the draught that wiped out their agriculture between 800 and 1000 AD. We saw calcified skeletons, broken and not broken pots and dishes, and fire pits used to light the cavern.

After we trekked back out of the cave and walked back to the van, I saw yet another basilisk lizard!!!!!! It was much larger but the same species as the one I caught yesterday (striped basilisk). I also saw two 7 ish inch long rose bellied lizards on the side of the trail which were incredibly fast after sitting in the sunlight. I did not get a great look at any of these lizards, but they were still cool.

Tonight, we went on a night tour of the Belize Zoo. We saw their rescued jaguars, ocelots, puma, margays, tapirs, paca, and crocodile. The jaguars were majestic so were super cool to watch.

(Jaguar!)

We did have one incident with an iguana however. It was a wild iguana that was resting too close to one of the electric fences, so our guide poked it to make it move. Instead of making it move a little however, this iguana SPRINTED away from us and then SPRINTED back right at us. My life flashed before my eyes. I do not know what this iguana could have done to me, but this iguana was so intense with its run. The iguana ran right into my leg and over my feet as well as right into two of my peers feet.

(demonic iguana)

Today was incredible and I want to do it again as soon as possible. But… TOMORROW IS TIME FOR REEF BIOLOGY! See you then!

Claire C

Day 7: Another Basilisk Lizard !!!

Today was such an exciting day because I found and caught my first basilisk lizard!!! As I mentioned in my previous blog, basilisk lizards are nicknamed the Jesus Christ lizard because they can run on water. I have been wanting to see one all trip (it’s my favorite reptile), and while the one Dr. Solomon caught on day 6 was so cool, I did not get to see it in it thriving outside on its own. This one however I did see, and I caught it! 

(baby striped basilisk)

When I first saw this lizard I thought it was anole because it was about 4 inches long and brown, but I quickly realized it was the wrong shape. It had long hind toes and a crazy long tail compared to its body size. After picking it up and getting a closer look at it, I became confident it was a young basilisk lizard. Despite it having a vastly different coloration and size from the one Dr. Solomon caught and brought us yesterday, I was able to see the morphological similarities. I looked up specific basilisk species and identified it as a striped basilisk lizard. (I named it Tom in honor of Harry Potter if you know you know)

(Me and my lizard)

(Tom)

Today we also analyzed our camera trap footage, and we saw THREE pumas. The pumas (or singular puma since they are territorial) all took the trails as opposed to off the trail where our camera traps were. The excitement in the room when we sifted through the pictures and all of a sudden a puma was on the screen was infectious. 

(Puma!)

My camera trap was off the trail and it took 4 total pictures (the second lowest count of anyone; some ppl had upwards of 100 pics). I assumed it would all be pictures of me putting up and taking down the camera, and three of them were. However, one picture was not! My camera trap got a picture of a tayra! They are medium sized, weasel like mammals.

Overall day 7 was such an exciting day, and while I am so sad to be leaving Las Cuevas tomorrow, I can’t wait to be on the reef shortly!

Claire C

Day 3: Into the thick of it!

Wow. Today really felt like a marathon: an awesome, sweaty, exhausting, educational marathon. Most of the day we spent setting up camera traps. This effort involved countless machete hacks, tons of bug spray, and a lot of good laughs.

On the trails, Scott and Kory turned over a couple of logs which revealed the homes of a couple cockroaches! From my taxon ID card I think they were either Smokybrown cockroaches or Oriental cockroaches, but they ran away quickly so it was a bit difficult to tell.  I can’t believe I’m actually starting to get excited about seeing those little creatures. We also spotted a large cat paw-print on the trail, and decided to get creative by making an even larger footprint of own.

It was really awesome to see all of the micro-habitats on the rainforest floor. It seems like each and every leaf conceals a unique habitat and lifecycle of its own. I also loved noticing all of the twisting and turning vines and plants I had only seen in expensive houses before.

Tonight’s lectures were quite interesting and spotlighted orthoptera, reptiles, and the history of biogegraphic development in Central America. I learned about the jumping mechanisms of grasshoppers (something we get to see in action each day in the field/LCRS), stridulation, and the significance of orthopera in reflecting broader microclimatic conditions. It was also fascinating to hear about all of the unique species of reptiles just in the Belizian rainforest.

Tomorrow will be another big nature day and I am excited to get back out there!

-Emily

Day 2: Life under the sun!

Today we drove for a few hours through a pine ridge ecosystem into the Chiquibil National Forest! We stopped at Caracol, Maya ruins deep in the rainforest 3/4 of the way through our drive where we learned about Maya civilizations. We walked around the large site seeing bases of what used to be homes and temples in a sprawling city from 200-1200 CE/AD. There were huge palm trees with parasitic fig trees suffocating them and some very fragrant wild cilantro plants. I saw a small brown anole on one of the trees in the middle of one of the family housing areas. It was about 6ft up the trunk of the tree.

(Brown anole)

The largest ruin was in a wide expanse of sunny fields. It is the tallest structure in Belize, and we climbed all the way to the top! At the top we could see miles upon miles of mountains. Archaeologists suspect was the home of a local king, and at the top of the ruin was a temple to the sun god. We spent a good amount of time exploring the ruin, and though I was sweating through every layer of clothes, I loved every moment. I also saw a small brown lizard on the outside of the sun temple. Before we left the site, we saw a baby grey fox in the rubble of a partially excavated ruin.

(the view from the top of the tallest ruin)

(Rose bellied lizard)

We continued our day by driving to Las Cuevas Research Station, our home for the next few days. The jungle got consistently denser the further we drove; we even saw a toucan and some howler monkeys on a tree on the side of the road.

At Las Cuevas we took a short walk through the rainforest where I saw a blue tailed skink in the hole of a tree. Now we have started wearing boots anytime we go outside of the research station fields just in case we come across any venomous snakes. Hopefully we see some but not too close.

All in all, today was a super fun day and I successfully ended our sunniest day of the week without a sunburn!

See you later!

Claire C

Day 1: Iguanas are falling from the sky!

It is the first day in Belize! Today we had an easy flight into Belize City, and after about an hour of driving, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant called “Cheers”. It was an outdoor layout with a ton of previous visitors signed shirts that were hung up on the ceiling. I ordered rice and beans (not beans and rice), and while we waited, one of the waitresses told us to check out a pond out behind the place. She said we would be able to see fish and turtles, so we walked over to it. As soon as we rounded the corner of a bushy tree and saw the pond, there were about six large splashes. We were all quite confused until another few happened, and then we realized that iguanas were launching themselves from the trees into the pond! I recognized both black spiny-tailed iguanas and green iguanas, and as we continued to watch them, they kept dramatically splashing into the water below. I also saw a turtle, but it dipped under the water before I could identify it.

We drove for a ways longer and got to our place for the night: The Crystal Paradise Ecolodge. This place is rustic but gorgeous, as it is right in the middle of the forest. There is a chorus of frogs, insects, and birds coming from all around. We walked down to the nearby river and saw a hummingbird and a large, brown butterfly which were very cool too.

I am excited for where tomorrow will take us and should get to bed soon, as we have another early wakeup. Next update is about Mayan ruins, Las Cuevas Research Station, and more dense rainforest! Talk to you then!

Claire C

Leaving Las Cuevas (Day 12)

Hi all, it’s Faith with Day 12 updates from the 2022 Belize trip…

This morning we woke up and prepared to leave Lac Cuevas. I enjoyed my morning hot-chocolate-coffee, and then joined the group at 8 to collect our pee samples from the forest.

We didn’t see any reptiles on out hike, but we did see lots of fungi from the rains. We did this hike rather speedily, so I don’t have much to report on. Afterwards, we worked on out poster and analyzed our findings. Our data supported our hypothesis by 66%. We did find more arthropods on the forest floor, and more were attracted to the pee samples over all. However, the ratios between pee:water on the floor was actually greater than that of the canopy. Our study had many limitations such as a short data collection time, inability to identify some insects, and having flagging tape on our trees. All of these could have skewed our data.

After we analyzed the data, or group split into two teams. One team went and collected the cameras, while my team stayed and packed up camp. By 3:00, we were all packed and ready to leave Las Cuevas. My team did make a quick run to the frog pond to grab the last camera; however, we didn’t see any fauna on that trip either. I wish I could have gone on the hike to retrieve the cameras, but our teams method was much more efficient

After a 4 hour car ride, we made it to Midas Resort in San Ignacio. We plan on staying here until our flight tomorrow… I’m so sad that tomorrow will be my last Belizean breakfast; I will miss the  fryjacks, eggs, and beans.

Goodbye Belize!

QOTD: “If you really have to, you could pee in a waterbottle. We are all really good at that now.”

Luna the cat at Midas Resort
Our Pee Project Poster

 

What Lies Beyond the Mangroves of Death??? (Day 2)

Hi all, it’s Faith with Day 2 updates from the Belize trip!!!

Today we woke up and hit the ground running. We had delicious banana pancakes that reminded me of the ones I make back home, and then some Black Iguanas, Ctenosaura similis, watched us prep for out first snorkel.

For our first snorkel, we saw lots of patch reefs, soft corals, hard corals, and many reef fish. From this dive, my favorite thing was the Christmas tree worms that we found burrowed in brain coral. We had lots of fun watching them pop in and out of their burrows. Our dive safety expert, Ruth, also let us hold a Queen Conch Snail!!! Some other interesting finds were pufferfish, a corallamorph, a yellow stingray, and lionfish. I was disappointed that I didn’t see my taxa, but that disappointment dissipated when we started our next activity– quadrats.

What is a quadrat you ask? Well, it is a “handy tool you can use for many things.” I’m not actually sure what it does yet, but it is a square PBC pipe tool with a grid-square net inside. And you’ve got to “belieze” the hype that comes with constructing your own quadrat. It truly makes you a marine biologist.

After lunch, we grabbed our clipboards and “willingly”  (100% not persuaded by the kids) voted to go into the M.O.D.  With our clipboards and fins in hand, all 18 of us RAN through seemingly endless mangroves with swarms and swarms and swarms of mosquitos to our watery safehaven. I got lucky and made it through with maybe 10 or so bites, but many have it much, much worse.

But the buggy adventure was worth it. My partner Maegan and I  attempted to complete the scavenger hunt on our clipboards, but we got sidetracked searching for our taxa. Again, I was distraught over the lack of echinoderms until I saw a broken sea biscuit (Genus Clypeasteroida). I knew that if their were empty sea urchin skeletons, then there were live ones somewhere nearby! I ended up seeing two live Sea biscuits, but many more calcite skeletons… (there were rumors of brittle stars and donkey dung sea cucumbers but I didn’t see them). The sea biscuits were not doing too much, they were sitting on their own or under coral.

Then the time came for us to stop swimming around the reef and run through the mangroves (or so we thought). In reality, we ended up snorkeling back to the wet lab. Our dive back featured another stingray, a nurse shark, and fire sponges growing in the seagrass beds. I also found a plastic bottle with a crab inside! (Don’t worry, I recycled the bottle).

No lizards to report today except for a brown anole Anolis sagrei  and of course the previously mentioned iguanas!!! Til’ tomorrow!!!

Quote(s) of the day:

“Vote mangroves and we won’t send the crabs into your rooms tonight”

*Pointing at a dead Sea Biscuit* “It’s a fossilized sea star!!!”

Nurse shark just chillin’
Meeee with a conch!
Maegan and I with our quadrat
Yellow stingray in the seabed
The Sea biscut we saw in the sand!

 

5/21/19 BEST DAY EVER

Hi!

Today was AMAZING. It was basically a reptile-a-palooza, we explored the ATM cave system, and we got to tour the Belize Zoo at night!!!!!

One the road while leaving Las Cuevas we saw a fer-de-lance!!!!! What’s a fer-de-lance? You may know him by one of his many other names: lancehead, terciopelo, X-snake, yellowbeard, tommygoff, or Bothrops asper. He’s known for being large, aggressive, and venomous. Then, on the hike to the cave entrance we saw so many reptiles, like almost as many as we saw this whole past week in the rainforest. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take any pictures because we weren’t allowed to bring cameras into the cave. We saw three small anoles, a Teiid lizard, a helmeted basilisk, and a striped basilisk. Then after exploring the cave we saw two iguanas while we were eating lunch.

Apparently I’m one of those people who is super carsick but then gets excited about seeing an enormous venomous snake and feels better

The ATM Cave (name is in Maya, but it roughly translates to Cave of the Stone Sepulcher) is known as one of the most amazing caves in the world, for good reason. We got into the cave by swimming in the water that was flowing out of it, and we swam in that river for almost the entire time navigating the cave. It was nice and cool and dark. There were lots of rocks to climb over, narrow crevices to pass through, and a few tiny waterfalls we had to slide down (note: some people were more graceful than others at doing these things…and I was not among those some people). I was having an amazing time just being in the river, but we were also right in the middle of a Maya ritual site full of broken pottery and actual human sacrifices. We saw a nearly complete human skeleton (and also some bats).

I was already having an awesome day from the cave, but then we went to the Belize Zoo at night and everything got better. I GOT TO HOLD A BOA CONSTRICTOR. Remember like a week ago back in Houston when I said I wanted Dr. Solomon to let me hold a snake??? Okay it was in a zoo but still. AND I GOT TO PET A TAPIR WHILE FEEDING HIM A BANANA. The best way I could possibly convey how epic this zoo tour was is by saying that we got to see a jaguar that was trained to do somersaults, and yet I decided other aspects of the tour were more exciting and deserved to be written in all caps.

This is Balboa the Boa Constrictor and he is absolutely precious
Welcome to Tapir Town, WHERE WE GET TO BE FRIENDS WITH TAPIRS!

Honestly, BEST. DAY. EVER.

-Kelsey

5/20/19 fANTastic

Hi!

Today was the longest and most tiring day yet…as evidenced by the fact that we all took a nap at 11am. We spent the morning collecting our camera traps from our first day in the rainforest, and it was exhausting. Dr. Solomon told us that it would be easier the second time…but that was false. We did get all the traps though! And we saw Spider Monkeys! And on the way we saw some reptiles! We saw 2 skinks: neither of which I got a particularly good look at. I didn’t see the first one at all but Cassia said it had a blue tail and yellow lateral stripes, so I’m near certain it was a Sumichrast’s Skink (Plestiodon sumichrasti). The second one I did get to see, but as it was running through the grass. Based on its general color I have some ideas, but I’ll have to break out a guide book and take a closer look at the picture Kaela took get a better idea.

No good reptile sightings for me today, but this Spider Monkey was pretty cool

In the afternoon we finished processing the data from the Azteca Ants/Cecropia field project, which was pretty much inconclusive. After that we learned about Leaf-Cutter Ants by excavating their nests. Unfortunately we had to disrupt the nest, destroying their hard-worked architecture and invoking the wrath of enormous soldier ants trying to protect their colony. It was cool to the see the fungus that the ants cultivate inside their nests though.

Today was our last day in the rainforest (yay we survived). I’m not sure how I feel about it yet, and I’m excited to go to the reef. Tomorrow though we’ll be seeing the ATM cave and seeing the Belize Zoo, so not time for the reef quite yet. I’ll certainly miss my reptiles though.

-Kelsey

5/19/19 SNEKS!

Hi!

Today was a long day. We did two research projects, hiked to the Bird Tower, and night hiked (back from the Bird Tower). Most importantly, we saw snakes!

The first research project had to do with the effect that hurricane disturbance has on plant diversity. Hurricanes, which are common in tropical places like Belize, cause treefall and canopy gaps that allow fast-growing/good-dispersing “pioneer species” to grow. We used a method I’ve never done before, the line-intersect transect method, to count individual plants for 22 sample sites across disturbed and undisturbed places along the Bird Tower Shortcut trail, ultimately finding a difference not in diversity but in community composition. The second project has to do with the relationship between Azteca Ants and Cecropia trees, but we haven’t finished that one yet.

It was while sampling the Cecropia trees that we found our first reptiles of the day. Dr. Solomon almost caught a yet-to-be-identified Teiid lizard (I’m pretty sure based on head size/shape) that had a beautiful blue underside. Then we saw a teeny tiny beige snake curled up in the dirt/root tangle of a tree that had been knocked down. Apparently there was also a black snake with yellow stripes earlier on the hike, but I didn’t see it.

Look at this beautiful Teiid Lizard that Dr. Solomon *almost* caught
We almost walked right past this amazing little bean

Late in the day we hiked to a place called the Bird Tower. The hike was pretty long and steep for most of the way, so frankly it wasn’t my favorite. The view from the tower was cool though: high above the canopy you could see mist over the mountains in the distance and the tops of all of the trees mingling together. The walk back from the tower was a night hike, so also steep but now dark and going downhill this time. On the hike back we saw a super small Jumping Viper (Atropoides mexicanus) in the leaf litter that half our group accidentally stepped over without even noticing.

The view just might’ve been worth the excruciating hike up to the Bird Tower
Teeny tiny Jumping Viper (Atropoides mexicanus) that Pierce insists did not want to be his friend, despite my claims otherwise

Get excited! Tomorrow we’re going to collect all of the camera traps from our first day in the rainforest and see what they’ve been capturing while we’ve been adventuring.

-Kelsey

UPDATE: Based on the field guides, we’re pretty sure the Teiid lizard we saw was a Middle American Ameiva (Ameiva festiva), based on general description and known range, and the small balled-up beige snake was a False Lancehead (Xenodon rabdocephalus), based on size and color pattern (5/20/19).