After a long day, I'm relaxing in the Volcano cabin with Austin and Christian, listening to the deafening sound of a torrential tropical downpour. We can barely hear each other talk over the noise. Outside, lightning flashes and thunder rolls, but inside we're safe and dry. We've lost power once so far, but it's back now.
Just this morning it was dry and sunny. We started the day by taking an orientation walk of our project site to familiarize ourselves with the layout of the land and the different habitat types we're going to be surveying. The local ant fauna is diverse and fascinating. One of the most interesting species is the leafcutter ant, Atta cephalotes. These ants harvest leaves from trees, but they don't eat them. Instead, they carry them back to their vast underground nests, where they chew and process the leaves, turning them into substrate for intricate fungal gardens. The fungi serve as their only food source. Each colony can use as much vegetation in a single day as a full-grown cow, so they need to collect a lot of leaves. We watched green tendrils snake across the forest floor, the highways of ants each carrying a small piece of leaf overhead. Other genera have been identified as well, such as Ectatomma, Solenopsis, and a beautiful Aphaenogaster species.
We worked on project protocol today, and decided to set up a transect of pitfall traps tomorrow morning to begin our specimen collection. We plan on doing samples of ground-dwelling ants in each of the three forest habitat types (original, natural reforest, and monoculture) to find and compare species diversity and abundance.
But it's late right now, the 5:30 wakeup call is going to come early, and our roof just sprang a leak. It's time to get some sleep: we have a big day ahead of us.
-Sebastian
That sounds so cool Sebastian! Keep up the good work.. you’ll be a professional myrecologist in no time.. actually I’m pretty sure that’s what professional myrecologists do anyway. I’d like a detailed artistic interpretation of these “intricate fungal gardens” upon your return.