Day 3: Collection Day, Butterflies, and Night Hike

This morning we started out with a fantastic breakfast and amazing smoothie drink. After breakfast we went straight to the lab and learned about different types of ants. we got to explore the thousands of chambers that can be made in Atta ant colonies. We learned about two different types of Atta ants, cephalotes and colombica, and a different type called Acromyrmex. Then we went out into the field and dug up our own colonies in groups.

My group, GAJE, was one of the 2 groups to catch a queen ant. She was huge compared to the other ants! While digging up our own colonies we collected the fungi garden, which was where we found the queen. After our break for lunch, we had to meet back up at the main pavilion and hop on the bus to go down to the town. Before getting on the bus to go into the town, Dr. Pinto instructed us to follow him and look at the Acromyrmex nest that was found off the side of the main road at the farm.

After seeing the nest of the other genus of leaf cutter ants that we were researching, everyone hopped onto the bus to the town to visit the Mariposario, the butterfly house. At the house, the women of the town talked about the process of raising caterpillars and letting them fly out of their cocoons in the flight house. the two types of butterflies that the women of the town raised were the owl butterfly and the blue morpho. Next, we went to the market in the town where we could buy candy and drinks.

After that, we went back to the lab and put the fungus gardens into boxes and collected the data from the bacterial abundance to calculate the p-value, which showed how much of the data would have been generated from chance. We then took our dinner break and went back to the cabin to change for our night hike. On the hike, we saw many cool animals such as a lizard and frogs.