It was great to get a comment from a fellow BFREEphile! It is such an extraordinary place, particularly for field courses. Here is our website: http://www.desu.edu/special/belize/index.php

Having time to do student research projects within a couple of days is challenging, and I have tried several (some detailed in the blog). Finally, we hit on bat activity, which can be monitored with inexpensive bat detectors (at least two so a comparison can be made concurrently between habitats). We don’t really do a nice comparative research project with camera traps, as there just isn’t enough time (or enough cameras!), so we use it as more of a descriptive tool. We have been leaving traps in four locations for four nights, but the best place is the main access road, about 1/2-1 km up from the river, on the side across from the bunkhouses. This is where you see all the animal tracks on the 6-mile hike in! Especially jaguars. We also use 1 G memory cards, because so many other things set off the traps (leaves, wind, people). We have also gotten jaguar photos near First Creek. For some reason, we haven’t gotten any pictures of animals at the lagoon, which I thought would be a hot spot!

We had a colleague along this trip (Jan 2008) that took some water quality samples up and down the Bladen River. I’d be curious to see the comparison with your readings. This project also worked out well as something that a group of students could accomplish in a few days.

Please keep me posted on the success of your camera traps, and good luck!

Kevina

In January of 2007 we also put up a few cameras with hopes of getting images of the jungle fauna. Unfortunately we didn’t get any, in part because the cameras were only up for a couple of nights. When we return in January of 2009 we will put the cameras back up and will share what we find with you.

Farley Brown

Dung beetles eat the dung themselves, actually the bacteria in the dung. It is their main source of food (although some dung beetle species have a more varied menu, including dead animals or rotting fruit in their diet. there are even a few that specialize on weirder things like live millipedes!). Yummy!

Beetles also use the dung to provision their nests, that is, they make brood balls out of the dung, lay eggs in the brood balls, and the larval beetle develops to the pupal and then adult stages completely encased in its own private food source. Most of the time, these nests are underground, which leads to some of the beneficial effects dung beetles provide us with, such as recycling of nutrients, planting occasional seeds, and clearing up the soil surface.

Tell me what is it that dung beetles produce with it?

Rita Leal