Conga Ants

 Today was a good day. We had decided that we were going to do lots of short bits of trails in a medium loop. We got all ready and went into the field. Along the way we were going to start checking the plants off the list that I created yesterday. Our first plant was 53 meters down the trail. Once there we decided to look at some of the Inga around there. That eventually lead to us finding our way towards a large gap.  On the way I saw an ant that had died from fungus. It was way tiny and picturesque. Shortly after that while looking at an Inga I noticed a Conga Ant on a plant. I can't remember if I have told you, but the Conga Ants are thought to be the scariest things in the forest. They actually do cause some researchers to run in fear away from an area. They are known to have the worst bite and sting of any ant, resulting in a fever with flu-like symptoms from it that can last for days. We decided for our safety we need to catch the conga in one of our herbivore cups so we did not disturb it. Tom was the one to catch it and I was the one to watch/ hold it in the cup. Once we were done with the area we did release the Conga. I then saw a number of fun caterpillars. Some were in cool circle formation with squiggle damage design under them. Another looked like it was saddled for a very small rider. After that I saw a spider with horns that I have been told hurts a lot if the horns poke you. About this time is when we realized it was getting close to lunch and we also realized that we could see the station. It turns out that the gap we thought was farther away from the station, is actually about only 30 meters away or about 60 feet. This realization made us laugh. We usually spend until about 1:00 looking for herbivores then head back to the station if we have reached 20 herbivores. Well when we realized how close we were to the station we all wanted to know how many herbivores we had gotten. T guessed 18, M guessed 21, and Z guessed 17. We all thought we had a lot but we were all happily shocked when I counted 27. So with 27 herbivores we decided to go back to the lab early to make sure we finished before dinner, and to enjoy lunch on the lab balcony. It was a great lunch without any bugs flying into our sandwiches or eating us.  Work in the lab went well. We were able to finish about fifteen minutes before dinner.

Spider with the horns.