Post by jshuey on Aug 22, 2014 5:31:18 GMT -8
I returned about a week ago from 2 weeks in Belize. Conditions were pretty interesting. Much of Central America is experiencing drought this season, and we saw a very dry rainy season in Belize. Numbers of bugs were low but diversity was ok. A big day ment that we collected about 50 specimens per person – pretty paltry. But every day we picked up great species – so that made up for it. Some groups were seemingly missing in action – Papilionidae were especially scarce with Parides being about the only genus we saw regularly. Ithomiidae were also pretty scarce, with only about 6 species seen.
One interesting phenomenon (probably thanks to the drought conditions), was the lack of fermenting fruit in the system. So the bait traps were hot, hot, hot – and we hammered the Charaxinae. We took eight of the nine species of Preponini known from Belize – including a pair of Prepona deiphile “diaziana”. This bug was previously known only from the very highest point in Belize – Doyle’s Delight, which is a very wet rainforest at about 1,100m elevation. We assumed that it was restricted to these high ridges, perhaps limited by metamorphic soils – based on the fact that in decades of work, neither Jan Meerman nor I had ever seen it elsewhere. But we picked up a male at 420m elevation and the female below at 640m both in karst rainforest – which means that it probably occurs across the southern half of the country. You can never really explain what is going on with these insect communities!
We also trapped a lone Agrias aedon in the middle of the most grassy habitat in the country! Baldy Beacon. In this case, it’s also a major hilltop that borders a granite-rainforest basin, and good habitat seems to be less than a two miles away from the spot we bagged the bug. The only Preponini we did not collect was Prepona pylene gnorima, which is a fairly uncommon species in Belize.
My co-worker, Paul Labus, is still sampling Belize – and will return in early September. We have an intern working with him, and hopefully they are having as much success as when I was with them. Right now, he should be camping on the toe of Victoria Peak in the Cockscomb Basin, trying to collect forest habitat at around 700+m elevation.
John
One interesting phenomenon (probably thanks to the drought conditions), was the lack of fermenting fruit in the system. So the bait traps were hot, hot, hot – and we hammered the Charaxinae. We took eight of the nine species of Preponini known from Belize – including a pair of Prepona deiphile “diaziana”. This bug was previously known only from the very highest point in Belize – Doyle’s Delight, which is a very wet rainforest at about 1,100m elevation. We assumed that it was restricted to these high ridges, perhaps limited by metamorphic soils – based on the fact that in decades of work, neither Jan Meerman nor I had ever seen it elsewhere. But we picked up a male at 420m elevation and the female below at 640m both in karst rainforest – which means that it probably occurs across the southern half of the country. You can never really explain what is going on with these insect communities!
We also trapped a lone Agrias aedon in the middle of the most grassy habitat in the country! Baldy Beacon. In this case, it’s also a major hilltop that borders a granite-rainforest basin, and good habitat seems to be less than a two miles away from the spot we bagged the bug. The only Preponini we did not collect was Prepona pylene gnorima, which is a fairly uncommon species in Belize.
My co-worker, Paul Labus, is still sampling Belize – and will return in early September. We have an intern working with him, and hopefully they are having as much success as when I was with them. Right now, he should be camping on the toe of Victoria Peak in the Cockscomb Basin, trying to collect forest habitat at around 700+m elevation.
John