January 17, 2011 | Cahuita National Park, Limon Province, Costa Rica
I spotted this wasp nest way up in the canopy. I like how it’s open-ended at the bottom, exposing the comb inside.
It’s amazing to me the variety of forms that tropical wasp nests take. One day I’d like to do a compilation of all the ones I’ve photographed over the years.
5mm | January 17, 2011 | Cahuita National Park, Limon Province, Costa Rica
One of my books (below) has a picture of a very similar looking spider identified as a spiny flag spider, Alpaida cornuta, also from Costa Rica. I wasn’t able to find anything online though using either the common name or the scientific name. The World Spider Catalog doesn’t seem to recognize that name at all, but I saw two species there from Costa Rica, A. bicornuta and A. championi. Perhaps this is one of those.
Here’s a similar looking unidentified Alpaida from Ecuador, so I think the genus is probably correct.
January 17, 2011
Cahuita NP, Limon Province, Costa Rica
I was watching some leafcutter ants and I noticed they disappeared inside the trunk of this tree palm(?). I thought perhaps they were just passing through, but another trail ended on the other side.
In the second photo you can see some leaves being carried along one of those stems. One of the nest entrances is about one third from the left and one third from the bottom.
I thought that leafcutter ants always had underground nests. Perhaps that’s the case here as well, with the majority of the nest still being underground. It’s a swampy area though, and the area behind the tree was submerged. It makes me wonder how leafcutter ants nest in areas that are often inundated with water.
10mm | January 17, 2011 | Cahuita National Park, Limon Province, Costa Rica
Not great shots, but I wanted to post these shots of some trapjaw ants, Odontomachus erythrocephalus. While taking the first photos of my trip, I knelt down on a log on the side of the trail in order to steady my camera. A few seconds later, I was stung by one of these guys on the inside of my knee. Turns out they had a nest in that log, and they weren’t happy about being disturbed. They don’t seem to like to expose themselves though, and I had a hard time trying to photograph them once they painfully made me aware of their presence.
20mm | January 17, 2011 | Cahuita National Park, Limon Province, Costa Rica
I thought the tree frogs shown here were both young Mexican tree frogs, Smilisca baudinii. I asked Brian Kubicki though, and he replied that based on just these images it could be that or possibly Smilisca puma.
15mm
Reference:
[book:0970567804]
12mm | January 17, 2011
Cahuita NP, Limon Province, Costa Rica
These ants, Ectatomma tuberculatum, were easily found on the vegetation shown above. Not sure what the plant is, but it dominated the coastal trail near Puerto Vargas within Cahuita National Park. The white plant parts shown attracted quite a variety of critters. I think the ants above (possibly the same ant) are waiting in ambush. Below, I tried to catch one on the move.
Dorsolateral view
I found an interesting story while reading about this ant. A USDA biologist, O.F. Cook, was convinced this species could help control the impact of boll weevils on cotton production. In the early 1900’s he introduced it to cotton fields In Texas, but it failed to colonize.
2mm | January 17, 2011 | Cahuita National Park, Limon Province, Costa Rica
This is almost but not quite the shot I was going for. When I first saw this little beetle it was oriented toward the freshly eaten patch. With the frass strewn around, you can just imagine it chewing away at the surface in a circular pattern. I wasn’t quite stealthy enough in my approach however, and I spooked it into moving away.
Below is a similar beetle, perhaps a different sex of the same species. Note the difference between the freshly eaten patch above and the older ones below.
Showing older leaf damage
7mm | January 17, 2011 | Cahuita National Park, Limon Province, Costa Rica
If I managed to use this “Key to Cephalotes Species Known from Costa Rica, Based on Minor Workers” correctly, then these images are of Cephalotes basalis.
There were quite a few crawling around on low vegetation.
Dorsal View
One interesting thing about this arboreal genus is that some members (perhaps all) have the ability to glide during free fall. If they fall, they use this ability to attempt to maneuver themselves toward their host tree trunk where they have a much better chance of returning to their nest.
2mm | January 17, 2011 | Cahuita National Park, Limon Province, Costa Rica
These beetles are tiny. Each one is only a few millimeters long.
15mm | January 17, 2011 | Cahuita National Park, Limon Province, Costa Rica
I’m still puzzling over this. Has anyone seen anything like this before? It’s certainly distinctive, but I can’t come up with any theories for what could have done this. It’s on the underside of a live leaf.
Updated: I’m adding a crop from the above photo (from the upper right, rotated a bit).
Crop
Maybe this will help. There’s a tiny tiny critter about one third of the way from the left, near the bottom. I suspect it’s unrelated, but maybe not. I’ve also been thinking that maybe the clumps perpendicular to the main leaf vein might be concealing some sort of hemipteran nymphs. But then what about the oval perimeter? Maybe that serves to discourage predators, like a sort of fence?
