Mirador del Cañon Reserve is located in the Cañon de Río Dulce area, administered by FUNDAECO. In it we were able to document many insects, one of our favorites was a very curious wasp hive. Their colors are yellow with black and they belong to the Vespidae family
Within the Vespidae family are grouped the common wasps that are characterized by measuring between 4.5 - 25 mm (adults) and having colorations ranging from yellow to black or dark blue. Both sexes have developed antennae. Their antennae have 12 segments in females and 13 in males. In Guatemala, 90 species have been recorded that inhabit heights between 0 - 4000 meters above sea level. They build their nests with mud or vegetable fibers. (Yoshimoto, Cano and Orellana, 2015).
Taxonomy of Vespidae family.
Vespidae at Reserva Cañon de Rio Dulce, Livingston. September, 2021.Photo by Brandon Hidalgo, FLAAR Mesoamerica.
Class
INSECTA
Order
HYMENOPTERA
Suborder
APOCRITA
Superfamily
VESPOIDEA
Family
VESPIDAE
Order
HYMENOPTERA
Wasps, bees and ants
Suborder
AUSTRALIAN COMPANY
$1.38
AAD
AUSENCO
$2.38
Superfamily
ADELAIDE
$3.22
XXD
ADITYA BIRLA
$1.02
AAC
AUSTRALIAN COMPANY
$1.38
AAD
AUSENCO
$2.38
Written by Vivian Hurtado & Roxana Leal
Identified Species by Victor Mendoza
While we were walking along a path in the San Miguel La Palotada - El Zotz Biotope, we could hear the sound of the cicadas intensely, when we were about to leave in a tree we could observe the small insect on the trunk of a tree.
Cicadas are insects belonging to the superfamily Cicadoidea, they are well known for their shape and colors, you can easily see a skull, a bird and a butterfly, in the area of its head and thorax. They are also famous for being able to remain buried for up to 17 years (depending on the species); but, above all, they are very famous for their strident sounds. And why are Cicadas so noisy? They are able to produce these sounds because they possess the tymbal organ. The sound is produced only by males because is a mating call. According to Bauer, P. (n.d.) “each male cicada has a pair of these circular ridged membranes on the back and side surface of the first abdominal segment. Contraction of a tymbal muscle attached to the membrane causes it to bend, producing a clicking sound. The tymbal springs back when the muscle is relaxed. The frequency of the contractions of the tymbal muscle range from 120 to 480 times a second, which is fast enough to make it sound continuous to the human ear.”
What is most amazing of the noisy calling of Cicadas is that each species has its own distinctive song that only attracts females of its own kind. This allows several different species to coexist (Valdes, n.d.). So the next time you listen to Cicadas, pay attention because you won’t always listen to the same song twice.
Now that we are in Yaxha, Nakum and Naranjo National Park we were able to photograph them in droves. We spent more than ten minutes observing them and finding their best angles. You can find them on the Yaxha road to Nakum and at Grupo Maler, in the Yaxha area. Possibly in more places, you just have to listen and observe the logs.
Chicharra - Order: Hemiptera Family: Cicadidae
Chicharra - Order: Hemiptera - Family: Cicadidae. Grupo Maler, Parque Nacional Yaxha. June 30, 2021. Photography: David Arrivillaga. Photo taken with a Sony A7R IV camera, Sony E 30mm F3.5 Macro lens, 1/125 sec, f/9, ISO 1600
Sony A7R IV camera,Sony E 30mm F3.5 Macro lens, 1/100 sec, f/10, ISO 1600
Written by Vivian Hurtado & Roxana Leal
Identified Species by Victor Mendoza
On our June field trip in Parque Nacional Laguna del Tigre, part of the Reserva de Biósfera Maya, Petén; we were documenting savanna ecosystems -as we have been doing for the last couple years- and we get to hear a very peculiar sound. As we were getting closer, we get able to see it… A Laughing falcon (Herpetotheres cachinnans) in front of us! By its common name you can imagine the sound that produces.
Herpetotheres cachinnans
H. cachinnas is a raptor species, inhabiting tropical and subtropical zones from southern Mexico to northern Argentina, in a variety of habitat types such as forest edges, riverine woodlands, savannas and secondary forests (Caldeira et al 2014).
Laughing falcon is not the only common name for this bird, it is also called snake hawk and the reason is that snakes comprise the majority of its diet, big and small, venomous and non-venomous, arboreal and terrestrial. The falcon pounces on snakes with great force, hitting the ground with an audible thud. When it catches a snake, it holds it just behind the head with its beak. Then it readily bites off the snake's head. However, it also will pray on lizards, small mammals, birds, fish, and large insects, such as grasshoppers (Caldeira et al, 2014; The Peregrine Fund, n.d.).
An interesting fact from H. cachinnas is that sometimes nests close to ants, because even if the ants doesn’t bother the falcons, the attack other animals that come close, helping the falcon protect its netslings from predator.
Taxonomy:
Kingdom
ANIMALI
Phylum
CHORDATA
Class
BIRDS
Order
FALCONIFORMES
Family
FALCONIDAE
Genus
HERPETOTHERES
Species
H. CACHINNANS
H. cachinnas in Parque Nacional Laguna del Tigre, June 2022
Photographies by Emanuel Chocooj
The laughing falcon in the Popol Vuh
It is very impressive when you find some of the fauna that is part of the sacred book of the Maya, because you are in the authentically atmosphere was their worldview was conceive. Nicholas Hellmuth explained how the Laughing falcon appears in the Popol Vuh:
The Laughing falcon is very important; it is also called the snake hawk. But this bird is the bird of the Popol vuh. In the Popol Vuh is considered to be a macaw and in Copan ruins in Honduras, the sacred bird is a macaw, in every aspect, kind of a symbol logo. But in other maya sites the bird that sits on the tree that has the calabash is the Laughing falcon and in my PhD dissertation I devote time for that and I showed and I incised the shell that shows two of the aspect again in the Popol Vuh, the grandmother gives a message to a flee, or an insect. The insect is eaten by a frog or a toad who carries it further, a snake eats the toad and carries the message further and the laughing falcon eats the snake. The when it gets to Xibalba the bird regurgitates the snake and regurgitates the toad but then has a little trouble regurgitating the flee.
We know the relevance of the Popol Vuh, but it was Michael Coe from Yale Univesity, he is the one who really showed the relevance of the Popol Vuh and the hero twins. And then in my PhD in the 1980’s at the Graz University in Austria showed more of the Popol Vuh that was not widely known, because every person knows a little bit about it – I don’t know everything – but Michael Coe introduce it and I was able to follow it up and find even more basis more plates, more bowls that shows the hero twins and shows the laughing falcon and I am also the one who notice on top of the tree, it was not a Macaw, it was a bird with a snake in his mouth and that’s the snake hawk which is the laughing falcon.
Bibliography
CALDEIRA, H., ESTEVES, L., DE FREITAS, B and G. ZORZIN
2014
The reptile hunter’s menu: A review of the prey species of Laughing Falcons, Herpetotheres cachinnans (Aves: Falconiformes). North-western Journal of Zoology 10 (2): 445-453.
Larvae of butterflies and moths come in amazing different sizes, shapes, and coloration. Yesterday Victor Mendoza found the green larva we show here. It is the largest I have seen in many decades of photographing larva in the rain forests of Guatemala.
We found this along the trail from Plan Grande Tatin toward the Cueva del Tigre, Municipio de Livingston, Izabal, Guatemala.
We will do a photo essay showing all our macro photographs by Nicholas Hellmuth and by David Arrivillaga (FLAAR Mesoamerica). But to start here are photographs with an iPhone 13 Pro Max, held within a few centimeters of this creature to get these views. Since most larvae are dangerous to touch, we did not touch it. And we left it in the same place that we found it (on the ground).
We now initiate library research to figure out what family and what genus this creature is.
If you want to study insects, Guatemala is a great place.
El Búho recently invited Dr Nicholas Hellmuth to speak about his experience in Guatemala and to share more about what we do at FLAAR Mesoamerica and MayanToons. Here is the video of the interview held in Spanish.
Watching dolphins in the sea is an incredible spectacle, something beautifully unmatched. It makes you feel peace, excitement and joy at the same time.
On April 7, the FLAAR Mesoamerica team made an express fieldtrip to Livingston. It was on this trip where we had the opportunity to watch this incredible moment, we were heading to Tapón Creek crossing Amatique Bay when suddenly we observed that the dolphins jumped next to our boat, they could be seen to the right and to the left.
The species that we observed in Amatique Bay is Tursiops truncatus, commonly called bottlenose dolphins or locally called “Toninas” in Livingston. Dolphins belong to the order CETACEO of the mammalia taxonomic class, this means that dolphins are certainly marine mammals.
Video by Victor Mendoza. April 7th 2022. iPhone 11. Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) sighting in Livingston.
Bottlenose dolphins are social animals known for their playful behavior. Many times, they are found living in groups called pods. These groups can contain just a couple of members, or hundreds of members when different pods join. Bottlenose dolphins hunt in groups, taking turns chasing schools of fish or catching fish against mud or sand banks (NCEAS, 2004).
FLAAR Mesoamerica has had the opportunity to document several sightings of these amazing marine mammals. This time it was possible to observe them on the coast of Punta de Cocolí around 10 in the morning. Regarding their physical appearance, they were approximately 8 feet long, so we deduced that it was a pod of adult dolphins. Alexander Cuz, our boat captain told us that they were feeding according to their behavior. They were light gray in color and we could see how one dolphin jumped on its back and we appreciated its white chest.
If you are very lucky you can live this incredible experience if you visit Livingston, Izabal!
Bibliography
Centro Nacional de Análisis Ecológicos y de Síntesis: NCEAS
2004
Delfín Nariz de Botella. Mamíferos merinos del Proyecto: Kids Do Ecology
