It’s my first morning at Posada Amazonas, and I just spent two hours watching a family of endangered Giant River Otters hunt as 3 species of macaws soared overhead. Not a bad start.

For the next two months, I will have the pleasure of contributing blogs, tweets, and Facebook updates for Rainforest Expeditions as I do research and explore the area surrounding the three lodges that the company manages in Tambopata. I’m not even a day in at my stay and I’ve already seen some of the most remarkable plants and animals the Amazon has to offer. And I’m pretty stoked.

As a biologist, I’ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of time in the field on conservation research projects throughout Latin America. This has allowed me to see the diversity that the Amazon has to offer, both in the organisms, in the landscapes, and in the extent it has remained ‘untouched.’ I’m always quick to tell a tourist in an area like this how lucky they are to see these incredible creatures- so much of the Amazon isn’t like this anymore. Monkeys and jaguars have been hunted out, big trees have been cut down, and incredible cultures have been tarnished.

 

Additionally, I’ve seen the bad side of ecotourism. From uninvolved indigenous to poor waste and forest management, to keeping wild pets; not all ecotourism companies get it right or do it sustainably. During my time here, I’ll be sharing stories from Rainforest Expeditions’ programs and highlighting some of the great ways they keep it clean and sustainable.

Most of my posts will be about the forest. From the absurdly knowledgeable guides, I’ve already learned that macaw colors can be hard to see in the sky because they are a pigment, unlike many birds which are light refracted; that over 20,000 giant river otters were killed over two decades for their pelts, making the population dangerously low and nearly absent from the actual riversides (they’re now generally isolated to oxbow lakes); and how the Brazil Nut is harvested, just to name a few. Time will only tell what the actual forest will be able to teach me during my research.

Showing off a red-tailed boa found on a night survey.

 

I hope you check back on the blog and please feel free to ask me any questions you may have about the programs or the forest. Also, if you come as a tourist while I’m here, come to say hello!

I know these are the proverbial tips of a fish in a small bowl, That doesn’t matter, I hope they help!

Do pick high ground.

The Amazon floodplain is wide. And I mean wide. When we built Tambopata Research Center we had a couple of Ese’eja friends recommend the site. “My granddaddy never saw this land flood,” they told us. Rivers however have a time scale in centuries, and floodplains are several kilometers wide in the upper Amazon (much wider in the lower). In 1990, we built the lodge about 100 meters from the river. By 2004, the river passed a few meters from our porch and we had to move the lodge 500 meters away, to higher ground. Think in the time scale of rivers, not humans.

Do use cement below the ground.

Jungle lodges that our clients like are contextual – wood, palm frond, bamboo, etc. However, wherever we’ve found one good place to cheat. Let me explain: the columns holding the lodge up are made of wood. Even the best wood won’t outlast cement in the moist rainforest underground. So we assemble a cement post below the ground, with a beautiful wooden one above. It’s aesthetic and lasts a lot longer.

Do prune your trees.

If you have palm frond roofs, or roofs of any vegetable material, worry about the trees on top of them. If there are branches overhanging your roof, it may be the beginning or the end of your beautiful palm frond roof. Water will drip from the branches onto the roof. Leaves will fall on it, carrying fungi and disease. The shade will be cast, keeping the roofs wet for longer periods of time.  Be sure pruning scissors are part of your equipment from day 1.

Don’t use shihuahuaco wood (Dipteryx micrantha).

I already posted on the fantastic ironwood, or shihuahuaco, tree. I explained its growth rate is so slow (eighty or one hundred years to be harvestable), that is logging is practically like mining it. Describing how it hosts literally dozens of species, my favorite being nesting macaws. It is a great wood and would make a great lodge. But please don’t use it.

Don’t build on lake shores.

Don’t build your lodge on lake shores.  According to the Frankfurt Zoological Society, they are prime habitats for the critically endangered giant river otter. Lakeside habitat is prime for otters’ burrows, and that’s where they have their pups. If you cut the forest off the edge of the lake, they will stop using that area. And otters need all the habitat they can get.

Don’t garden.

Can you beat the rainforest? Then don’t worry about gardening. Let the forest do its job. Our lodges greatest asset is that there are no walls between guests and primary tropical rain forest less than five meters away.

Please share more dos and don’ts for building in the jungle. And come see for yourself how our Amazon jungle lodges are built!

 

I recently sat down with Rick Vecchio of FerTur Travel to share some of my personal stories, explain what the amazon jungle photography tours entail, and offer expert advice on taking photos in Peru’s southern Amazon jungle. – Jeff

Click here to listen to the interview:

Jeff Cremer Jungle Photography Interview

Introduction
For six years, photographer Jeff Cremer has practiced his craft in Peru, documenting the people, wildlife, and natural beauty of high mountain plateaus, remote coastal desert, and mega-diverse Amazon rain forests.

Jeff offers an all-inclusive, five-day Amazon photography tour designed for small groups (4-6 people max!). The tours are based in the eco-lodges of Rainforest Expeditions and are geared toward the beginner and intermediate photographer. The program includes in-the-field instruction, as well as formal workshops. You don’t even need to bring a camera. All of the standard and specialty equipment is provided.

 

Transcript

Rick Vecchio: To start, Jeff, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background. Where are you from originally and how did you get involved in photography?

Jeff Cremer: Well, I’m originally from Pueblo, Colorado and I’ve been in Peru for about six years now. I started in photography when I was doing astrophotography out on the prairies of Colorado. I just went out there with my telescope and stuff and used to take pictures of galaxies and stars and planets, and all that. And after a while I thought maybe I would turn my camera towards more terrestrial subjects, and I started photographing that stuff as well.

RV: So what drew you to Peru and Peru’s rainforest?

JC: I was basically living in Costa Rica for a couple of years, and I thought, ‘Hey I’ll come to Peru and check everything out.’ I knew there was Machu Picchu. I knew there was the Nazca Lines. I knew there was the Amazon jungle. So I came to Peru and I stayed. At first, it was like a two-month trip, and then it turned into about six years. And then I took a trip to Iquitos a long time ago, and I was in the Amazon Jungle and it blew my mind. I thought it was really, really cool. And then I just fell in love with the Amazon and that’s where I stayed.

RV: Tell us about your photo tours. Who are they for? Where do you go? What do clients have to bring?

JC: Our photo tour is for anybody who’s interested in photography. It can be a beginner, an intermediate, an advanced photographer. And where we go is through Rainforest Expeditions lodges in Tambopata Peru, and that’s in the Tambopata National Reserve. So, we go to all three of the rain forest lodges — that’s Posadas Amazonas, Refugio Amazonas, and the Tambopata Research Center.

And each lodge offers something different, as far as photography goes. So, like, for example, Posadas Amazonas works with a native community and you can have interaction with some of the native people there. They also have a lot of different clay licks. They also have about a 30-meter-tall jungle canopy tower. You can climb up and look over the canopy. They also have a lake with a family of giant river otters, so we can go out and photograph that.

Refugio Amazonas has another canopy tower. They also have a clay lick. They have a lake out there, as well. You can see Watson birds and macaws and toucans. Bat falcons are out there… a lot of cool stuff.

And then the Tambopata Research Center is well-known for the largest macaw clay lick in the world and every morning dozens of macaws and parrots come out there and eat clay because of the salt content, and they need salt for their diet. It’s a cool thing; it’s almost like a natural wonder of the world. It’s amazing to see all of the macaws come out there, and we get the opportunity to photograph that. And in-between, when we’re doing transfers — that’s on giant canoes with big outboard motors, and we get a lot of time on the Tambopata River: sea turtles covered with butterflies; Capybaras; and then there is always the chance to see a jaguar. And so, you know, there are other things a rainforest has to offer, but we touch on all the best sites for a photographer.

 

As far as what the clients have to bring, I always say just bring your sense of adventure, because we provide all of the photography gear. We provide cameras, lenses, tripods, all the pro stuff. You just have to come out there. You want to have an adventure, want to learn stuff.  I provide all the rest. You know, Photoshop, all the instruction, everything… It’s a really cool time.

RV: The most important question of all — to photographers, at least — What’s your kit? What glass do you carry with you? What other equipment?

JC: So when clients come down, I give them access to a lot of different equipment. Some of the stuff that I carry is a 600mm/F4 lens for a Canon. That’s a gigantic pro sports lens and wildlife lens, it’s huge. It weighs about 15 or 20 pounds. That hooks onto a carbon fiber tripod with something called a Wimberley head, so it balances a lens really well, and you can move it around to catch pictures of birds in flight and when you’re moving down the river you can swing it around really fast and take pictures of capybaras and stuff on the river.

I carry a couple of macro lenses: a Nikon105mm F/2.8macro, and then I carry a very special CanonMP–E 65and that’s a really high-powered macro lens and it can get five times life-size on the subject. I mean you can take a picture of the eyes of an ant or the wing scales on a butterfly with that. I carry other lenses: a 1-400mm Cannon, a 7200mm/2.8 Nikon.

I got some wide angles. We also have a gigapixel camera that allows people to take 360° photos or take 1000 photos and then combine them into one super high-resolution photo.

And then I have automated focus stacking devices that are good for really extreme macro subjects and you can do special processes with that to get high-resolution macro photos. Then I have a 17 inch Mac Book Pro and I’ve got Photoshop on there, focus stacking programs, HDR programs, plug-ins for Photoshop. Clients get access to all of that on their tour.

RV: Two questions: How have advancements in camera technology changed the way you work? And the follow-up question to that is, with all this advanced equipment that you are taking into the jungle, what do you do if it flips over the side of the boat and goes into the drink?

JC: I’ll answer the second question first. Everything is insured. So, if it falls in the water I got insurance on it. But please don’t have an accident.

How have advancements in camera technologies changed the way I work? I’d say there’s not so much of a learning curve anymore, right, because you fire off a bunch of photos and you can see instantly the results that you’re having, you know, when you make changes to ISO or aperture or shutter speed, you can see the results that are having on a picture right away and then make corrections to it.

Also, you can, you know, Photoshop allows you to do a lot of editing and stuff like that. You can crop the photo very quickly. You can change the colors. You can change brightness, saturation levels, and stuff like that, and it makes the pictures pop. And HDR techniques… we can get a very high dynamic range in the photo and get really cool effects. The focus stacking, you know, that’s something that wasn’t possible years ago. So you can take a picture of, maybe, the head of the ant. Normally the head of the ant will be in focus and then the tail of the ant won’t be in focus.

With focus stacking, a robotic focuser moves the camera throughout the length of the ant. It will take a photograph of each different focus point. You bring all those photographs into the computer and it magically kind of fuses them together and only fuses the in-focus parts, so the entire and will be in focus and that’s a very new technology assembly.

And the same with the gigapixel stuff. You know, taking a thousand or five thousand pictures and stitching them all altogether for a super-high-resolution photo. That really is a game-changer. You can take crazy, high-resolution stuff and huge panoramas. It’s very cool.

RV: How huge is huge?

JC: How huge is huge? I have the record for the largest picture in Peru and that’s about 22,000 megapixels and that’s equivalent to about 22 gigapixels. So you could take something like that and print it out maybe, depending on the resolution, you know, maybe 50 meters long by at least 10 meters high and it will be still full resolution, maybe 300dpi. And that was made with 3060 photos fused together using almost a supercomputer. Yeah, we can get pretty big on stuff like that.

RV: So you can get very, very big and very, very small.

JC: Yeah.

RV: Do you see directly any effects on animals or the forest from human encroachment in the time that you’ve been working in Tambopata and the Peruvian rain forest?

JC: I haven’t seen many effects of human encroachment in Tambopata, but in other parts of the Amazon, I have seen a lot of the ethics of human encroachment. So, one of the things I’ve seen, like, I went up to Iquitos and basically, I didn’t see much. I went out there wanting to see all sorts of animals and stuff like that and I really didn’t see that much and a lot of the reason is that all the people up there in Iquitos, killed all animals and they’re eating them. So, when you go out into the jungle, you don’t see much.

Out in Tambopata, it’s a little bit different of a story. So, we work with the native community to promote ecotourism. And then we’re also in the Tambopata National Reserve, and that’s a protected area and they have park guards and checkpoints and stuff, so it’s not like this Holocaust of animals like you see in the market in Iquitos. What’s more, they’re providing value to the standing forest through ways of ecotourism and you’ve got a lot more opportunity to see wildlife.

RV: What do you do to minimize your footprint when you’re out there, particularly with less experienced amateur photographers who you’re guiding?

JC: How do we minimize our footprint out there? Well, as we say, it’s an eco-lodge, right? So everything is ecologically friendly. We use biodegradable soaps. We’re using solar power. At night there’s a generator and that’s only run at night for a few hours. Garbage that is generated from the tourism operation is boated off to Puerto Maldonado, the nearest city, and it’s disposed of properly. And then, you know, we try not to interfere with the animals as much as possible. You know, we just leave them alone and just take pictures of them.

RV: And what about the size of the groups you’re taking into the forest?

JC: Normal size of a group… two or three people. I do a maximum of six. You know, we don’t want to have these big, huge tour groups tramping through the forest, and making all sorts of noise and stuff. Then we want to get good shots and then I want to be able to give a lot of one-on-one instruction to the clients. So, we keep the group sizes pretty small.

RV: And in your time photographing in the Peruvian rainforest, what’s the most beautiful thing you’ve seen?

JC: That is a good question, and it’s a difficult question to answer. There’s a lot beautiful stuff out there in the rainforest. Once you get the eyes to spot the different things, you know, you can see a whole lot of different stuff. So, I mean, there are harpy eagles out there, there are the capybaras, all sorts of different birds, and then, you know, you have stuff at the macro-level or a small-scale. And there are all sorts of different ants and ant colonies: leaf cutter ants, army ants. There’s a really tiny little insect called a leaf-hopper. Those are really cool to photograph.

Small grasshoppers. Glow worms, those are really cool. I’ve been taking glowworm photos lately. Those are about 3mm long and they have these tiny little jaws and hide in the embankment and some dirt. It’s really crazy.

A lot of beautiful stuff.

I’d say as far as a bird goes, a royal flycatcher is a pretty beautiful bird, and that has, like, some feathers on the back of its head and when it wants to mate, or when it’s scared, it puts those feathers up on the back of its head and then it dances around in this really robotic looking dance, and that’s really cool. That’s really beautiful. I like the royal flycatcher a lot.

RV: How do different animals react to being photographed?

JC: The animals react pretty well, you know. We try to stay really, really quiet, extremely quiet so they don’t even know that we’re there. And then a lot of times, we’re at a really long focal length and truthfully they just act normally.

RV: And for some of those animals, where you’re doing macro photography, and you’re right up there, very close, is there any behavior that you see with any particular kind of animal or species that’s surprising?

JC: Some things… There’s something called jumping spiders and those are really, really tiny spiders, about half the size of your pinky fingernail, and they live all over the place. They live on logs, they live on leaves, they live on the side of trees. And they’re kind of curious by nature, so when you go out there to take their picture, they’ll kind of start moving their head left and right, and kind of looking at you, examine the camera. Then they get scared so they’ll take some steps back, and then they’ll walk up and take a look at the lens again. And they’re territorial, too. So, if you scare off a little, tiny jumping spider, it’ll kind of run under a leaf, and then maybe a minute later, it’ll come and start defending its little home again. I think jumping spiders are really, really cool. They’re friendly, they’re nice, they’re curious and they have a lot of personalities.

RV: Now, even though Tambopata has its beaten paths for visitors, and it’s known as a very safe destination for travelers, it’s still the jungle. There’s no shortage of peril if you don’t follow safety guidelines. So my question is, what’s the closest encounter you’ve had with something deadly?

JC: Well, to tell you the truth, the jungle being a crazy, dangerous place for tourists, I think, is a misconception. I think out there in the jungle it’s pretty safe. It’s not crawling with poisonous snakes. It’s not crawling with venomous spiders.

The closest encounter I’ve had with something deadly? Not in Tambopata, but I was up on the border between Ecuador and Peru, in the native tribal area, and these people make a living by capturing bushmaster snakes and they milk the venom to sell as medicine to different pharmaceutical companies in the United States and Europe. So one time a guy walked in with a basket. I said, ‘Hey, what’s that?’ He said, ‘Oh, it’s a couple of giant bushmaster snakes.’ And I looked in the basket and there they were. Yeah, I’d say that was the closest I’ve come to be with something deadly.

RV: For the photographers, you take, what makes a good photo in the rainforest?

JC: Well, I would say that a good photo, anywhere, is when it allows somebody to see the world in a different way. It enables a person to think about something that they never thought of before, or it feels an emotion, or maybe ask a question. I think those are good photographs. Let’s say you have a photograph, and the lighting is not exactly right, or it’s not totally sharp, or something like that, as long as it moves a person to ask a question, or feel something, or stop and think, I think that’s a pretty good photo.

RV: Thanks Jeff for taking the time to talk with us today.

JC: You got it. It was a pleasure being here.

RV: For more information about the rainforest photo tours with Jeff Cremer, visit our webpage: www.fertur-travel.com or our blog, www.ferturperu.info. For Peruvian Travel Trends, I’m Rick Vecchio.

Luana Luna from Conservation International visited Refugio Amazonas in April, 2012. Thanks, Luana for your guest post and wonderful photo journal.

Do you know normal life? That one in which you wake up and spend the entire day running to get things done, and when it is time for bed you are tired but still wish your day had more hours? This is the kind of life that I forgot I had been in the forest for a week. It was the most relaxing and rewarding week I had in a long time. There is no electricity, and one of the walls is open to the forest, so you wake up and sleep with the sun, without the noises of technology to disturb you. The fact that we had Yuri as our guide (only ours!) allowed us to choose what we were doing in our days. And that is the best part: we saw and did everything we could!

I am a nature lover. I could spend an entire week observing how monkeys interact and play (and taking pictures of them, of course). In the forest, we had that entire week to observe not only 5 species of monkeys, but other mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and birds, such as the colorful macaws. We learned about life in the forest, met the Centro Ñape medicine man who extracts his portions from the plants, played soccer in sandals in a soil field with locals and other tourists, and learned how the local communities totally depend on the forest to survive. I am proud to know that my experience in the forest provided income to the people of the forest in a sustainable way, a way that they have to keep the forest and the animals alive if they want to survive themselves.

The slow pace that nature offered us when we were there is something I will never forget and that I am already looking forward to repeating. You can learn more about our trip and the animals through our Tambopata photos.

 

Monkeys abound in the trees around our Rainforest Expeditions lodges. But hidden in the dense jungle vegetation, it can be surprisingly hard to find them! So we’ve put together the ultimate guide to spotting monkeys in the rainforest, compiling our favorite tips and tricks to see — and snap amazing photos of — these lively primates.

Step 1: Learn their unique calls

It might seem counterintuitive, but the key to finding monkeys is actually using your ears, not your eyes! Take the time to memorize their calls:

• The bird-like whistles of Tamarin and Squirrel Monkeys
• The «whoops» of Dusky Titi Monkeys
• The grunts of Capuchin and Howler Monkeys
• The barking «alarm» calls of Spider Monkeys

Once you can pick their unique «voices» out of the rainforest soundtrack, you have a much better chance of spotting a monkey.

Step 2: Visit a Floodplain Forest

Floodplain forests are full of tall trees, close to rainforest rivers. Because they’re so close to rivers, the rainy season floods these forests, depositing valuable nutrients — which foster amazing biodiversity and enormous trees! This means monkeys, lots of them.

Monkeys come to floodplain forests to snack on figs from towering rainforest fig trees, and to find other food and water sources. These forests are some of the best spots to see and photograph monkeys. Lucky for us, our Rainforest Expeditions lodges sits near several floodplain forests, with the most remote, biodiverse one at our Tambopata Research Center lodge.

Step 3: Watch and listen to the canopy

Most monkey life occurs, of course, far above our heads in the tall trees of the rainforest. As you walk through the jungle or ride a quiet boat along the river, keep your eyes and ears on the canopy.

While monkeys are great climbers, they’re not exactly elegant climbers. They jump, swing, and crash through the trees. So listen for that crashing, the rustle of leaves up above, then wait… and usually, a monkey (or a hundred monkeys!) will soon come into view.

 

Step 4: Tread with caution

Like other rainforest wildlife, monkeys are often easily scared away by loud, bold, or aggressive humans. They’re especially shy in isolated areas of the forest, where they may not be used to humans and their antics. As you walk down jungle paths, keep noise to a minimum and avoid rustling clothing or loud electronic devices.

This goes doubly for snapping good photos. Monkeys tend not to sit still long enough to get a good shot, not to mention the strong back-light of the sky, so getting a decent photograph takes some patience to say the least.

Step 5: Take a guided «monkey walk»

Trained guides are invaluable for spotting rainforest animals, particularly elusive monkeys. A good guide will know the calls of specific monkey species and be familiar with their favorite places, foods, and their typical behaviors. Before booking a trip to a rainforest region — whether it be in Africa, South America, or Asia — check your lodge or tour company’s credentials. Make sure your guides are well-trained, well-compensated, and committed to treating monkeys and other wildlife with respect and discretion. It will make your experience so much more worthwhile!

At Rainforest Expeditions, our highly trained guides lead spectacular monkey walks through the floodplain forests near our lodges in Tambopata, Peru. To find out more about Amazon travel options, feel free to chat with our Amazon experts!

This is not about celebrities. These three famous visitors to the Amazon it’s about historical figures. You know, Abraham Lincoln or Vladimir Lenin. And, to be fair, I got these from the excellent book on the history of the Amazon: Tree of Rivers by John Hemming.

You have to enjoy the Amazon to cover its 400 pages, but it is a superbly researched and well-written book (so is Hemming’s other book, the Conquest of the Incas). Anyway, without further ado, here they go:

Theodore Roosevelt (pg 236-244)

It is appropriate that the North American president who founded the National Park system had an epic Amazon journey. In 1914, Teddy Roosevelt, already 55, visited Brazil on a hunting trip to  Amazonia. The government of Brazil assigned the great woodsman Colonel Candido Rondon as his guide. Rondon, who may have been the first indigenous rights activist in Amazonia has a whole state named after him: Rondonia.

Anyway, they had no mission beyond hunting and exploring. Hunting is not as good in the Amazon as it is in Africa: the game is smaller and much harder to find. So I imagine that after a disappointing tapir or red brocket deer kill, Roosevelt turned to explore. Rondon gave him a choice of four rivers to descend from Rondonia northwards to the Amazon. One was an unknown tributary called the Duvida, or “River of Doubt” because now when knew where it emerged. Roosevelt of course,  picked that one. During the eight-week 1000 kilometer descent, he almost lost his son Kermit in the rapids and was “wasted to a mere shadow of his former self”. The Duvida was christened the Roosevelt River by Rondon.

I love his quotes from his Amazon travels, which could be found in any field biologists journal:

“Now, while bursting thru a tangle, I disturbed a nest of wasps, whose resentment was very active; now I heedlessly stepped among the outliers of a small party of the carnivorous foraging (Eciton, army) ants; now grasping a branch as I stumbled, I shook down a shower of fire-ants (Dinoponera) which stung like a hornet, so that I felt it for three hours… ”

“Because of the rain and heat, our clothes were usually wet when we took them off at night, and just as wet when we put them on in the morning.”

Henry Ford (pg 264-268)

Who would have thought that Ford founded one of the Amazon’s first businesses to go bust? It turns out that around 1922 Ford wanted to break the Dutch- British cartel on plantation rubber, which was steadily rising prices. Some shady Brazilians sold 10000 square miles of land in the state of Para where he could replicate the Asian and African rubber tree plantations in the Amazon. Any Peruvian forestry undergraduate will tell you that is an extremely risky proposition: high densities of any native tree species will attract pests (in Asia and Africa, rubber is a non-native species, so it has no pests). So, Fordlandia was built, complete with a cinema, a hospital, churches schools, tennis courts, swimming pools, social clubs, avenues lined with eucalyptus, and a golf course.

By 1935, 1.5 million rubber trees were planted, but as they grew enough for their canopies to touch, they lost their leaves to the endemic South American Leaf Blight. They moved the plantation and built a large Fordlandia at a place called Belterra. After 2 million trees were planted, the blight struck again. In 1945, Henry Ford II abandoned the enterprise having sunk 10 million dollars without tapping a single rubber tree.

Otto von Bismarck (pg 122)

The founder and first chancellor of the German Empire (ca. 1870) was an aide-de-camp in an expedition to the Amazon led by Prince Adalbert of Prussia. The expedition visited the Amazon in 1842 with the goal of exploring the Xingu. I’ve tried googling more on this expedition because Hemming doesn’t mention much about it (von Bismarck, was, after all, a lowly aide de camp), but I keep finding Bismarck biographies on Amazon DOT COM! Amazon.com is one of the few bummers of real Amazon work!

Please let me know of any other historical figures in the Amazon who are known for their Amazon adventures. And if you’re planning to become a historical figure, don’t forget to visit us at our Amazon jungle lodges.

Leaf-cutter ants «retire» from their cutting role when they grow old, switching to carrying when their jaws blunt with age.

Leaf-cutter ants start their lives with razor-like jaws, or mandibles, to cut through the leaves they harvest. But as these «wear out», the insects tend to carry the leaves cut by their younger counterparts. The findings suggest that individual ants can extend their useful lifespan as their skills decline. They are reported in the journal Behaviour Ecology and Sociobiology.

The US-based scientists discovered that older ants were significantly less efficient at cutting leaves.

A close-up shot of a leafcutter ant – Jeff Cremer – 

They estimated these older colony members’ «worn-out teeth» halved the speed at which the entire colony was able to harvest leaves.

The researchers, from the University of Oregon and the Oregon State University, support previous research showing the survival of a leaf-cutter colony depends on the efficiency of its workers. The leaf disks collected by the forager ants are transported back to the colony where the sap can be harvested for food. The gathered leaves are also used as a surface to grow the fungus that is consumed by the colony.

«Cutting leaves is hard work,» explains the University of Oregon’s Dr. Robert Schofield, who led the study.

A leafcutter ant carrying a leaf – Jeff Cremer

Much of the cutting is done with a V-shaped blade between teeth on their mandibles. This blade starts out as sharp as the sharpest razor blade that humans have developed. It is believed that leaf-cutter ants’ mandibles also contain zinc-enriched biomaterials, which strengthen them. Over time, however, these razor-sharp blades become blunt and less efficient.

The ants cut the leaves with a V-shaped blade on their jaw.

The researchers measured the wear on the mandible cutting blade in the ant species Atta cephalotes from a colony in Soberania National Park, Panama. Dr. Schofield and his team used electron microscopy to compare the pristine teeth of laboratory-reared pupae with the worn teeth of the wild forager ants.

By comparing the radius of the mandible teeth they found the blade of a cutter ant to be 340 times duller than the pristine blade of a pupa.

The study revealed that leaf-cutter ants with highly worn mandibles had difficulties cutting and anchoring leaves. Individuals with the most worn teeth, which had less than 10% of the cutting blade, exclusively carried leaves rather than cut them.

The team estimated that, because of this age-related wear, a colony spent twice the energy cutting leaves than it would if all the ants had sharp mandibles. The findings support the idea that wear and fracture can be significant problems for insects as well as larger animals.

Greater good

«This study demonstrates an advantage of social living that we are familiar with,» says Dr. Schofield. Humans that can no longer do certain tasks can still make very worthwhile contributions to society. Leaf-cutter ants live in colonies that have a very developed structure with a strict hierarchy. This level of social organization is described as eusocial.

As well as benefiting the colony, the researchers believe that this ability to change jobs may also lead to longer life spans in social insects compared to their solitary cousins.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9306000/9306830.stm

Related articles

• WebCam: Leaf Cutter Ants in Action (fox4kc.com)
• With an Ant’s Focus (godgirlgail.wordpress.com)

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Here in the rainforests of Tambopata, we see many interesting relationships between different organisms. Some are just smaller than others.

If you think about it, nectar is typically pollinator bait- it draws insects like butterflies, beetles, and flies into the flower to drink, covering them in pollen, and helping the plant reproduce. However, pollination is not the only role that insects can play for plants- they can also be protectors.

What you are glimpsing above is an ant drinking out of an extra-floral nectary (EFN). An EFN is a fancy term for a source of nectar that lies outside the flower. These EFNs are typically located near the base of a leaf, or along an outer branch. Thus, any ant aiming to drink from it has to walk all the way up the entirety of the plant.

Camponotus femoratus ant feeding on an Inga extrafloral nectary. The plant provides the sugar, the ant provides the protection. Photo by Phil Torres

So why have an EFN? Over millions of years, a relationship can form between these ants and plants: the plants provide the nectar, and the ants provide protection. This nectar is even anti-diet specific, containing more sugar, and less amino acids, so they can have the energy to take down any herbivore that happens to attempt to feed on this plant.

The image shows an Inga sp. plant, however other plants can have relationships with ants that are even more complex than this. Some plants provide homes for them, some ants tend honeydew-producing aphid ‘cattle’ on the plants, and some plants even reabsorb and ‘eat’ the anta’ feces!

The ant in the image is only 3mm long. The well it is drinking out of, only about 1mm wide. Size clearly doesn’t matter when it comes to interesting behavior.

See more posts by biologist Phil Torres at www.TheRevScience.com

 

The Black-fronted Nunbird (Monasa nigrifrons) is a six-inch nondescript black bird with a red bill from the puffbird family (Bucconidae).   It is common in the floodplains and secondary forests of the Amazon, where it forages below the mid-story. You find it sitting vertically in small groups, often erupting into a noisy chorus.

Does it claim fame? It is one of the forest’s sentinels. It accompanies mixed-species flocks of birds, often teaming with dozens of species of other birds to forage together. Every now and then it will produce a resonant alarm. Instantly, the rest of the flock will stop and quiet down. They will hide under leaves or branches, wary of nearby birds of prey the Nunbird has spotted. Sometimes I have also seen squirrel monkeys and brown capuchins react to the call. Quite a service.

But who pays for this service? Remember there is no free lunch. So once in a while, the nunbird bills the flock. When it sights a juicy grasshopper, the nunbird will also call the alarm, even if there is no bird of prey. And with the rest of the flock looking above for the bird of prey, the nunbird easily swoops in for the kill. It lies.

The amazing story does not end there. I came across the nunbird in the most unexpected of places: Murray Gell Mann’s The Quark and the Jaguar, his magnum opus on complexity theory and adaptive systems. The nunbird is cited in a chapter on how certain numbers appear in completely unrelated places across the world. Fifteen percent, for example, is the optimal amount of times a poker player bluffs. Bluff anymore, and no one will believe you. Bluff any less, and you’re missing out on chances to win. It turns out fifteen percent is the exact amount of times a Black-fronted nunbird calls out false alarms when confronted with juicy prey!

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We at Rainforest Expeditions are pleased to announce the opening of our art gallery at the Refugio Amazonas Lodge.

This gallery will include Peruvian artists inspired by the Amazon rainforest in our region, and all works on display will be for sale. For our first exhibit, we are excited to welcome Oscar Vilca. (Art Gallery at Refugio Amazonas)

Vilca is one of the premier modern nature and science illustrators in Peru and studied at the Faculty of Arts at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and Fine Arts. He is an artist committed to conservation and environmental disclosure.

The Oscar Vilca Gallery will open in late May and will exhibit original paintings, solely from Tambopata National Reserve. These will not only be on display but also be available for sale at the Refugio Amazonas Lodge. The exhibition will be held in June, July, and August.

Starting in September, a group of three Peruvian artists involved in the Bahuaja Sonene Collective will be on display at Refugio. Intended to draw attention to the community and to protect the Bahuaja Sonene National Park, their motto is «Bahuaja Sonene: Know, Inspire.»

The Bahuaja Sonene Collective is currently inaugurating the work on June 1 in the Japanese Peruvian Center, then take the sample to Refugio on September 1st where it will run until the end of the year. The 25 original paintings exhibited will be for sale.

 

By Phil Torres