ooh, shiny!

Today we started our crash course in studying shiny metallic stingless bees. (Euglossine bees) We set out six different chemicals on trees in three different habitats and recorded the buzzing visitors. One of the chemicals, I might add, is skatol...an organic compound from feces...I'll have that scent burnt into my memory forever. We caught almost thirty specimens, killed them, and pinned them for species identification. As you can imagine, there is high diversity here and most of it is not documented because the building that held all the bug specimens here burned down several years ago. So we are using our collection as a startup for a new bug collection here (it will include the bright blue metallic bee we caught hovering around my shoe). Tomorrow we will be trying out a new data collection method that we developed tonight to get a better idea of what chemicals these bees like.
I'd also like to add that I saw a different species of tropical frog on a night walk today, got the crap scared out of me by a foot-long lizard while I was planting chemicals, and saw a pair of toucans and a cuatemundi. Oh, and now there is a 2 inch spider on the wall above my pillow. Not sure what I'm going to do about that...