Santa Rosa

 Costa Rica

Marietta College Biology and Environmental Science Department Field Trip 2005/2007

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Santa Rosa - Tropical Dry Forest in Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica

 

Santa Rosa was our first stop in 2005 and our last stop in 2007.  It is in the northwestern corner of the country, near the Nicaraguan border in the  province of Guanacaste.  This part of Costa Rica is drier than most of the rest of the country.  It lies downwind of the mountains which block the prevailing easterly winds from this area and which wring the water out from the clouds as they rise over the mountains.

 

Our base in Guanacaste was the field station at Santa Rosa National Park, more formally known as the Centro de Investigacion del Bosque Tropical Seco, Bosque Tropical Seco translating as "Forest, tropical, dry".  

The field station has a number of buildings - a dining hall, classroom and laboratory buildings, cabins, and several dormitories.  We stayed in the latter.  The rooms were small, with bunk beds and few amenities, but they did have broad porches which kept off the sun (and the rain, in the brief rainy season).  The porches turned into the social areas as there was little room - and a lot of heat - in the bunkrooms.

As mentioned before, in 2005 we started at Santa Rosa, which was then receiving the very first of the summer rains.  In 2007, it was our last stop, and the rainy season had been well  underway.  The rainy season is a bit of a misnomer; what you get are massive thunderstorms that dump a huge amount of rain over discrete areas, with adjoining areas getting little or no rain - that day.  What you don't get are several days of all-day rain.  

In 2005, we were the first people to use the dorms in some time, which worked out well, since that way we got to find all the scorpions.  In 2007, we moved into rooms that had just been vacated and as a result it was a lot tougher to find a good scorpion.
   

Above - post shower party; below, a cool place to study.
The wildlife in 2005 was easy to spot, since there were very few trees with leaves on them at that point.  The varigated squirrels must have a tough life, having to share the canopy with big lizards and monkeys (more on the monkeys below).  One of the coolest birds was a roadside hawk which was tame enough to allow some close approaches.  This bird reminded me a lot of the red-shouldered hawks I had seen in Florida.  The picture to the left, and the one below left show the hawk with its breakfast, an anole.

Below:  Despite the lack of water, we found dragonflies remarkably abundant.

Above:  What a difference a few weeks make!  Two pictures, one taken at the end of the dry season in 2005 and the other a few weeks into the rainy season in 2007.  These are not views of the same place, but you can see a remarkable difference in the amount of green vegetation.
We found this tiny blindsnake (somehow) hiding in the leaf litter along a trail.  It was extremely small, fitting easily in the palm of a hand.  If it were a worm, it would be too small to use for fish bait, yet this is a fully mature adult reptile snake.  Apparently they feed on termites.  

 

Below:  Even in the dry season there are flashes of color.  Some trees tap reserves of water (or reach far underground for it) to put out a display of flowers, even when the tree itself lacks leaves at the height of the dry season.  This would seem to be wasteful, but a tree flowering at this time has the undivided attention of the pollinators, a surprising number of which are active, such as this butterfly (below left).
There were some good-sized cockroaches in the woods.  These are not household pests (though they do wander inside on occasion), but wild creatures feeding on decaying things in the leaf litter of the forest.  Note that the cockroaches color and the leaf-shape of its front wings help it to blend in far better with leaf litter than kitchen linoleum.

 

Left (and below):  One of the most interesting things in the seasonal forest is the contorted shapes taken on by many of the trees.  The tree to the left is beset by strangler figs, whose trunks are fusing around it.   
Two of my favorite animals from Santa Rosa were both a golden color in their own way- the Golden Carpenter Ants and the Agouti.  The carpenter ants were quite common on trees of the forest, often making glittering golden trails moving up and down the trunks.  If you look closely you can see that the golden color is the result of thousands of tiny golden hairs (setae) which cover the ant's body.  Relatives of the ordinary black carpenter ants found in Ohio, these ants feed on decaying wood in trees, no doubt deriving much of their nutrition from the fungi breaking down the wood.

The agouti is a rabbit like rodent (and rabbits are not rodents, by the way).  There were several near the field station, scurrying about the underbrush looking for tidbits like fruit or seeds.  Most of the time I saw them eating it was some piece of fruit from the dining hall itself, probably taken from a trash bin.
 

Agouti Video

 
The Howler Monkeys really stole the show.  By the time we got to Santa Rosa in 2007 they were old news, but in 2005 it was the class' first encounter with wildlife in Costa Rica and these guys put on quite a show.  From their loud, ominous howling off in the distance the first night, to the second day when they moved into the big tree in front of the dining hall, they put on quite a show.  The troop was easily aroused by the sounds of certain vehicles, which usually brought the whole group into full chorus, a sound one describe as the "barking of the guard dogs at hell's junkyard".

Despite the fierce sound, these monkeys are mostly herbivores and spent the day in the treetop either sleeping or eating fruits, nuts, flowers and the like.  There was at least one baby clinging to its mother.  We were careful to avoid getting under the males (obvious because of their white scrotum); apparently they will urinate on anything below them they see as a threat.

 

Howler Monkey Video

 
There was other wildlife, of course.  Perhaps most useful were the geckos that hung out in the dorm rooms; they came out at night to prowl by the edges of any light sources to seize insects attracted to the lights.  They would also bark at each other.  Geckoes maintain their grip on the ceiling by the use of millions of tiny hairs on the underside of their elongated toes.

 

The earwig pictured below has a fearsome looking tail, but despite its appearance it is not particularly harmful to humans.  It can serve as a defense for the earwig; they are attracted to tight spaces and if a predator would crawl up behind the earwig in such a space it would encounter the pincer (also called forceps).  Earwigs are placed in their own order, Dermaptera (skin wing).
The 2nd-largest reptiles we saw at Santa Rosa were the Ctenosaurs.  Also known as black iguanas, they are in fact relatives of the more familiar Green Iguana.  The ctenosaurs are creatures of the tropical dry forest; their coloration blends them in better to this environment than it would in the greener tropical rain forest.  They feed on insects and other small animals to some extent, but a good portion of their diet comes from vegetation, including flowers.  We saw some that were nearly 4 feet long; while they would go up into the trees we were much more likely to see them on the ground than in the trees (green iguanas are more arboreal).  A particularly large male used to hang out by the laundry.
It was somewhat surprising to see whitetail deer among the fauna.  In Marietta, I see several deer daily, to the point of having to walk around them on my way to work.  The deer in Costa Rica are much smaller than the ones in Ohio - the buck above was the size of maybe a yearling deer back home, and it was strange to see the antlers on a deer's head in June.

The birds were also easy to spot, at least in 2005 when the trees were not in leaf.  There are a number of small birds with striped heads (like the ones above and below, left) and I haven't figured out which species we were looking at.  Ditto for the flycatcher-type birds like the one to the left.  Easier to identify were the Inca Doves (below); these pigeon-sized birds traveled in pairs and had the most amazing 3-dimensional pattern to their feathers.
The Hymenoptera were well-represented as well.  Above are a winged ant, off to found a new colony, and a tiny wasp.  More on the ants later.

One of the amazing bees in Costa Rica are the stingless bees.  These social bees place their colony, with its cells of honey and young, in a cavity deep within a tree.   They then construct a long tube leading into the nest.  A mammalian predator, such as a coati or a skunk, would have to chew through a good deal of wood to get to the nest deep in the tree; the narrow opening in the wood is too small - and too far away - from the nest for them to get access that way.  Insect predators would have to navigate the long tube.  Here the sisters of the colony stand guard, ready to smear any intruders with a noxious, sticky secretion.  Since there are no mammalian predators to deter by stinging, these bees do not have a stinger.

Below, left, honeybees congregate at a basin in a sink where a dripping faucet provides a miniature oasis.  This is the same species of honeybee as is found in North America - indeed, around most of the world, as the original bee has been carried by humans to virtually every corner of the planet in domestication.  Bees that escape domestication create feral colonies, and Costa Rica is no exception.  Unlike most other bees, honeybees maintain a large colony throughout the year, even in tough seasons like a northern winter or the dry forest's dry season.  Water is important to the hive as workers will drip it near the entrance to the hive and fan the drops with their wings.  The evaporation of the water then cools the hive. 
Scorpions were always a morbid fascination at the field station.  The first year, our first scorpion was a rather large one, discovered by one of the women on the curtains above her bunk.  This cause some excitement, but the group quickly got past it; one night later we could hear voices from the women's room "something just crawled across my pillow - it's probably just a cockroach" said in a normal tone of voice that conveyed a sense of routine.  Despite our habituation to them, however, scorpions are fascinating creatures.  We always take a blacklight (UV) light along, both to Costa Rica and to Utah, to make the scorpions glow.  It seems they have a protein in their exoskeleton that is similar to a protein that forms in human cataracts (and one reason why eye doctors keep blacklights handy; they are more interested in seeing cataracts than they are obsessed with the thought of their offices being overrun with scorpions.

We saw what looked to be two species at Santa Rosa; one was larger and darker, the other was smaller and almost always light brown.  Of course it might have been one species at different levels of maturation.
We rarely saw the scorpions away from the dormitories.  Partly this was because that is where we spent most of our time, particularly at night, and partly because they are well-adapted to human habitation and drawn by the insects attracted to the lights there.

One of the students managed to lose his wallet 3 times in 15 minutes.  I put it on the windowsill outside his room; trying to be helpful I put 2 scorpions in the plastic bag with the wallet - this was to ensure that no one tried to rip him off.  He was quite grateful I had safeguarded his wallet, but uneasy that he could only find 2 of the 3 scorpions I told him were in the bag - and this after removing each item one-by-one with a long pair of hemostats.

In 2 years we only had one sting, and it was on the first day at Santa Rosa in 2005.  Toweling off after a shower, Will Fogle (below, with bagged scorpion) felt a sting on his chest which he likened to a bee sting.  We went to the cook (the only employee around at the time), and although I could not follow her rapid-fire Spanish, I was relieved not to hear the words "muerta" or even "pelligroso", so we figured Will would live.  Little did we know about the sting's long-term effects on his behavior, however (inside joke, see also "fogling").

 

Below, Will (center) and others "pet the scorpion".  This was actually a bit more dangerous than petting the crocodile, but not much more so.

Right: Pest control, Costa Rican style.  If your house is full of scorpions, they will kill all the roaches!  Problem solved, without dangerous chemicals.  Below, two other invertebrates spotted on the porch of the dorms; a robber fly (itself no slouch at pest control as they feed on other insects), and a slug.
When we visited in 2005 the very first rains of the season fell on our second day there.  As you can see from the graph below, in the preceding year, at least, the dry season started in December and broke with rains in May.  Most of the year has at least some rain, but January through April are very dry.  As a result, most of the trees lose their leaves during those months; thus in many ways the forests resemble a temperate deciduous forest.
Right - a large Sphinx moth; for some reason, moths in this family, the Sphingidae, are vary common at Santa Rosa.
The blue-crowned motmots were exciting, with their electric blue heads and their multicolored bodies.  Equally interesting - and more often seen - are the white-throated magpie-jays.  These birds would scold hikers endlessly.  Like other jays, they cache food for the lean months, in this case the dry season.
Camouflage is well developed in the dry forest.  Above, a moth perches on a tree trunk.  Right - the forest canopy at the end of the dry season.  Below, an anole and a bessbug.  The latter is the adult form of a grub that feeds on decaying wood. 
One day I was out in the woods and thought it must be raining - they sky was overcast, and I could hear the rain hitting the dry leaves.  Thing was, I wasn't getting wet.  I looked down at my feet to discover long columns of army ants moving through the leaves, rustling them as they went and making a sound like a gentle rain falling on the leaves.

Army ants forage in huge numbers, with ropy trails of ants snaking across the forest floor.  They overcome nearly any animal too slow to get away (unlike in fiction, most vertebrate animals simply fly or walk away from the ants, which really aren't that fast.  Above and below, right, you can see a column of the ants moving across the leaves; above left they are dismembering a small cockroach.  To the right they have a stink bug; as the name implies stink bugs are normally protected by smelly, annoying chemicals, but the ants don't seem to mind.  As they carry it they will also cut it into smaller pieces to take back to the "nest".  Below left the tables are turned as an army ant worker has fallen into an ant lion pit and been seized by the ant lion, which is eating it.
Above left you can see some of the different sizes of worker ants foraging on the trail.  Above right is a soldier ant; her giant jaws can cut up much larger insects and serve to drive off predators as well.  Apparently, in some parts of Central and South America natives use these soldiers as surgical staples; to close a wound they induce the soldier to bite into the flesh on either side of the wound and when the jaws clamp shut they twist off the ant's body, leaving the jaws closed tightly and binding the sides of the wound together.

Right:  a group of ants in a rolled-up leaf.  The queen and a host of attendant ants remain in a moveable nest or bivouac while the others are out foraging.  The temporary nest is made of the bodies of thousands of workers who link themselves together.  I looked around for it and I think it was close to where these workers were, but with millions of ants around me I didn't want to push the issue too far.

Below:  The ants have overwhelmed a small scorpion - yes, a scorpion, and are carrying it back to their nest. 

The long-horned beetle above was a sizeable, hard-shelled insect that the ants also managed to overwhelm.  One tactic is to have two or three ants pull on each of the legs, and while the legs are stretched out other ants move in to chew them off.
Stepping back - a good idea, really, when you think about it, one gets the scale of the entire operation.  The ant columns were spread over an area about 50 feet square, and the ants were running over and under the leaves, as well as climbing all the shrubs and small trees in the vicinity.  They were flushing a lot of insects, small lizards, and other small animals as well.  Any small animal that could was fleeing, and there are a number of species of birds in the dry forest (and in any forest with these ants) that spend their days following the ants and catching and eating the small animals and insects fleeing the ants.  Our presence was probably keeping the birds away, however, as we didn't see any.

 

Army Ant Videos

Nighttime was a good time to see toads at Santa Rosa.  They would hop on to the smooth concrete patio that went all the way around the dorm building.  Normal etiquette at a field station is to keep lights off as much as possible - both to conserve energy and to reduce the amount of mess from piles of dead bugs under the lights in the morning.  However, entomologists usually ignore the protocol as they want to see piles of bugs in the morning - that's the whole point of being at a field station.  Toads love entomologists.  They can spot a bug on the concrete from 10 feet away.  They also like to defecate on the concrete, as at least one barefooted student found out the hard way. 
There were at least 3 species of amphibians enjoying the night life at Santa Rosa.  Giant, or Marine Toads were imported into Costa Rica to help control insect populations in the sugar cane fields.  Bad idea.  The toads do eat a lot of bugs, but they eat anything else that moves, and, unusually for toads, will also eat non-moving things such as pet food out of a bowl.  As in the bowls left out for people's pets.  

The smaller yellow toad was also seen; it could be separated from the giant toad by the much smaller parotid glands (the glands just behind the ears) as well as the presence of raised black bars on the head.  The milk frogs are a type of tree frog; they hung out in the day in drain pipes and moved up to the screens covering the openings to the showers at night.
As mentioned, insects came to the lights as well, and we managed to photograph a few before they were eaten.  Long-horned beetle usually have larvae that bore in wood; the larvae may be quite long-lived, while the adults live long enough to mate and lay eggs on a promising looking tree.  This one had "eyespots" on the elytra (front wings) that presumably would startle an attacking bird as the beetle flicked open the wings to fly away from the threat.

I'm not sure what the moth below right was imitating; it looked to me like a miniature dragon.  Granted, dragons are fearsome (or is it firesome?) creatures, and resembling one would presumably confer some protection; the only problem is that dragons are also fictional and most birds do not read fairy tales.

Below, a spider demonstrates that the toads are not the only ones to benefit from the phototropism of many forest insects.  This spider has captured a grasshopper or cricket. 
If you looked carefully, you could spot some of the forest creatures like the toad despite its camouflage.   Toads are well-adapted to blend into leaf litter on a forest floor; the poison in their skins is a back-up in case they are discovered.  The katydid, above left, blends into leaves far better than white walls.  Presumably its life cycle is timed so that the adults are around when there are leaves in the rainy season.

The ground beetle to the left is nocturnal, so the bright red trim is a bit mysterious.  The large jaws are easily explained, however; this beetle feeds on other insects it encounters in the leaf litter.

Spiders (below) are always predaceous.
In 2005, we saw a lot of stick insects (walkingsticks) both in Santa Rosa and at La Selva.  In 2007, we saw few at Santa Rosa and at La Suerte, but quite a few on the night hike in Monteverde.  

Obviously, these insects survive by imitating twigs, at least during daylight.  At night they are more active and feed on vegetation.  They can't bite or sting.
Above and right - head of a stick insect.  Above right, the tail end of a male stick insect; the structures curving below the abdomen presumably help get everything lined up during mating. 

Below:  Dragonflies were unusually conspicuous at Santa Rosa, even during the dry season.  All dragonflies have aquatic (or nearly aquatic) larvae so their abundance in a dry place is a bit of a mystery although a large specimen such as this could have flown in from a great distance.  In addition, any temporary ponds that do form in the seasonal forest are not very likely to contain fish.  Since fish are important predators of larval odonates, fish-free ponds are ideal places for dragonflies to lay their eggs, and some species routinely fly hundreds of miles following the rains in search of such temporary ponds. 
The coati pictured above is a raccoon relative and very similar ecologically.  Stink bugs feed by piercing the plant and sucking out its juices; the brown spots on the plant above may be evidence of earlier feeding.  Stink bugs, as their names imply, can emit an odiferous mix of noxious chemicals to deter predators, and some advertise the presence of this chemical defense with bright colors.

Left:  during the day, the milk frogs liked to hang out in the drain pipes for the concrete washbasins at the dorms.  It was one of the few moist places.  Without the presence of humans I'm not sure that the milk frogs would live at Santa Rosa, except in proximity to natural sources of water that would persist through the dry season.  

Below, a moth attracted in to the lights, and an ant lion at the bottom of his pit.  Ant lions need areas with sandy soils and protection from rain; in the dry season at least the latter requirement is easy to fulfill.
Another odd find at the lights was the water scavenger beetle, which, as its name implies, is normally found in water.  The adults, however, do range far from water looking for new ponds to colonize and they are well-known for being attracted to lights.  This one was about 2 inches (5cm) long.  Moths, of course, are also active at night and drawn to lights.  The lepidopteran fauna of Santa Rosa has been fairly well-studied, but it is hard to find good references to identify the individual species one sees.
One of the most interesting mutualistic symbiotic relationships that can be seen at Santa Rosa is that between the Acacia trees and the Acacia ants, most of which are in the genus Pseudomyrmex.  The ants protect the trees by removing insect herbivores, clinging vines, parasitic plants, and even competing plants in the immediate vicinity.  In the meantime, the Acacia trees attract the ants in 3 ways:

First, the trees provide large hollow thorns for the ants to live in (above).  The thorns help protect the acacia from large vertebrate herbivores and also provide the ants with a home.  If the tree is disturbed, the ants come out of the thorns.  Second, the acacia has nectaries (both pictures above).  These swellings have a small indentation in the middle, in which a pool of sugary nectar forms.  The ants drink the nectar and get carbohydrates and water at the same time.  Third, the plants produce protein-rich Beltian bodies on new leaves (right and below).  These structures are cleaved off by the ants and consumed; the protein allows the queen ant to produce additional eggs and gives the workers a source of protein to feed the growing larvae (adult insects do not grow and thus need little protein unless they are producing eggs).

Some other organisms are able to take advantage of this mutualism.  Some birds build their nests in acacia trees; their nests are protected by the ants (how the birds avoid the ants is something of a mystery).  Other organisms such as wasps also build their nests preferentially in acacia trees.  We also saw a number of insects on the acacias.  Preying mantids were not uncommon, and it makes sense that the acacia would not mind having the preying mantis there as it would be eating herbivorous insects, but why the ants would tolerate the mantids is not clear.  There was also a stink bug that was common in the acacia; presumably it was protected fromt he ants by its chemical defenses.

 

Above Left:  The sensitive "fern" is interesting because they can fold their leaves up when mechanically disturbed.  If you brush against them, the leaves will fold up in about 1 second.  On the plant pictured above left you can see a few of the leaves in their folded position.  This is actually a flowering plant, not a fern!

The Crested Guan is a large turkey-sized bird named for the Guanacaste Province where it is found.

To the left, Dr. Brown counts money out before a trip into Liberia.  All costs for the students were included in the price of the trip.  When we were eating a a field station it was simple enough to pay for everyone; likewise when we all went to a restaurant we could arrange for a single bill.  The problem came when we decided to turn everyone loose to feed themselves, at which point the "Bank of Dave" would open and distribute a few thousand colones to everyone to pay for lunch.

Below, a typical breakfast at the field station dining hall; pictured here is a sweet pancake, scrambled eggs, and, of course, rice and beans.  A fruit drink rounds out the meal.  There was a wide variety of tropical fruit juices on the menu.
Above:  Some of the students playing cards in the dining hall.  Another popular pursuit was looking at the animals (and photographing them) as they came in to the lights in the evening.  Right:  Dinnertime.

Below:  In general biology we talk about the Lycophytes - club mosses - as being a "primitive" plant, dependent on water for reproduction and unable to live in dry places as a result.  Thus, it was surprising to see club mosses growing profusely on the forest floor in the rainy season in 2007.  We didn't see them at all in 2005.

Below right, our man in Guanacaste, Eladio Castro.  Eladio, a champion surfer and ecotourism pioneer, arranged much of our travel in the area, including getting us to and from the beach at Nancite (the 2005 death march).  Here he is packing us off to the bus station in Liberia.
It wasn't all fun and games.  We did some serious work as well.  The main event in Santa Rosa was a transect, similar to the ones we did in La Selva (2005) and La Suerte (2007).  We did transects in Santa Rosa both years, but in 2005 it was the first transect and in 2007 the second one.  In addition, the fact that the 2007 transect took place early in the rainy season as opposed to late in the dry season made a huge difference.

Above - planning for the transect.  Rather than work from a worksheet we talk the class through the kind of information we want to gather and how to go about doing it.  Above right:  a line is snaked through the forest on a set compass bearing, with measurements taken at random intervals along the way.

Right:  We use a modified point-quadrant technique.  At each random point along the main transect we construct an imaginary line perpendicular to the transect line and measure from the center point to the nearest tree in each of the 4 resulting quadrants.  This gives us a feel for tree density.  We also measure circumference of the trees 4 feet off the ground to give us a feel for tree size, age, distribution, etc.

As you can see in the images below, it was a lot harder to see what we were doing with the leaves out during the rainy season in 2007.  The transects both years took place in the same stretch of forest.
One of the more interesting organisms at Santa Rosa were the Tailless Whipscorpions or Amblypygids.  These creatures are relatives of both scorpions and spiders.  We got glimpses in 2005, but had some good views in 2007 around the field station.  These creatures are carnivores which seize small prey.  The one above is the empty exoskeleton left behind after a molt.  The top of the body is opened up (this is where the whipscorpion backed out of its old skin) and you can see the inside of the body is divided up into several regions, one for each leg.  Like spiders, whipscorpions extend their legs by hydraulic pressure, and it is these chambers which muscles compress to force fluids into the legs and extend them (they are retracted by muscles).  Whipscorpions do not have a stinger like a true scorpion.

We saw the bats roosting in a historical building at the National Park.  The tarantula, below, was living in a hole by the side of the driveway a few meters from the dorms.  During the day its hole was covered with webs; the spider itself came out at night.
In 2005 I was introduced to one of the best beverages I have ever tasted, guanabana con leche, which is made from the tropical guanabana fruit, milk, and sugar (all whipped into a milkshake-consistency by a blender).  Since then, I have kept a sharp eye out for the fruit wherever I went.  I was pleasantly surprised, then, in 2007, to discover it growing in the form of several trees near the dining hall.  The trees, probably intentionally or accidentally planted there by people, were even bearing some young fruit while we were there.

Dr. Brown was able to buy an almost mature fruit in La Fortuna, and on our last morning in Santa Rosa we decided it was time to give it a try.  We procured a large knife from the kitchen and dug in.  It's a messy process, and one can see why the drink form would be preferred as being much less messy (on a good day in Costa Rica you can find guanabana yogurt or ice cream).  The fruit was sweet and delicious, with hints of banana, guava and mango - at least to my palate.  Some of the Tican staff were quite excited to see the fruit and eagerly accepted our invitation to dig in.  
Above:  A delicate pink mushroom on some rotting wood.  Above right: One rainy night we spotted this Sheep Frog near the dorms.

Right:  A lot of research is going on at the field station.  Here, a leaf litter trap is set up to catch falling leaves and give researchers an idea about the resources available on the forest floor.

Below:  A spectacular golden scarab beetle (left) and a tightly coiled millipede (right).
After being there in the dry season in 2005, the change with the coming of the rains in 2007 was astounding.  All of the trees had leaves and the brown forest floor was covered with patches of green.  Formerly dry streambeds were running with water.  Overhead, the leaves of the canopy closed to block out most of the sky.
Finally, as mentioned earlier, for some reason there are a lot of sphinx moths and their caterpillars (called horntails) in Guanacaste.  We found the large moth above (genus Xylophanes) at the lighted windows one night.  As you can see, it is a specatular insect from the same family that produces the tobacco hornworms that feed on your tomatoes in the summer (yes, tomato hornworms are more commonly found on tobacco and tobacco hornworms more often on tomatoes).  We also saw a number of caterpillars such as the large hornworm to the right.
 

 

 

 

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