2025 Dates

2 weeks: 2 weeks terrestrial only – 16 June – 29 June 2025
2 weeks: 2 weeks terrestrial only – 30 June – 13 July 2025
2 weeks: 2 weeks terrestrial only – 28 July – 10 August 2025
4 weeks: 4 weeks terrestrial only – 16 June – 13 July 2025
4 weeks: 4 weeks terrestrial only – 30 June – 27 July 2025

Calakmul terrestrial biodiversity research experience

Research is completed at a series of forest camps across the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. Arrivals on this programme first complete an introduction to the Ancient Maya and Mayan jungle ecology course alongside practicals in survey techniques. Following this you will be helping teams of field biologists completing standardised surveys on a series of key taxa. These surveys are aimed at assessing the importance of the unique aguada habitats for fauna (aguadas are the only water bodies in the reserve) and understanding the relationship between Ancient Mayan manipulation of the forest and current biodiversity. There are several thousand Ancient Mayan ruin sites in the reserve and the forest adjacent to these areas contains the remnants of 7^th century agroforesty resulting in very high abundance and diversity of fauna. If you stay on site for multiple weeks you can travel to different forest camps to see how the forest changes and to assist with biodiversity surveys.

Key Activities:

• Bats: Mist netting long into the night for bats, where morphometric measurements and measurements relating to body condition and reproductive status of captured bats are taken and species identified. Additional data for insectivorous bats that cannot be caught in mist nets will be collecting using acoustic recorders at mist net locations
• Birds: Mist netting is also conducted early in the morning for birds to capture individuals so that morphological measurements and measurements relating to body condition can be taken and individuals marked for population studies. Student can also help collect bird recordings for development of the Calakmul bird vocalization library
• Large mammal surveys involve recording primate sightings (distance sampling) and terrestrial mammal tracks (patch occupancy sampling) encountered along forest transects during morning surveys accompanied by an afternoon session analysing camera trap data.
• Herpetofauna are surveyed using diurnal and nocturnal visual encounters surveys along line transect. As many herpetofauna aggregate around aguadas (the only water bodies in the forest) diurnal and nocturnal timed searches of for herpetofauna will be conducted at aguada habitats.
• Frugivorous butterflies are surveyed using baited traps in the canopy and understory of different forest types. Forest structure is an essential dataset for the project and you will also assist with carrying out quadrat samples.
• Habitat: Habitat plots will be carried out at set intervals along each survey transect to enable a better understanding of the forest structure and tree species composition across different locations in the reserve and to complement the data collected for all other taxonomic groups.
• Guided tour of the Calakmul archaeological site
• Maya forest ecology lecture series covering: Biodiversity monitoring in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, Forests of the Maya and their importance for primates, Aguadas and their importance for herpetofauna, Birds, bats and butterflies as indicators of ecosystem health in the Neotropics, Felids and ungulates of Calakmul, and Conservation Management.