We made it to Panama City! After settling in, we spent the evening at Las Clementinas, a fancy restaurant featuring two musicians playing background music and our first taste of Panamanian beer. Today we are hiking through the Metropolitan Park, one of the only urbanized parts of the rainforest, located in the middle of Panama City. The view above is from this transitional forest, which morphs from wet to dry, making it even more distinctive. Over the next few hours we learned about the various species, climate, and wildlife that inhabits this unique park.
This is an ant nest created by Meramax ant saliva. The ants have a mutualistic relationship with the tree in that they provide the tree with protection through the nests, and the tree provides a habitat for the ants.
Another example of mutualism is the relationship between bullhorn acacia and stinging ants. The ants benefit from the plant by hollowing out the horns and living inside of the hornlike spikes seen above. The tree provides the ants with food and nutrients and in return, the ant protects the tree from any other species that might cause it harm.
The tree shown above is a Cecropria, or more commonly known as the Trumpet Tree, so named because of it's hollow trunks. The tree has external roots that work as support and to make it easier to obtain nutrients from the air and rain falling down the trunk. This is important because the soil of rainforests is actually very infertile since there are so many plants that have already leached the essential nutrients from the soil, leaving behind fine red clay clay which other nutrients wash off of the top of. Due to the little nutrients in the soil, trees don't survive too long as far as trees go. Trumpet trees are pioneers to secondary growth, meaning they are the first to emerge after the initial cycle of trees die.
The Gumbo Limbo, also known as the naked tree, looks as if the bark is peeling off the trunk of the tree. The natives jokingly call it the "tourist tree" because it looks like a really bad peeling sunburn. The peeling fake bark overlays the true smooth bark underneath and is produced in response to where animals climb the most in order to make it slippery, making it difficult for animals to eat their fruit.
This is the Panama tree, the national tree of Panama. The bottom features modified roots, and the top sports a large crown at the crux of the trunk and branches, which umbrella out. Since this space in the middle is so large, it is favored for nesting by the large harpy eagle.

This little guy is cute!
Here you can see a couple of leaf-cutter ants carrying leaves that they have harvested. These ants are eusocial and have complex underground nests that harvest fungus cultivations for nutrients. The female ants are the workers and the males stay at the nest only for reproductive purposes. The sgt. major ants have larger non-toxic mandibles which aid in protection against predators.
To finish off day one, we visited the BioMuseo which focused on the biodiversity of Panama and the impact of time and various forces on the geography and life and its impact on the rest of the world. After the tour, our amazing and wonderful tour guide, Fabio provided us with the most delicious pineapple we had ever tasted. The fruit was so ripe that it looked more orange than it did yellow. What a great way to end our day!
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