The Forest at Night

The white faced Capuchin monkeys climb high into the trees to settle in for the night. After a long day of leaping from limb to limb--the longest day of the year, today-- they seek safety from the predators awaking below. Actually, a majority of the forest's creatures are becoming active as the cover of night closes in; sloths begin their slow migration, armadillos shuffle blindly from their dens, tarantulas stalk prey from the mouth of their caves, pit vipers unravel and slip to the forest floor to wait for rodents. The cicada's deafening drone gives way to the rhythmic chirps of crickets. Never quiet and never dark-- fireflies flash at regular intervals, while bioluminescent inchworms are seen sporadically. Lightning on the coast adds to the display, illuminating orange and purple clouds in the distance. The greens of the day, ubiquitous in Costa Rica, fade to rich hues of blue and deep, impenetrable black. Hidden somewhere in this blackness lurk the jaguars that grace the covers of books and countless postcards in Costa Rica's gift shops.

The star of this night, however, is neither rare or creepy, nor cuddly or colorful. The leafcutter ant-- or several million of them-- steal the show with their prodigous work ethic; laboring without stop through the night to serve queen and colony. The smaller ants clean the leaves of parasites and fungal disease, the larger soldier ants guard the colony entrance and protect the workers travelling a hundred feet or more to reach that entrance. The average sized workers, which give the species its name, cut and carry leaves many times their size over huge distances, for the several months they are alive. Deep in the colony (this one was about 18 feet deep and probably the same in diameter) the leaves will incubate a special fungus found only in leafcutter colonies, and its sole source of food.

The fungus cannot exist without the ants, the ants cannot live without this fungus; a whole society is formed around this beautiful relationship. But within a decade, the queen dies and the colony disappears, like so many rays of sunlight beneath the canopy.