But for a few other outbuildings, this is Las Cuevas Research Station. This building is dorm room, cafeteria, and lab all in one. Visiting researchers sleep in modest double rooms at one end, work in the lab at the other end, and share their meals in the central dining room. Like most structures in Belize, the building is on stilts to put it out of the path of floodwaters.

“On a typical day, we tend to get up quite early, around 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning. That's when the sun comes up in Belize because it's on the equatorial belt. We get this chorus of scarlet macaws and parrots and a multitude of birds in the morning.” —Chris Minty, Station Manager