Manders by the handful

Things are still quiet in the field since the big movement in almost a week ago.  A few stragglers show up every day, but no big events.  Today there were more Anolis than anything else since it was an absolutely gorgeous sunny in the high 70's.  Good day for trick or treating!  Think my last trick or treaters just left.  For those of you that live closer to the edge of the range for marbled salamanders it can be hard to imagine just how many a single wetland can have here.  Hopefully today's photos helps put it in perspective---these are just some of the salamanders from a single bin so from no more than 3 buckets.  Pretty crazy.  I spent years trying to get tissue samples from fox squirrels and gray foxes--after a couple years I had about 300 fox samples.  I can get my hands on more marbled salamanders than that in about a minute!!!  I started studying amphibians in college, glad to be back to them---just can't beat that sample size, plus they are just wicked cool.
Happy Halloween!
Photo comes from Robert Horan.

It wasn't just opacum diggin' the rain

The other night when it rained we got a more than just marbled salamanders.  Got a  handful of bullfrog juveniles and a slimy salamander.  But the great find for the  night was a newt.  Way back when the drift fence at Rainbow Bay was first put in red-spotted newts were quite common, now they are very rare.  This one was just hanging out on the "flotation device" and was incredibly cooperative for his photo shoot.  Pulled the wood out of the bucket and he just hung out, then we managed to get a marbled salamander to join the fun.  Love it when you can get multi-species photos.  At first there was a beetle using the newt as a couch, would have been great to have the beetle, newt, and marlbed salamander all together but critters don't always think of our photo ops. 

Anyway, not much has happened at the fence since the rain earlier this week.  Mostly David has been frantically measuring and photographing the over 1500 that came in and then releasing them as soon as possible.  No rain in site so it should be quiet.

Both photos are from Maria Ruiz-Lopez. 

Marbled salamanders lovin’ the rain

Some more photos from Monday night.  Without video it’s a bit tough to capture the behavior that was going on as the salamanders came to the fence from the woods, but I’ll try to give a feel for it from stills.  First, thanks to Maria Ruiz-Lopez, a postdoc visiting the lab from Univ. of Missouri to do some genetic work on raccoon MHC.  Maria took all of the above photos.  Ok, so looking at the top left you have two salamanders interacting.  They were kind of sizing each other up, moving alongside each other and then they kind of go head to tail and “circle” around each other.  Moving clockwise in photo two you’ve got the same two animals together but note you’ve got 3 more heading their way, then in the next photo one has joined the party so you have 3 interacting and 2 heading in.  Moving down to the bottom left now you have 4 interacting and moving all over each other and 1 just about ready to join the fun.  In the next photo all 5 are partaking in the opacum fun, but it was very temporary and in the next photo you can see the group is dispersing.  This was going on all over the place Monday night.  Unfortunately almost every time we came up to them with our bright headlamps they refused to play along and stopped what they were doing.  We found spermatophores all over the place too.  Like most nights of big migrations it was clear that males were showing up first and then females later.  Too bad for the boys, I think most of their spermatophores were wasted!   May have more rain tonight, we’ll see how many more are waiting to come in.  Pretty sure about 1500 came in Monday and already about 1000 had dribbled in over the previous weeks.  Just glad I’m not the one measuring, weighing, and photographing almost every one of them!  It’s easier to write about it!

Rain!!! It finally rained!

Thought it would  never happen, but we finally got some rain today.  Had some good downpours and thunderstorms.  I know not everyone is so thrilled for rain, but we were long overdue---and the salamanders seemed to be getting desperate.  First thing that needed to get done is the guys had to finish “processing” the over 400 that came into the bay the other day because tonight will likely be a good night for mating so they really wanted to get those manders back out there.  David returned them around 5pm today and saw that new animals were already moving into the bay and some males were already doing some mating behavior.  Again, this isn’t the norm around here---you’d expect them not to start moving and mating until later at night, but I guess when you finally get some rain you go for it.  Several of us went out tonight to see what’s going on, collect some of them from the buckets so there won’t be too many in the buckets in the morning, and to make sure they all have “flotation devices.”  I have a postdoc from Univ. of Missouri visiting this week so I took her out and she loved it!  She had a much better camera with her than I did so tomorrow I’ll post some better photos.  They were moving every where you looked--so much so that you had to walk very carefully and shine your light everywhere you are thinking about stepping. You can pick up all the ones along one stretch of fence, then turn around and do it again b/c there are so many moving around.  It’s just really cool when you think about the fact they were out in the woods out of sight just a bit ago and then like magic they all show up in one place.  We just got back a while ago and plan is to be back out there early tomorrow so the photos tonight are a bit rushed---basically starting in the upper left and going clockwise you’ve got: a bucket full, three that had been hanging out together by the fence until I showed up and they started moving apart, one about to drop into a bucket full, two that were doing a bit of the circular motion mating display, one climbing over a log, and one literally on the fence.  Salamanders rock. 

Cricket frog day

The fall season at Rainbow Bay continues to be confusing.  A few more marlbed salamanders came in but the winner today was the southern cricket frog, Acris gryllus.  We don’t get a ton of these in the buckets, but tend to see them hopping all over the place near the fence. They are one of the species that can hop the fence so we have some basic data on their numbers at the bay, but nothing as detailed as we do for many other species. They have some serious “ups” and watching someone try to catch one can be pretty entertaining.  I was the entertainment today as I tried to grab a bunch of them.  They let you get nice and close and then ‘sproing’ and you are left empty handed, but convinced you’ll get them before the next jump.  Works for me with about half of them and then other half I give up on. We probably had about 10 or so at the fence today and a few yesterday and aren’t really sure what has them moving around. It’s not their breeding season and it’s still as dry as can be outside.  Cricket frogs are really cool and they have a ton of different color patterns--check this out to see a couple of really beautiful ones. Around here it can also get confusing because we get both northern and southern cricket frogs and they can be tough to tell apart.

It is actually supposed to rain tomorrow but given the way the season is going probably no marbleds will move tomorrow night!  We’ll see.

Marbled salamanders (and spermatophores) with no rain!

 We’re all learning a lot about marbled salamanders this year!  Everything you’d ever read about them says they won’t migrate to their wetland unless it rains and they don’t mate except on rainy nights.  This year we had a movement of over 350 last week with no rain---but there was a front moving through.  Last night was an even bigger migration and there was no rain at night.  We had a few sprinkles during the day at the lab, but the rain gauge at the bay said NO rain.  Yet, this morning three of us went out together because we just had that sense that last night may have been the closest thing to the right conditions that we’ve had yet.  Sure enough we got several hundred.  And man are the males ready!  If you look closely at the picture on the top you can spot several spermatophores.  The most obvious one is toward the upper right part--basically look for the bright white spot.  The males put down a spermatophore which has a base that looks like a clear jelly and then the sperm packet is on the top.  The females have to position themselves over a spermatophore and pick up the sperm packet. We put “floats” in all of the buckets--usually a piece of wood and in this case the males were using the floats as a mating ground!  Unfortunately for them, most of the sperm was left on the base so doesn’t look like the females were quite as ready as the males.  As an aside last year David Scott and I had a study going in which we collected every spermatophore put down by males in enclosures--now I have boxes and boxes of hundreds of spermatophores I need to extract DNA from.  It’ll be a cool study when I finally get back to it! 

The picture on the bottom shows all the bins we used today to bring the manders back to the lab.  Brian Metts is posing with the buckets.  Brian is one of the guys who has “run” Rainbow Bay the most over the years.

Bin o’ manders

Well David finished processing the over 350 marbled salamanders that Brian found at the fence on Friday so I got to help do another release today.  We know there are nearly 500 in Rainbow Bay now this season, but it’s not likely any mating has occurred since it remains bone dry out there.  I always enjoy releasing them--as you can see in the photo they tend to pile up together in the bins, but as soon as you release them they head their own way.  Today there was one smallish male that absolutely took off upon release.  It was hysterical to watch, usually the wriggle a little ways and quickly start to burrow under leaf litter--this little dude just booked--he must have covered a few feet in just a few seconds.  A friend was there with me and we both started cracking up watching this guy run for it.  Not sure where he was headed but he seemed to be on a mission---figure maybe he had some personal space issues and the bin environment had taken its toll and he was overwhelmed with joy to be free of his fellow manders!  That was a  case where I wish I had some video.

The opacum must be crazy!

 What a crazy marbled salamander season!  It is bone dry outside--even the normal humidity we experience here is gone--yet yesterday Brian found over 350 salamanders at Rainbow Bay (see his comment on entry from 10-14).  When we bring the salamanders from the field to the lab we put them in ziplock bags or plastic bins with lots of moist paper towels--like the stack of bins in the upper right photo.  When Brian put the marbleds in bins it seems they were thrilled for some moisture at long last. By the time he got back to SREL there were spermatophores in the bins!  Males weren’t going to pass up the opportunity.  Yesterday was really the first day a reasonable number of females starting showing up.  Today I got to help release a lot of the sals caught yesterday.  As mentioned before--they get brought back to the lab to be “processed”--meaning many of them get to pose for photos, get weighed, and get measured.  It’s really fun to release them, we clear a little spot in the leaf litter, put them down and watch them go--as in the photo in the bottom.  They are pretty quick to start burrowing their way under the litter--you can see this a little in the brief video I uploaded to You Tube.  One of the sals found yesterday was really unique--all of them have unique patterns but this one was nearly entirely black which only happens about 1 out of every 3,000 sals.  The one in the picture in the middle had very faint white bands across it’s tail but other than that it was all black. Pretty cool find.

Redbellied snake

Our dry spell continues but today there were a couple of snakes to be found and more desperate marbled salamanders came to Rainbow Bay.  The above picture is quite out of focus (sorry) but is of a Redbellied snake, Storeria occipitomaculata.  Two of these have been spotted this week, one at dry bay and one today at the H-02 wetlands.  These snakes remain pretty small and mostly eat slugs.  There was also a Black Racer at H-02 today.  Unfortunately I didn’t get to see it since I didn’t help run the bays today!  Figures it would work that way.  At least I got to see the Redbellied snake from Dry Bay since it was brought back to the lab.  There is a very slight chance of rain tonight so hopefully more than a handful of marbleds will come to the bay tomorrow.  I may have to start investigating to see if those that have entered have starting mating and laying eggs.  Hard for me to imagine them going through their courtship behavior in the bone dry nights we’ve had, but desperate times....

Still no rain....

..and it is starting to look like the marlbed salamanders are getting desperate.  Absolutely no rain for days and yesterday was hotter than it’s been in a week or so, yet there were about 10-15 marbleds at the drift fence today!  Was pretty surprising, but it’s getting close to the time of year where they’ll move without the right conditions because time’s running short.  Another week or so and we can expect that with any rain at all they’ll come in in bigger numbers.  Also found a surprising number of bullfrog juveniles today---in the bucket pictured above we found one salamander and three bullfrogs---initially all were sharing the same piece of floating wood but only one stayed for a photo!  Not surprising there were also a bunch of Anolis running around.  Had a visitor at the lab last week from Asheville, NC and she said the marbleds have already entered the wetlands in big numbers up there--makes sense they’d be well ahead of us.  I hope the forecast changes---no rain in sight for a week at least.  Not looking great for the marbleds!

Lizard weather

Well it hasn’t rained in over a week and there’s no rain in sight---so, no salamanders to speak of.  But with the fantastic sunny weather we have been seeing a lot of Anolis lizards at both Rainbow Bay and the H-02 wetlands.  Many of them are clearly the young from this year and none of them were willing to pose for a photo.  The one in the upper left was actually one of the biggest Anolis I’ve seen here.  At the H-02 we also got to see this great fence lizard.  I don’t get to see them nearly as often.  If you like these guys you can read more about the Anolis or Sceloporus.  Hopefully we’ll get some rain eventually, I’m more than eager to find buckets full of marlbed salamanders!

Snazzy opacum photos

About thirty more desperate male marbled salamanders came into Rainbow Bay today.  Our brief chance of rain came and went without a drop.  Only warning on the weather channel now is for high risk of fire!  In other words, it’s going to stay dry for a while.  Thought I’d show you what these guys look like when they get their photos taken.  All of them are put on the same background (some red felt), illuminated from above, and a counter is kept in the field of view.  All marlbeds coming into the bay that have a cohort mark (meaning they were born in the bay and have been marked in a way that we know what year they were born).  The critter on the left is a one-year old and on the left is a three-year old.  These two have fairly similar patterns but still you can tell them apart by the patterns of the white “bars” across their backs and the amount of white on the head.  Since the “cohort” mark doesn’t provide an individual mark the photos can serve that purpose.  Also just shows how incredibly beautiful they are!  Ok, time to do a rain dance.

Praying Mantis

Yet another gorgeous fall day in SC!  Tagged along to run Rainbow Bay just to have an excuse to get outside in the field.  Did get one marbled salamander, a couple more bullfrog juveniles, and some Anolis lizards running along the fence, but the highlight for me today was this gorgeous paying mantis.  Wasn’t at the drift fence--we stopped to take some plant cuttings (Baptesia, Sassafras, and a Vaccinium)--and saw this critter just hanging out.  It stayed put for me to take a lot of photos which I really appreciated. I think this time of year is when their mating season is so hopefully they’ll be out and about more often.

Beautiful fall day...

The morning light was gorgeous on the ride to Rainbow Bay, but no salamanders.  Back to dry weather and no rain in the forecast for the weekend so no more marbled salamanders likely to enter the bay.  Did get a few juvenile bullfrogs in the buckets.  At one of our wetlands, the H-02 constructed wetlands, we’re getting bullfrog metamorphs coming out so this seems to be the time for them.  Bullfrogs don’t reproduce at Rainbow Bay because the hydroperiod (the length of time the bay holds water) isn’t long enough for them.  They breed in the late spring and need several months to develop.  Many of the bays on the SRS typically dry up too quickly for bullfrogs to succeed.  When we see them at Rainbow Bay they are usually juveniles moving through the landscape from other nearby wetlands.