Was all excited for the "big rain" we were to get over the weekend.  It only amounted to a total of 4.4mm over two days--not much to talk about.  It did make it wet enough for 40 or so marbled salamanders to leave the bay, but not much else moving.  It's sprinkling tonight and rumor has it it may rain tomorrow and Wednesday.  I'm not going to hold my breath.  But as I've said before we can always count on a ton of invertebrates to be at the fence.  We typically have a LOT of millipedes and centipedes in the buckets.  Today I tried to get a video of a centipede--they move really fast so it's not exactly in focus but at least it shows their  cool movement.  enjoy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

On Thanksgiving day I'll be thankful for many things including the wonderful invertebrates that are always at the drift fence--hot, cold, dry, or wet they are always there to keep things interesting.  We get a ton of these very large crickets and are now getting a lot of what I'll naively just call wooly bears.  Looks like our crazy summer weather should come to an end tomorrow and we'll get back to normal temperatures and some rain.  Hopefully that will mean some amphibian action for Saturday.  Rain may even come tonight so one of our dutiful bay runners (not me) got to work at the crack of dawn today to process the salamanders that left the bay the other day to make sure they got released before the next rain. Keeping the Rainbow Bay fence going is quite the commitment--no holidays missed in 30 years!


Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!

At least mice come out to play when it's dry!

78 degrees today and dry as a bone--needless to say not the ideal weather for amphibians.  But we managed to get one southern toad and one green frog leaving the bay and one very late marbled salamander entering the bay.  A fun find was this adorable Peromyscus in one of the buckets--must admit I have a soft spot for mice.  It was very nervous, but quite healthy and happy to be released back into the woods.  We don't get these very often in the buckets, get a few shrews here and there, but not that many mice.  We get a mix of Peromyscus on site with most being white-footed mouse, cotton mouse, or oldfield mouse. 

At least the mice are active in this drought.  To give a feel for just how dry it is--Brian went to Ellenton bay the other day and went to the water gauge in the deepest part of the "wetland."  He dug down to -40 inches and still hadn't reached water.  Doesn't bode well.  Really hoping to get more Gopher frog samples this spring but will need water for that!

It's good to have an incubator

I really really wanted to post something yesterday because we went into the H02 wetlands looking for green treefrogs (Hyla cinerea) and found a few.  I needed a little tissue for DNA extractions but they are so photogenic I figured they'd be perfect for the blog.  That was a great plan until my camera fell into the water.  Yep, totally submerged and covered in duckweed.  Brought it back to the lab and pulled out the battery and memory card and put everything into my 37 degree incubator.  Twenty-four hours later it worked great!!!  No wetlands today but have a couple photos of fall plant life. The club moss is from around Rainbow Bay, but have to confess the Mexican marigold is just from my yard---just had to test that the camera is indeed dry and functional! 

The opacum are already starting to leave!

Got a whole 8mm of rain yesterday.  Went to Rainbow Bay first thing this morning and really didn't expect to see too many marbled salamanders.  figured they used last night to play the  mating game and on the next rainy night they'd start leaving the bay.  Turns out a few had had enough already.  Totally surprised to find several "handfuls" of salamanders in the first few buckets. Still had a few stragglers just now making it into the bay as well!  Plus a bunch of bull frog juveniles passing through.  Plus the newt we saw enter the bay a few weeks ago decided it was time to go.   It will certainly take a LOT more than 8mm of rain to get the bay to start filling.  Such is the life of a pond-breeding amphibian, some years things work out, some years they don't.  This year isn't lookin' so good.

Maybe some salamander love tonight

So far we're still seeing more reptiles than amphibians at the drift fences.  Getting several Anolis each day (like the one in the photo) and at the H02 wetlands there were two garter snakes the other day.  Unfortunately I wasn't there and didn't get a photo.  But a miracle happened today---it rained!  Not sure how much we got, were supposed to get about a half an inch.  No way the bay will start filling yet, but hopefully the marbled salamanders can at least come out from hiding and play the mating game.  Should be some nests being built tonight!  If so, on the next few rainy nights the male salamanders may start leaving the bay while the females will stick around and tend to their nests.

Well even if I can't share awesome salamander photos during our drought I can at least share the wonderful fall days we've been having.  It's been absolutely glorious with days in the 70's and nights in the 30's.  Even with nothing going on in the Bay I've been trying to go often just for an excuse to get outside.  Today we returned some salamanders that were caught over the last week or so---just a few stragglers that came in and needed to be processed.  The cool thing was that one female actually laid a few eggs in the bin we had them in.  That's how desperate they are--put them in a bin with wet paper towels and it's the closest thing they've seen to good breeding conditions!  Just a few eggs so hopefully when it finally does rain she'll still have plenty of eggs to lay.  Slight chance of rain Monday!  I'll be keeping my fingers crossed.

Missing the rain

Looks like I picked the wrong year to start blogging about drift fences!  Today it's 75 degrees and dry.  Been that way for a while and all forecasts suggests we'll have a very dry winter.  It's the La Niña aftermath of our wonderfully wet El Niño year last year.  I feel bad for the over 1500 salamanders that made the trek to the bay and are now just hanging out waiting for a rainy night to set the mood for a night of salamander lovin'.  In thinking of all those salamanders I figured I'd share another photo from the big migration day.  Each bin you see on the right has anywhere from 50-100 marbled salamanders (and one slimy salamander and a few bullfrog juveniles).  On the left is Brett DeGregorio who has been helping run the fence lately (and he's a New England Patriots fan like me so we're still recovering from Sunday's awful game).

Fence Repair

Back from Missouri and was happy to get a chance to go back out to Rainbow Bay.  Gorgeous fall day so it was a great excuse to be outside for a bit.  We haven't had rain since a few days ago so there wasn't much to speak of in the buckets but it was a great day to do some fence repair.  Maintaining drift fences can actually be a lot of work.  Over time each bucket needs to be replaced, trees fall on sections of fence, holes show up under sections of fence etc etc.  The guys got most of the outer buckets fixed before the marbleds moved into the bay and now it's time to make sure all the inside buckets are in good shape before they come back out of the bay.  In the photos you can see the progression from upper left then clockwise where you dig out the old bucket, put in a new bucket--which needs to be flush with the fence, put a new sheet of fence over a worn out stretch and pack sand and dirt all around, and then replace all the leaf litter around the bucket so that hopefully you can barely tell anything happened.  sounds pretty simple but I'm always impressed with the care that goes into the process.  It's really critical that the bucket is as flush as possible to the fence, otherwise something the size of a salamander can walk along the fence and not fall in the bucket.  It's also really important to pack the sand and dirt down to make the surrounding area flush with the bucket top--even after rain and trampling--same basic reason--a salamander walking along the ground that bumps into the lip of a bucket isn't going to fall in! 

Miserable in Missouri

Our fearless leader, Stacey Lance, is away at a conference in Kansas City teaching the world about genetics and is unable to blog. Brian Metts and I will fill in while she's gone. We were excited to check the fences this morning as its been raining all night with at least 2 cm accumulated so far. However, when we met this morning to go check the drift fence we realized that David Scott beat us to the punch. David, afraid that the buckets may have filled up and could possible drown salamanders, had arrived very early and run the fence. He found 15 marbled salamanders in the buckets, fewer than we had expected. We think this may signify that the animals headed to the pond to breed this year have already made their move. As its going to continue to rain for the next day or so, we'll keep our fingers crossed that we get one more pulse of animals heading to the wetland, but it may be quiet for a while.

We'll head out tomorrow to see if the bay is filling up yet....

Manders strutting their styles

Well there's still not much happening at the fences due to lack of rain. We may have some tonight or tomorrow and I'll be out of town (conference in KC) so hopefully Brett, Brian or David will let everyone know what's happening.

In previous posts I've mentioned that every marbled salamander has a unique pattern--which is why we can use photos to ID individuals.  Robert Horan gave me this photo the other day and it perfectly illustrates how variable the patterns can be.  The one in the upper left has very little white down the middle and the white is actually pretty gray which usually is the case for females.  Then the one on the right is more white than black with very thick "dog bones" across the back.  On the bottom you have what I consider the more typical "dog bone" pattern with thin white bars that go across the back and are thicker on the ends--hence the dog bone.  All three of these have a decent amount of white/gray on their heads, but that is something else that can vary a ton.  Hopefully some day we can actually do some work to figure out more about why they have such different patterns and whether it matters for mate choice or competition among males.