Gopher frogs

Figured it's time to post again even though absolutely NOTHING is happening at the drift fences.  Still dry and cold.  We did get some snow on Sunday which is really unusual for here, but it didn't amount to much.  Certainly not enough to affect water levels!  Took these photos of a couple gopher frogs, Rana capito, we have in captivity for the winter.  They were born last spring at Craig's Pond--one of the largest bays on site.  They will be released back there this spring, but most likely with some radio transmitters on their backs so Kurt Buhlmann can look at their movements and use of the uplands away from the pond.  Gopher frogs are quite rare and there is a lot of interest in learning more about their habitat requirements and general ecology. Their name comes from their association with Gopher tortoises--they use their burrows!  They are considered endangered, threatened, or at risk in every state in which they occur.  The closely related Mississippi (or dusky) gopher frog, Rana sevosa, used to occur along the gulf coast states but is now federally endangered and restricted to only a few remaining populations.   Hopefully Rana capito won't suffer the same fate, but in SC there are only two main places where these gorgeous frogs can even be found: the Savannah River Site and Francis Marion National Forest.  We only have a few known ponds with gopher frogs on the SRS but we are actively trying to get some tissue samples for DNA so we can get a feel for the genetic health of the remaining populations and compare the populations here and at Francis Marion.  Fellow blogger, David Scott and I are doing the genetic work along with Stephen Richter at Eastern Kentucky University.  Stephen has a lot of experience with the Mississippi gopher frogs and hopefully together we can all learn more about these awesome frogs.

Shrew vs. the salamander

I may not have mentioned it before but marbled salamanders have a nice "goo" on them that is supposed to be distasteful.  They, like some other Ambystomatid salamanders produce noxious secretions thought to deter predators. After handling them my hands have a nice coating of their secretions and it basically looks like you're just dirty--it gets dried and black and pretty hard to get off.  As an aside getting it into your eyes is NOT recommended.  On Friday we caught a shrew in a bucket and decided to see what it would do. Shrews are common predators of salamanders and it's been shown they don't seem to get used to the secretion, but also don't let it deter them.  I've uploaded the video to you tube and you can watch it here. It is clear that the shrew finds the salamander distasteful but irresistible at the same time!  It "tastes" the salamander then rubs it mouth like crazy but comes right back.  Pretty cool to watch.  Rest assured neither the shrew nor the salamander were injured in the making of this film! 

Frozen gators

I thought when I moved to SC from Maine I was heading to a warmer place!  This week it's warmer up there.  We are really having some crazy southern weather.  Didn't get out of the 30's today and ridiculous wind to go with it.  Reminded me of a cold snap we had last winter where the ponds we have out behind the lab froze over for a couple weeks.  In those ponds we have a male and female pair of alligators and some of their offspring.  Many of us took the opportunity to get into the enclosure and take some photos assuming the cold would have them moving pretty darn slowly.  Here are a couple of the photos I took then. One shows the male entirely under the ice except for the breathing hole he created.  In the second one the female had been completely under the ice but when we got a bit too close she broke through and gave us a warning to stay away from her and her babies.  You can see a chunk of ice on her head.  Gators here are pushing the edge of their range so this is not a normal occurrence for them.  Hopefully we'll warm up and get some rain so we can get back to amphibian field work!

It's freezing in SC!

Not much to report lately since it is ridiculously cold for here.  We've gone from unseasonably warm to unseasonably cold very quickly.   Supposed to be 19 degrees F (-7 C) tonight.  Not exactly the best weather for amphibians to be moving around.  The really unusual part for here is that the low is going to be below freezing the rest of the week.  I suspect we'll continue to get a lot of invertebrates in the buckets and the occasional bullfrog juvenile trying to make its way across the landscape. Just for fun here is a cool photo where the color of the bucket causes interesting effects.  It's is a bucket full of leopard frogs from the H-02 wetlands. The photo was taken by David Scott--the person who is really in charge of running and managing the Rainbow Bay study.

Camel crickets everywhere

I got to escape the lab and head to Rainbow Bay today to help check buckets and release some of the 200 or so marbled salamanders that were caught leaving the bay the other day.  We had about 16mm of rain the other night so a bunch of males (and one female) decided it was time to leave the bay.  The males leave before the females----males leave after the mating season is over, but females will continue to stick around and protect their nests for a while.  If we don't get a lot of rain soon even they will eventually give up and leave their nests.  Previous research by major bay runner David Scott has shown that the nests do not do as well without female attendance, but he also showed that females are not eating during this time.  So basically if the rains don't come to fill the bay and stimulate the eggs to hatch, the females eventually have to give up and go.  It's raining a little right now, not enough to do much, but may have more  males taking off tomorrow and I'll be curious to see if females start to go soon.  As usual, even though the bay is dry the buckets were full of invertebrates.  Today seemed to be camel cricket day.  They were in a lot of the buckets.  You can see they have huge "thighs," a humped back, and harder to see, really long antennae.  I think they're pretty cool, most people come across them in their basements and don't seem to think so, but they don't chirp so it's not like they can be considered annoying.  Though I even enjoy the chirping cricket in the basement.

A new bay to explore!!!

Today four of us got to explore a bay that only one of us had ever been to before--and that was many years ago.  We're about to start a new project looking at amphibians in a bay that is contaminated with coal fly ash and we  need a "reference" bay that's nearby, similar habitat but no ash.  Went to check out Bay 100 (we have incredibly exciting bay names eh?) and were all stunned to find water!  It did rain last night but most bays are still bone dry.  In fact Ellenton Bay is now so dry you have to dig to -69 on the depth gauge to find water.  Anyway, Bay 100 is absolutely gorgeous.  It's somewhat amorphous--just a meandering bay right now--full of cypress trees.  It almost felt like walking on a bog, very spongy.  Didn't see any signs of amphibians yet, but we didn't exactly come prepared to find water so we didn't have dip nets etc.  I'm pretty excited to put up some drift fences here and at the nearby contaminated bay and start adding these to our regular sampling routine for a while.  Hopefully we'll have some good finds.  Hope you enjoy the photos--the light was great, not sure I captured it, but mostly it's just never-ending cypress with Spanish moss.  Really, really pretty.