Back from the long hot summer

To the few of you who were loyally following the blog I apologize for disappearing.  After a cold dry winter we had an even dryer summer which made things somewhat uninteresting in the field here.  That is of course unless you absolutely love spiders b/c we find TONS of those--like the one in the photo.  But fall is here and with or without rain the marbled salamanders dutifully return to their breeding grounds.  This year we have a much bigger study going with them.  Near the main study site, Rainbow Bay, are four other wetlands that marbleds go to: Linda's Pond, Bullfrog Pond, Pickerel Pond, and NPR pond.  One question we are interested in is how much movement is there among the ponds.  In the past David Scott has done some work on several species of Ambystomatid salamanders to estimate dispersal from Rainbow Bay to the other sites.  We're doing it again this year b/c in the Spring of 2010 we had over 10,000 marbled salamander metamorphs come out of Rainbow.  This fall would be when most of those are ready to breed so we can see which pond they show up at (they all are marked).  It was hard work but we (ie: David) opened up partial fences at the other sites and now several of us are running all the bays when it rains (rarely).  We've had about 2000 adults come back to Rainbow so far and much less than that at the partial fences, but we've definitely seen some that were born at RB and have dispersed to other sites.  Will be great to get the final numbers later.  The image shows how the wetlands are related to each other and where the fences are located.


Off to The Wildlife Society meeting in Hawaii tomorrow!!