Category Archives: Gallery

Campus sloth

Three-toed sloth - 04.20.2009 - 16.02.20 Three-toed sloth - 04.20.2009 - 16.11.11

 

I didn’t shoot the greatest photographs, but I wanted to share some photos of a sloth on the Universidad de Costa Rica-San Pedro campus.  In the bosquito (small forest) surrounding a stream that runs though the center of the campus, there is a large diversity of wildlife, including sloths, momots, and various parrots.  It was incredible to see these kinds of animals, living wild, on a college campus in the center of a dense city. 

This sloth had ventured away from the bosquito to feed on a tree outside the biology department.  As I was studying an aquatic invertebrate collection in a lab, I noticed a group of people looking up into the tree outside the windows.   I eventually ventured out to see and discovered this sloth, but it was a bit to late in the day and dark to get decent photographs with my relatively slow (high f-stop) telephoto lens. 

Physalaemus pustulosus

Physalaemus pustulosus - 06.14.2009 - 13.01.35

A tiny, common Leptodactylid, Physalaemus pustulosus (the Pustuled thin-toed frog) could easily be mistaken for a toad (Bufonidae) because of its warty skin.  It lacks obvious paratid glands, but the adult is so small (probably a maximum of 4-g) that it’s difficult to identify.  The first ones I saw had fallen in a bucket-trap during the day and had dried out, so I mistakenly identified them as toadlets. 

The males are easily identified by their blotchy, dark chin.

62!

A tentative herp count from my four months in Costa Rica: 62 species.  It may increase (or decrease) slightly as I add and update photographs with uncertain identification and scientific names from Savage and Bolanos (Zootaxa 2009).  The majority of the herps discovered were reptiles, which makes sense, given my extended stay in the dry forest.  I missed out on much of the phenomenal diversity of anurans and didn’t see a single salamander because they tend to be more diverse in wetter parts of the country.  When I was in those areas (i.e., the Osa Penninsula), it was the dry season, so many of the herps were hiding out.

herps of CR