This caterpillar used silk to construct a home by folding a part of a leaf over. The frass in the background of the second image is presumably from the caterpillar, although I didn’t notice any herbivory within the folded leaf.
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Monthly Archives: August 2009
Only when the last river is poisoned
Boa holds (inappropriately) his Coluber mentovarius catch. Paul noticed soon after that it was likely gravid (had eggs inside).
Coluber mentovarius
The last snake Paul saw in Palo Verde was also one of the largest finds. Snout to tip of tail, she was 3.05 m! She was also very aggressive, and nearly got us several times while we too photographs and admired her.
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Physalaemus pustulosus
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.
No leaves
No artificial leaves ever made it to the end of our 30-m release, where the seine was set for their capture. This is an interesting find, since litter biomass is relatively low in the stream itself; where is it going? Are tadpoles, which do appear to be abundant, processing litter?
Trendy
Some of my first attempts to take some trendy macro photographs of various actions. These are a couple of samples of macro photos I took of research in San Ramon. Allison was usually in charge of releasing and calling out artificial leaves into the streams and Mike was timing the releases – thus, our two hand models. I wish that I had played around with the depth of field a little more on these, but I still think they came out well. It’s difficult to take this type of photograph in the field, particularly in a dark, canopy-covered stream bed.
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Down-time
Any available free time in San Ramon, Mike, Erin, Allison and I played cards. We were addicted to cribbage and the bean game (Bohnanza), which was preferred by another student present in the reserve at the time: Kyle. Allison wasn’t quite as bad as the rest of us, reading a book on circadian biology filled with references to tropical organisms on the stream bed as we set up a mock cribbage table on a large boulder.
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Two-headed, aposematic caterpillar
There’s all kinds of potential predation-defense mechanisms going on here.
The Band, Working Hard
For one of the litter releases in Rio San Lorencito, we decided to pose for some photographs. The second photo may be mistaken for a music band, save the rubber boots and overall lack of trendy clothing.
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