Outside Boa’s home, a male Agalychnis callidryas has set up territory in an ornamental plant hanging over a swimming pool. It calls each evening and is regularly successful in procuring some eggs. Here’s a few photos of him and his fertilized eggs. The development of the tadpoles are in various stages – once the tadpoles use up all the yolk in their eggs, they will escape the egg and fall into the pool below the leaf that they are attached to. Unfortunately, there is no water in the pool, but Boa try to rear them in buckets around the house (inadvertently breeding mosquitoes too…). Ants also prey on the developing eggs too.
Daily Archives: 24 June 2013
Swimming in Hitoy
The river at Reserva Biologica Hitoy Cerere is clear and stunningly beautiful. Hiking up the river, I observed several species of fish, spiders, and an interesting crustacean. On the way back, I swam and watched some of the fish investigate me and the disturbance I created. There were several species, but I could only ID to family: characids, cichlids, poeciliids, and eleotrids. Some of the cichlids were rearing young – the adults protected a small school of fry. Additionally, some of the eleotrid (guavinas) males were in breeding color – stunning bright blue.
As I observed some fish in a deep pool, it began to rain and Boa took some photos… it was a bit dark and my camera wasn’t set properly, so the photos are blurry… I’ll just have to go back to get some better photographs.