Last Sunday, we visited the famed Hinkley Reservoir’s Buzzard festival. Although I think we were too late, either in the year or in the afternoon, to see a large roosting flock of vultures, we enjoyed much of the Spring weather with some turkey burgers and watching Brewster, Jenn and Matt’s dog, mope in the grass.
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Tuesday and Thursday of this past week, the two Vertebrate Zoology sections sampled fish assemblages at Jennings’ Woods. Although Tuesday’s weather was less than ideal, raining and cold, the class caught a new fish that we’ve never managed to catch with seining – a Least Brook Lamprey. Unfortunately, the rain and sampling prevented me from taking too many photographs of students in action, seining and giving the-all-too-important fish call. Here’s a few of folks presenting and observing the classes’ catches.
One point of interest that came up during the salamander hunt on Wednesday night was the variation in spotted salamander coloration. Not much hybridization occurs with spotted salamanders (at least not as much as in the Jefferson complex), but this variation could conceivably result from hybridization. I wonder what environmental conditions could cause spot variation. Presumably, spots serve to warn potential predators of a distasteful and possibly toxic prey source, so with lots of natural variation occurring, it’d be a bit easier to test predation-risk as a function of the number or prominence of yellow spots.
Anyway… here’s a couple of spotted salamander photos illustrating some spot variation, Dean’s first encounter, and a spermatophore!
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A couple of years ago during the annual salamander outing, a flip of a log yielded a mole salamander with blue speckles. At the time, I didn’t look into it much – I was aware that it could be a blue-spotted salamander, Jefferson salamander, or a weird hybrid complex that consists of parthenogenic uni-sexual Ambystoma spp. This past Wednesday night, however, we found much more than the one, obscure amphibian under a log, possibly because the trip occurred earlier in the year (there’s still ice on the pool), and Jefferson salamanders are known to migrate over the snow to their breeding ponds.
According to Michael Lannoo’s book, Amphibian Declines, blue-spotted salamander populations are extremely limited in their Ohio distribution. Rather, Ambystoma laterale occurs commonly north of Ohio, in Michigan and New York, but is only recorded in one or two counties in Ohio. In contrast, a hybrid complex, often containing part of the A. laterale and A. jeffersonianum genome, is common in northern Ohio counties, and I think we encountered this bizarre uni-sexual hybrid! I don’t believe any males were found, and there was considerable variation in the amount of speckling along the sizes, legs and backs of the salamanders. The hybrid is known to make annual migrations to vernal pools to reproduce and is visually indistinguishable from blue-spotted and often Jefferson salamanders.
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Peter has been continuing his monitoring and manipulating of snow cover in his plots this winter, and he has periodically collected samples. Today, sampling didn’t quite go as expected; an off-the-chart flooding event washed through three of his five plots, effectively destroying them by altering organic matter and leaf distribution within the flooded plots. Regardless, Peter salvaged samples from two un-scathed plots and we sample the others just in case there’s something interesting to be found.
Some photos showing riparian flooding:
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A non-flooded plot:
Sampling flooded plots:
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Much of the mountains seen from Santa Barbara and the small town of Golita where Raja’s living are protected by Los Padres National Forest, views from which Raja and I enjoyed during my visit in November. Here are some photos of the views, along with Raja and my rental car…
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Joshua Tree National Park
Today, with the much-appreciated help of a few volunteers, Jessica’s artificial loaves of leaves were set in the stream. The next couple of weeks will include some intense sampling and processing efforts, but given the work done today, it won’t be a problem.
Nine artificial loaves were attached to stakes set into the stream bed in five different riffles. The nine include two leaf treatments, previously conditioned in the stream and unconditioned. Jessica will be sampling them to examine winter invertebrate colonization and FPOM deposition.
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Gigantic icicles form from mist sprayed by the Middle Falls in Letchworth State Park.
Or artificial loaves of leaves, Jessica, another undergraduate student working in my lab, is investigating leaf pack dynamics in an Ohio stream. She has characterized leaf accumulation in the field, and, unfortunately, seen the rapid washing of her samples during a mild flooding event. The next step is to characterize a few variables that may be important in leaf packs within streams (i.e., invertebrate community succession and FPOM accumulation) using artificially constructed leaf packs… or loaves. Below, leaves where pierced onto a kabob with the help of a couple of volunteers.
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