Only two students braved the wetland last weekend when a large group of student came to Palo Verde from UNA (Universidad Nacional). I hope that’s not the case for the folks coming with Kent State this December…
Fed and Silvia were interested in counting ‘utriculos’ or bladders on Utricularia, but I convinced them to examine Neptunia nodules instead.
Boa and another recruit (Jose or Peru) after finishing sampling for the day.
Boa holds (inappropriately) his Coluber mentovarius catch. Paul noticed soon after that it was likely gravid (had eggs inside).
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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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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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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Dr. Orr, the Emeritus professor teaching the Summer session for Vertebrate Zoology, shows the class the latest salamander catch.
Andrey is Romilio’s son (Romilio is one of the cooks at Palo Verde). Besides helping me with Spanish since he didn’t speak English and providing excellent company, Andrey assisted in photographing plants one day and traveled with Boa, Aaron and I to Bocana. He and I were the only two who braved the lagoon after we arrived and saw a large crocodile swimming about. In the last picture (bottom right), if you look close, you can see it, but I didn’t use any zoom, and it’s a very cryptic animal….
One family of flies that I do know are the Tabanidae (tabanos, sweet bees, deerflies). Mike also got to know them while in San Ramon; consequently, los tabanos conocen la cuchilla de Mike, mae.
Although I was only bitten a couple of times, Mike, Erin and Kyle suffered regular, nasty, stinging bites after several minutes of annoyingly circling their heads. The tabanos were quite common in San Ramon, but I only saw larva in the wetland at Palo Verde.
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We seined for fish in the Cuyahoga River last week during a Vertebrate Zoology field trip. Although out catch wasn’t a speciose or large as previous trips, it was good to be in the flowing, cool water.
![VertebrateZoologyFishTrip07.28.20090[7]](https://www.montegraphia.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/VertebrateZoologyFishTrip07.28.200907.jpg "VertebrateZoologyFishTrip07.28.20090[7]")
![VertebrateZoologyFishTrip07.28.20090[2]](https://www.montegraphia.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/VertebrateZoologyFishTrip07.28.200902.jpg "VertebrateZoologyFishTrip07.28.20090[2]") |
![VertebrateZoologyFishTrip07.28.20090[4]](https://www.montegraphia.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/VertebrateZoologyFishTrip07.28.200904.jpg "VertebrateZoologyFishTrip07.28.20090[4]") |
