In one day, I was able to observe a pair of mating parrot snakes and a parrot snake preying on Lithobates (Rana) forreri. As a disclaimer, the frog was tossed toward the snake out of curiosity by another student here, Paul, so it wasn’t a ‘real’ predation event. Mahmood, however, suggested that this species of snake hunts for frogs, such as L. forreri, in the leaf litter during the day, while the frogs are inactive.
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After completing a fence to keep out the damn cows, Boa and I discovered that a 2-m crocodile had come to investigate. The water is still very shallow, so it didn’t make an attempt to get away… that is, until we decided to strap a rope around it’s jaw and wrangle it to the shore.
Charles is shown stringing the crocodile’s jaw and Paul is the other individual celebrating the catch.
What could be controlling the patchiness of tadpole density in the wetland? There are areas, such as those pictured below, where tadpole congregate in large numbers and appear to move about as a school. In a couple of cases, I notice one or two dead tadpoles being cannibalized in the mass, but here there was no obvious food source that had attracted them. In the surrounding area (maybe within a 5 m radius), there were very few tadpoles; 2-3 per sqaure meter.
On a related note, how can I measure tadpole density?
Finally, some decent images of the Central American Coral Snake!
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The bronze-backed climbing skink is in a pretty cool sounding genus: Mabuya. Incidently, it appears to be one of the only genera that has remained stable since Savage’s 2002 Herps of CR book. Many other genera have changed since and are published in Savage and Bolanos 2009 Zootaxa.
There seem to be too many plants and animals for me to memorize and learn. I lack knowledge of entire groups of organisms – from what they are, to their ecological roles. I won’t even mention organisms in Domains, such as Eubacteria (although I just mentioned it…), but insects and plants are phenomenally diverse, even in Ohio, and I am overwhelmed with it… I need more time – well, that, and a bit of patience to actually look at the insects and plants. Little by little, I’m getting it, but in the mean time, I watch butterflies mate.
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95 degrees is both hot for me and hot for this tiger-heron. The heron sat, perched and panting on a log for several minutes, seemingly too hot to fly off.
| The mosquitoes are getting out of control. Walking through parts of the wetland, I litterally have difficulty seeing my feet, not because they are underwater, but because there are thousands of freshly emerged mosquitoes dodging my boots.
It seems that this is the second generation of mosquitoes, with the first potentially being left-overs from the dry season. It’ll be interesting, to say the least, to experience the exponential growth. |
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I’ve set out 200 mesh plastic bags to examine decomposition rates and changes in litter chemistry of four types of litter: freshly killed Eichhornia crassipes and Typha domingensis (or dominguensis depending on what paper you read), and the past seasons accumulated litter from both aforementioned species. The bags sit, baking in the sun, attached to 3-m poles of PVC, which actually may be too short given the height of Typha (cattail) around here. The two photographs of bags below show some test bags I set out a few days ago, with tadpoles skimming around the surface of the bag… potentially attempting to enter and process the litter themselves. The other photo is designated site E1. |
By the way, check out the excellent sewing job on the bags below… I can pump those out at a rate of 50 in 4 hrs now, although I started out at a much slower rate.
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The Black-Necked Stilts have come to the wetland by the OET Palo Verde station.
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