This past Thursday was a wonderful adventure and a good start to our class experiment. As you can see above this was my group, Team Snake Balls, marking one of our plots at the third location we visited. Each group marked 3 plots at 3 different locations (Harkers, Peffers, and the last one which I seemed to have forgotten, but it starts with an M) and noted several details about the plots including if there were any honey suckle stems and/or herps. We only found one herp in a plot, however we did find several in locations other than our plots, it was an enjoyable time in the feild, and I can't wait to see what the results will yield.



One of the species we did manage to find was the Red back salamander ( Plethodon cinereus ) in assorted leaf litter. Here's some characteristics of this particular species:
Generally they are 5.7-12.7 cm in length and have 16-19 costal grooves. This salamander also has 5 toes on it's hind legs. An obvious distinguishing feature is it's red back, which can be picked out when you lift a log or rock to look for it. They eat Arthropods and they're not threatened but it's predicted that human activity that raises the soil pH will have a future negative effect on these little guys. I look forward to catching more on our future trips into the wild. (Bahram Khosraviani)