Recently we went on a herp field trip to Shelby Forest, which is a National State Park in Tennessee. The park borders the Mississippi River and contains two lakes— Poplar Tree Lake and Lake Piersol, which is what makes it ideal for studying amphibian and reptile diversity. I will be doing a natural history blog on one of the organisms residing here: Ambystoma maculatum, also known as the Spotted Salamander. According to Nature Works, the Spotted Salamander can be found from Ontario east to Nova Scotia and south to Georgia and Texas and its habitat consists of hardwood forests and hillsides. Upon entering the park we took about a half a mile walk in to a pond. This pond is a temporary breeding pond and is not filled with water for most of the year. Something we noticed right away were the huge egg masses left by these critters. In our region, the Spotted Salamander breeds from December to February, which was quite evident by the amount of clutches we saw. Each of the clutches contained about 100 eggs but there were some that had noticeably less. The hatching of the larvae is temperature dependent. It was about 35 degrees when we went out to the park so it will definitely be some time before the eggs hatch. Lastly drift fences were set up all around to collect some of these organisms for future studies. We did have rain a couple days before we went out to the park, however because it was so cold outside we didn’t see a single salamander and all the buckets located near the drift fences were empty. On the other hand, there were little self-sustaining communities set up by the field station (picture below). These ecosystems contained water and vegetation so no extra care or maintenance was necessary. After getting out some nets and digging through the kiddie pools, we were able to find two Southern Leopard Frogs (Lithobates sphenocephalus). These frogs were put in containers and taken back to the school for further studies. Besides finding the A. Maculatum clutches and the two Leopard Frogs, nothing else was spotted. It was just entirely too cold outside for herps to be out and about. Maybe next time!
Drift Fence
Ambystoma maculatum clutch
Temporary Breeding Pond
Artificial Ecosystem
Lithobates Sphenocephalus
1 comment:
Love that Amby mac clutch!
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