Herps in Mythology

Salamanders have long found their place in mythology. Being known as the "Fire Lizard" in the Greek language, the salamander was known to have an affinity to fire or in religious terms represented a soul that could not be destroyed by fire. A large amount of symbolism and legends have derived from this creature through the centuries allowing art and literature to depict salamanders in magical forms. A well known piece created in the 16th century by Manly P. Hall revealed the then Pope as a fire resilient monster.
















M.P. Hall's depiction of the pope as a salamander
Titled "Secret Teachings of All Ages"- 16th Century


Pliny the Elder, a Roman author, naturalist, and natural professor, was one of the first ancient scientists to study salamanders between 23AD-79AD. He identified the difference between a salamander and lizard, describe species still common today, and recorded their ecology. Pliny the Elder revealed salamanders as creatures able to put out fires with their frigid body temperatures. The well-known philosopher Aristotle also defined salamanders by this resistance to fire.

So just how did salamanders acquire the myth of fire resistance? The magical powers were attributed to salamanders due to the specific species Salamandra salamandra, or the fire salamander. This salamander finds its home inside tree trunks, leaf litter, and decaying wood. When people began to using this wood on their fires the salamanders would "emerge" from the fire. Many quickly began to think that they were fire proof and created out of the flames.










(Salamandra salamandra)


Today, salamanders are not known for their myth of fire resistance, but more for their charismatic, innocent appearance. They are still commonly used as in art and literature today- a well known example being Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

Works Cited

"The Legendary Salamander"
http://www.dragonorama.com/creatures/salamander/index.html

"Fire Lizard"
http://www.lifeasmyth.com/journal_planet_Salamander.html

Squirrel Frog Natural History

This passed Thursday, our class took a field trip to Ion Swap in the Francis Marion National Park. We wondered down the path, searching through leaves and under logs, while being eaten up by very large mosquitoes, in the quest of finding a catching herps. Our efforts, in the beginning, were successful yielding a few anoles and some skinks. Then further down the path, along the side of a ditch of an old, abandoned rice field some of my fellow student struggled to catch a very slippery herp that we had not yet seen. When the dust settled, in the hands of one of my fellow students was a female squirrel frog. The squirrel frog, Hyla squirella, is a small tree frog that varies in color and ranges from east Texas to North Carolina. The frog can be found throughout most forest preferring areas where it can hide and where moisture is readily available. The large toe pads are an easy characteristic of the species family and genus but the species identification can be quite tricky. The color pattern of this species is highly variable often varying from region to region. The best way to indentify this species is to eliminate other species from the genus first. While out in the field, my fellow classmates and I learn this lesson the hard way. The species that we caught was an adult female who had the quite the knack for jumping out of our hands. When my turn came around to hold the frog, she was stressed at the point; she began to rest in here watering conserving posture, which we had just talked about in lecture the class before. Overall this frog definitely  lives up to its name.

               

Article Review: Chemical Cues in Spanish Terrapins

Several scientists from the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid, Spain worked together in a study concerning chemical cues in Spanish terrapins. They proposed that chemical cues in the water may help other Spanish terrapins determine characteristics such as body size and health, which is important to choosing/fighting for mates. As both experiments concerned sexual selection, the turtles were captured from the wild during mating season and allowed two weeks to acclimate.

In their first experiment, they allowed an individual turtle to choose from a pool of clean water and a pool of water which came from an individual of the opposite sex. The size of the shell, weight, and health state (determined by immune responses) of both sexes were recorded. When shown the two pools of water from which to choose from, the turtles would often spend time moving in between pools before choosing to spend time in one more than the other. The results show that males spent significantly more time in pools with water from females of a greater immune response/better health. However, body size/weight did not significantly affect the pool the male chose. Therefore, male terrapins must be choosing females based on the presences of “good genes,” which can be indicated by stronger immune response to foreign bodies. Females spent more time in pools with chemical traces from males with larger weights. However, immune response/body size didn't impact their decisions.

In their second experiment, the authors exposed male terrapins to pools of clean water and pools of water from another male. Males were sensitive to chemical cues indicating the weights of other males, as they avoided males with larger masses. This is to avoid male-male competition in which the smaller males would most likely lose.

This article was very interesting, because when I think about reptiles that use chemosensory clues for information about their environment, turtles are not too high on the list. However, it does make a lot of sense that they would have chemosensory ability, as a lot of animals that are aquatic are sensitive to chemical cues. This article increases our knowledge about the family Emydidae, and allows us to understand how turtles modify their behavior according to other members of their species which are living around them. 

Ibanez, A., Lopez, P., Martin, J. 2012. Discrimination of conspecifics' chemicals may allow Spanish terrapins to find better partners and avoid competitors. Animal Behaviour. 83, 1107-1113.

NATURAL HISTORY: The Leaf-Tailed Gecko!

Do you all remember when we went to the aquarium, and we got to see the herps that had come in for the Madagascar exhibit, and there were those leaf-tailed geckoes? They'd all stuck themselves up along the sides of the tank they were in, and they were super adorable clinging to the glass, right?

As it happens, they were only adorable because we couldn't see their eyes.

Doom arrives on setae-laden feet.

LEAF-TAILED GECKO STATS

• Genus: Uroplatus
• Species: 13
• Terrain: Arboreal
• Activity: Nocturnal
• Diet: Insects
• Weirdness: In spades

Leaf-tailed geckoes are all native to Madagascar, and there are 13 currently known species. They range in size from 4-12 inches, and like all geckoes, they are direct-developing amniotes. The fearsome-looking guy above is Uroplatus fimbriatus, and he is super angry; when he feels threatened, he will scream at you. Because it is daytime, his pupils have constricted to leave red-lined, soulless orbs. Leaf-tailed geckoes' pupils are highly constricted during the day because their eyes are phenomenally sensitive and are evolved to make them great night-time predators. At night, their pupils dilate to take up almost the whole visible surface of their eyes.

Crazy huge pupils.

Common to all Uroplatus are their flat tails and their overall tree-ish coloration, and they tend to have all kinds of weird texturing so that they look like bark. Their eyes are mottled so that they look like lichen. In addition, they have this fractal fringing all along their sides, and around their jaws and each of their toes, which disrupts their outline like nothing else. They are just incredible at camouflage. Here, try to find the U. sikorae in this picture.

Pro at camouflage.

As geckoes, these guys are arboreal, and they're nocturnal as well—not always the case with geckoes. They have an obscene number of very tiny teeth—around 130—which is super cool, although we don't know why they have all of them, because they eat insects, just like other geckoes. It would stand to reason that if their diet is similar to that of other geckoes, then their teeth should be similar, too. But they're not. So that's something new and fun to research if gecko dentition is of interest to you!

Some other physical characteristics of leaf-tailed geckoes:

• Super large head
• Widened toes, toe pads
• Reduced abdominal musculature
• 11 - 13 inscriptional ribs (as opposed to few/none)—inscriptional ribs are cartilaginous rib-like structures in the abdominal muscles; this possibly makes up for the reduced abdominal musculature
• Reduced depressor mandibulae--this is weird because they're scleroglossians, so they need some good chomping action to hunt, although they seem to be fine without it, so maybe it's reduced to keep the mass of the head down?
  
• Incipient secondary palate—there is just so much weird mouth stuff going on!

So here is the weird thing, though: we don't know what a lot of their anatomy is for; we have a serious dearth of knowledge of why they do anything, and we have been studying these guys pretty consistently since the mid-1600s. Here is a plate from the 1700s illustrating that point.

I am a total sucker for old-school scientific illustration. (This is by Lacépède and you should definitely check him out.)

MORE!

• Check out this slew of leaf-tailed gecko videos from Nature!
• This is one of the articles I read and it was just wonderful.
• Cited in that wonderful article is this paper which you should take a look at if you are super excited about leaf-tailed geckoes and/or have a lot of time-- it is long and really comprehensive.
  

The Legend of Nessie

       The story of the Loch Ness Monster has been pasted on from generation to generation, each portraying a four legged, long necked, humped back, reptilian-like creature living in the largest of the three Lochs in the Scottish Highlands. 
       
        In the many years this story has been circulating, multiple sightings and photographs have been submitted as proof of this creature's actual existence. However, many people are still nonbelievers because of the simple facts that it has yet to be confirmed by an expert and that this creature is the only one to have ever been spotted in the world. People are reluctant to believe this creature lives alone and has been alive since the first water sighting in 1871 and land sighting in 1879. Many questions arise when trying to validate the creatures' existence: What does it eat? Why doesn't it show it's self more often? Are there more than one reproducing? Why doesn't it move to another Loch or another lake? Because humans cannot answer these questions, it makes the story of the Loch Ness monster even harder to believe. 

 

  http://www.nessie.co.uk/htm/about_loch_ness/lochness.html

                              http://www.nessie.co.uk/htm/nessies_diary/nessie.html

      Investigators have taken sonograms of the supposed cave where the monster spends most of it's time and multiple pictures have been taken, some of rather convincing footage. There have been no accounts saying this creature is aggressive or that it has caused any trouble in the Loch or to humans. The only unsettling aspect of this creature's physique is it's huge size that intimidates people from taking a dive to investigate the situation, which is understandable considering we don't know what it eats: could eat people for all we know.


      Essentially, this creature adds a flare of mystery to the Loch that attracts travelers to try and settle their curiosity. This story could be a concocted ploy to increase tourism to the Scottish Highlands and therefore increase profit. Some of the photos show nothing more than a blurry, grainy "smudge" on the lens while other photos are clearly photo-shopped or superimposed.    


      I consider this to be a great story among folklore. It seems to be a huge, docile creature trapped within the boundaries of the Loch and is forced to live there with humans constantly exploiting it everything it pops it's head above water. I'm not saying that I believe this story in the least bit, but until someone drags this creature out of the water, I'll enjoy wondering the 'what if's.' But to steadfast believers, this story represents a phenomenon among humans of the most bizarre form and will continue defending Nessie's true existence within Loch Ness. 

http://www.nessie.co.uk/index.html 
 

Natural History: Tantilla coronata

Tantilla coronata commonly known as the Southeastern Crown Snake, named for the dark crown like coloration on its head, is generally a very secretive fossorial species. This species is found throughout the southeast. I was very excited when we came across this one at Dixie Plantation because even though this species is widespread throughout South Carolina it often goes unnoticed due to its burrowing. This crown snake is considered an insectivore. It has rear fangs but is not considered to be dangerous to humans due to its small size and lack of venom. This is unfortunately the only snake my lab has encountered, which almost doesn't seem right considering how secretive this snake's reputation makes it out to be.

A rather adorable Eastern Narrowmouth Toad

Look at those eyes! Such a cutie..

How adorable! So small and chubby. :)

Gastrophrynes carolinensis or the Eastern Narrowmouth Toad was a very exciting find on our lab field trip last week to Francis Marion National Forest. This very cute and very unique frog is a member of the Family Microhylidae though it is the family with the most genera (60+), only two genera represented in the US Gastrophryne and Hypopachus, and there is only one species represented in SC..the one we found :P.

This is considered to be a lucky find, because these frogs like to stay close to a body of water and hidden under foliage and fallen logs, which is exactly why we probably found it because there seemed to be ample small ponds, moist ground, and fallen debris all over the trail we scoured. 

These frogs do have a biphasic life cycle with aquatic larvae, and since we found it in it’s breeding season (March-October), is probably why we found it near a small pool of water, since they stay hidden until optimal conditions for breeding usually when there is high humidity and lots of rain. 

We were unable to conclusively identify the frog we found as a male or female, though we have suspicions that it was an adult male do to its size. The frog was approximately 1 ½ to 2 inches, which is smaller than most females. 

He seemed very anxious while we were holding him and attempted to hop away many times, so we didn’t hold on to him for too long (though probably because he was so identifiable and it didn’t take us a while to identify him...)