Our first catch!

The first week we went out for class the water was still frozen and there was snow on the ground. I don't think we thought we were going to catch anything! After searching for a long time I found this guy under a rock near the edge of the stream. He is a northern dusky salamander, Desmognathus fuscus, but just a larva. His keeled tail helped us to identify him. The very young ones may have pairs of round yellowish dorsal spots that are bordered by a dark wavy band. The base of tail is often lighter than the dorsum, which you can see on this guy here. He is a member of the Plethodontidae family, which are the lungless salamanders.

My first frog catch!

I was down in Belle Glade, Florida for my spring break and found this guy. He is a Cuban treefrog, Osteopilus septentrionalis. The first time I found him he was outside in a trashcan. I continued to locate him, almost everyday. He moved back and forth between this trashcan and a mop bucket. I was able to identify him as a Cuban treefrog by his warty skin and large toe pads. He also has no stripe through his eye, like some of the other treefrogs. Within the continental United States they are only found in a few isolated spots in Florida (I guess Belle Glade was one of them!) and the Florida Keys. He was also my first frog catch!

Alligator mississippiensis

(Rawr!)

The American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) is a common resident in southeast United States. I was a TA for Hays Cummins' Marine Ecology course, part of which spends a day in the Everglades. where this picture was taken.

The American alligator was threatened in the earlier part of the century by illegal poaching: alligator skin products were a lucrative market. To counteract poaching, alligator farms were created to 1) help repopulate alligators 2) depreciate the value of alligator skin and thus discourage illegal poaching by making it unprofitable.

Today, both alligator meat and alligator skin products are still around. They are delicious and gawdy, respectively. A bigger threat to alligator population is enroaching urbanization, exotic invasive species, and the increased demand for water that filters the water from Lake Okeechobee before it reaches the Everglades.

Urbanization has put people's housing right against the alligator's natural habitat. People feed the alligators and the alligators eat their dogs. Feeding the alligators have made them unafraid of humans, which is partially why this gator swam so close for us to snap a picture.

Burmese pythons have also invaded Florida and are a sizeable top-tier predator population, which competes with and even eats some American alligators.

Miami/Ft. Lauderdale/Farming have increased demand for water towards the eastern seaboard. Lake Okeechobee, which sits in the center of Florida, supplies water to all of southern Florida. The Everglades, now just a small fraction at the tip of Florida, receives less and less water with the diversion of water flow east to supply a growing demand. The effects are felt most at the southern tip, where estuarian communities require a balance between fresh and salt water to thrive.

-BL

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)

Farancia abacura

I was in the Francis Marion National Forest a week ago during a plant taxonomy field trip and stumbled upon this beautiful snake! ~ Farancia abacura, a mud snake. I took the picture with my phone so it isnt so clear (sorry! =/)

Sadly he was dead; we found him in the grass on the side of the road. After observing him we noticed that his jaw had been broken and he had probably been hit by a car. This is a perfect example of why we cannot let our national forests be turned into commercial highways. South Carolina is trying to widen the roads that go through the Francis Marion, which would lead to the destruction of miles and miles of poccosin, swamp forest, and endangered longleaf pine ecosystems and undoubtedly lead to higher mortality of local species as is witnessed with this mud snake. (Posted by Gabi Oken)

Our last field trip :)

Here are some pictures of our last field trip:

Anolis carolinensis

Ambystoma talpoideum (larvae)

Kinosternon subrubrum

Scincella lateralis

-Kim Alford

Last summer I spent a few weeks in Gamboa, Panama. We lived next to some herpetologists studying the red-eyed tree frog, Agalychnis callidryas. A few nights when they had little to do they took me out with them to a pond a few miles from town in the jungle. We saw a lot of these guys out there. The one in the picture is a male, they tend to stay close to the water when they are calling. The females stay in the canopy and only come down to breed. Along with these frogs we saw a basilisk and some other frogs... I don't know they species of any of the others. (Dominique Wagner)