Ophidiophilia

Antigua: Land of the Lost (Snake)

2011-11-09T06:36:00.000-08:00

This past week I found myself on the Caribbean island of Antigua, scratching my head at my strange fortune. On the one hand, I was in a stunning area of the world, staying at an amazing resort, hanging around with a motley crew of fascinating folks—and it was a work trip (BASK! GLOAT! BRAG!). On the other hand, I was as close as I will ever get to the world’s most critically endangered snake species, with absolutely no chance of playing my hand at finding one.

The Antiguan racer (Alsophis antiguae) was historically found on the islands of Antigua and Barbuda as well as many small offshore island (photo from webecoist.com):

But it is now extirpated from the main islands and hangs on only on a few tiny keys. While on the island, we were told that the snake-fearing Britons who colonized the island imported mongooses to control the “snake problem.” This notion immediately caused me to smell a “rat.” Even the most ophidiophobic limey would not go to so much trouble to kill a harmless beast like the racer! As it turns out, the mongooses were imported to kill rats that had invaded the island from ship cargo holds. Unfortunately, the diurnal mongooses never encountered the nocturnal rats, so Rikki Tikki Tavi fed heartily on racers and their eggs.

To make matters worse, the mongooses chomped up the island’s lizards, which were the snakes’ main prey items. Ground dwelling lizards are now few and far between. Here’s an Antiguan ameiva lizard (Ameiva griswoldi), which I was lucky to see a single specimen of:

At one time, scientists estimated that there were only about 50 Antiguan racers left in the wild. Conservation efforts have since increased those numbers by an order of magnitude at least. A success story of sorts! Ah, it would have been so nice to see… but alas! I was here for work, and not my usual snakey sort.

What sort of non-snakey work would bring me to a Caribbean island? One of the other octopus-arms of my job—pre-med advising at Cal Poly. A medical school on the island—American University of Antigua—hosted pre-med advisors from California to visit their campus. They have recently received accreditation in California, meaning that their graduates will be able to get residencies and practice medicine in the golden state.

This is a very good Caribbean program. The students and faculty are extremely diverse, and they learn using a combo of large lectures and small hands-on experiences. Here are some students learning how to do a breast examination:

Cool brain model:

The school has state of the art technology, including Bertha—yep, that's a birthing robot. Right now she is set to deliver breach.

Even more exciting was Sim-man, a robot that can be programmed with all kinds of symptoms. The students have to diagnose him and give him proper treatment, and he will react accordingly.

After introducing us to the campus, the trip organizers took us around the beautiful island for some sight-seeing. Antigua has a rich history, ripe with pirate tales and skirmishes between the English inhabitants and attacking French. This is a building at Nelson’s Dockyard, a historic area in English Harbour where Admiral Horatio Nelson lived in the 1700’s. The harbor is now a famous yachting and sailing area. Here's one of the historic buildings, complete with badly dressed tourist out front:

Then we went up to Shirley Heights for a view of the dockyard from high up. Beautiful!!!

Nearby you could also get a peek of Eric Clapton’s house (which is currently for rent!):

The island is home to hundreds of churches, from grand to tiny. Here is a particularly gorgeous one.

We enjoyed some excellent Caribbean beer and food:

Meghan, my cohort from Cal Poly, REALLY enjoyed this Baked Alaska!

We stayed at the Carlisle Bay resort at the south end of the island. Absolutely gorgeous! It was nestled right into the tropical vegetation:

And of course, right on the beach! Here’s a little Watt’s anole (Anolis wattsi) that I found in front of my room within about 30 seconds of arrival:

A better look at a Watt’s anole:

By far the most common lizard was the Leach’s anole (Anolis leachii), whose arboreal habits apparently keep it out of reach of mongoosedem (this is allegedly the Caribbean slang plural for mongoose).

The beach at night:

Goodnight Caribbean! See you next time!

Vandenberg Rattlesnakes

2011-10-25T20:33:00.000-07:00

PERL has now begun conducting research on rattlesnakes at Vandenberg Air Force Base! This gorgeous area occupies a gigantic swath of land in northern Santa Barbara County. Most of it is pristine, inhabited not by humans but by a motley crew of flora and fauna, including lots of threatened and endangered species. And it is FULL of rattlesnakes-- most definitely neither threatened nor endangered.

Near the beach there are beautiful dunes:

And inland there are rocky hillsides (that's the city of Santa Maria in the background):

We saw about 15 rattlesnakes just in the rocks visible in this photo:

These are Southern Pacific rattlesnakes (Crotalus oreganus helleri), whereas for the past six years we have been studying Northern Pacifics (C. o. oreganus) about 50 miles to the northeast. It's probably a big intergrade zone, really.

Since it's fall, and the air is cool but the sun is warm, most of the snakes are hiding under the rocks, sticking body parts out into the sun:

In the words of Roger Repp, "Where's Waldo?" (Hint: There are two rattlesnakes in this photo.)

Rodent burrows are also favorite spots for snakes to hang out:

In two days out hunting, we saw about 10 male-female pairs! The Northern Pacifics would have been done with mating season by now (because inland it's cold at night?), but the coastal snakes are apparently going strong. If you look closely you'll see a little girl under this boy:

The big question is: Why are there so many snakes here? Could be the weather, could be the isolation from humans, definitely is the massive number and variety of rodents. Everywhere you look you see mouse burrows:

Ground squirrel burrows:

And gopher mounds:

The result is heaps of rattlesnakes that grow FAST. See this medium-sized male that Scott is holding?

Look at his rattle! This snake is no older than three years. He's huge for that age! Nothing like a steady supply of tasty voles to fuel rattlesnake biomass.

And one more cool thing: BABIES! (These are Northern Pacifics from inland though)

Stay tuned for a lot more snakey updates from VAFB!

Rattlesnake Research at Cal Poly

2011-08-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

Celebrating 5 fun-filled years of rattlesnake research in the Physiological Ecology of Reptiles Laboratory at Cal Poly! In this post, I want to introduce you to some of the cool things we have seen rattlesnakes doing, and to the students who have made it all happen.
We do not keep a colony of rattlesnakes at Cal Poly. We only keep rattlesnakes in captivity for short periods of time while they are outfitted with radiotransmitters for our research on their physiology and behavior. The students spend most of their quality time with the snakes not in the lab, but in the field.

One of the great things about studying rattlesnakes is that they are large enough that we can insert a Holohil Systems 13-gram radiotransmitter (about half the width and length of a tube of lipstick) into the snake's body cavity. The battery last for two years, allowing us to track the same snake for extended periods without multiple surgeries.

To anesthetize the snake, it is gassed with isoflurane in a plastic tube (all surgery photos by M. Feldner):
Then a small incision into the body cavity is made, and the sterilized radiotransmitter is inserted:
We also insert a Thermochron iButton datalogger, which collects data on the snake's internal body temperature at whatever intervals you like (usually every 1-2 hours in our studies):
All sutured up:
To wake the snake up, a tracheal tube is inserted into its glottis:
Then I blow into the tube to inflate the snake's lung with air, so when the air comes out, so does the isoflurane, and snake wakes up.
Then the snakes are returned to the field site and can be radiotracked to locate them as often as you want, to get data on behaviors, movement, etc., or to collect the snakes for blood sampling. Here is Kyle, one of the first students to work on snakes with me at Cal poly (2007). (Incidentally, Kyle couldn't stay away and is beginning his graduate work with me next month... on lizards!)
Snakes are recognizable in the field not just by radiotracking, but by their unique, colored rattle paint code:
Our field site is the Chimineas Ranch unit of the Carrizo Plain Ecological Reserve. This is a ~30,000 acre ranch that is managed for cattle, game, and wildlife. Its northern edge is studded with water impoundments and rocky outcrops that comprise perfect rattlesnake habitat:
The ranch also has a beautiful house with pool and hot tub that you can rent while you do research.
Current graduate student Tony in the poolside cookhouse:
The past five years of research on this species, the northern Pacific rattlesnake, have yielded all sorts of interesting natural history data. A very common sight in the spring (also in the fall, but less so) is courting rattlesnakes. Males coil next to or on top of a female, and run their chins all over the female's back in the hopes that she will become receptive to his advances. Males often stay with females for prolonged periods of time.

In the late spring the rattlesnakes are commonly found with food bulges that are suspiciously similar in size to a juvenile ground squirrel:
Sometimes we are lucky enough to witness the feeding events itself. Recently graduated grad student Matt (now off to start his PhD studying venom ecology at Ohio State) took this photo of a snake mowing a kangaroo rat.
Another snake eating a kangaroo rat, this time on the ranch house grounds (photo by J. Ahle):
Here is one of our radiotagged snakes eating a bird. We didn't get close enough for a positive ID on the bird for fear of disturbing the snake, but it might be a cowbird or blackbird:
Rarely, we found the predator becoming prey. Here, an adult California kingsnake is constricting an adult female rattlesnake (photo by M. Feldner):
We strive to make our activities accessible to as many people as possible, to demystify rattlesnakes and show the public how docile and beautiful rattlesnakes are in their natural habitats. We bring groups of students from Cal Poly's Wildlife Club, Herpetology class, etc. to the ranch to see the herps. Here Tony is allowing students to touch a safely restrained rattlesnake.
Jordan was an undergraduate studying thermal biology of the rattlesnakes (2009):

Bree did her undergraduate research project with me in 2009 on rattlesnake spatial ecology, and is now getting her PhD studying rattlesnake-rodent behavioral interactions (You can read her blog here).

Peter (left) and Craig were respectively undergraduate and graduate students doing some of the earliest work on rattlesnakes in my lab (2007-2008). Craig is now pursuing his PhD studying physiology of timber rattlesnakes at the University of Arkansas.

Vince, a community college student doing research on snake brains in my colleague Christy Strand's lab, came out for a chance to hold one of his study animals (2010):

Those pair-bonded to the PI also get a chance, especially when he finds 75% of the snakes in a given day. Here's Steve holding his first rattlesnake (2010):
Other than outreach, why are we actually holding rattlesnakes? Because our research questions often require us to collect blood samples to measure hormone concentrations, lending us the dubious titles of Snake Vampires. Here, current undergraduate Scott (left) and Tony take a blood sample from the caudal vein of a snake:
On another day, Tony and Matt take a sample:
You can read more about PERL's rattlesnake research at our website and publication site. Look for more coming soon as all the boys (and Bree gal) publish their stuff!

Horseshoe 2 Fire

2011-08-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

(photo by Sheri Ashley)

On Mother’s Day, 2011, the Horseshoe 2 fire broke out in the Chiricahua Mountains in SE Arizona. The exact cause has yet to be identified, but it is said to be human-set, perhaps from an untended campfire. The result was devastating: almost the entire mountain range, a full 230,000+ acres, was burned. Parts are okay, other parts are bad, many are worse.

Here is a NASA map showing the area burned by the fire (basically the whole mountain range):
I was very unnerved when I heard about this fire back in May. The Chiricahuas are one of my favorite places on the planet. I have been herping here for 13 years. Its biodiversity rivals any other place in the US. I was all set to teach the first herpetology course offered by the Southwestern Research Station, a chance to spend 10 days in the mountains and surrounding desert. All this and more was at risk with this massive fire.

Luckily, the firefighters were able to set backburns around the research station to save it, and lower Cave Creek Canyon is reasonably untouched by the fire. Here is a backburned area near the Herb Martyr campground. The brush burned, but the trees should live:

But just up the hill from Herb Martyr, this is what you see. It's just awful.
The conditions that led to the extreme magnitude of this fire have been described as a “perfect storm.” First the area was in a major drought this spring, having had virtually no winter rains. Second, in February there was a major freeze that caused many oak tree limbs to fall to the ground, providing tinder. Third, the fire started in May, over a month before the onset of the summer monsoon rains- normally, fires here are caused by lightning during the monsoons and are quickly put out. Finally, and devastating and inexplicable, unusually high winds rose up right when the fire started, throwing embers across the range and causing a virtual explosion.

But the course went on, and we had an amazingly successful herping session, as described here, here, and here. But everywhere we went in the mountains, we were reminded of the devastation wrought by this fire. All the campgrounds were closed for fear of floods and landslides. Even access to hiking and driving through most of the mountain range was closed. From Portal, the highest up you can get is Turkey Creek, then you hit this:
Above Turkey Creek, sights like this are common:
Word has it that areas higher up the mountains, including Onion Saddle and Rustler Park, are burned to a crisp. This is so hard for me to imagine. I was terribly disappointed that we didn’t get a chance to view this in person. By staying down at the research station, where the habitat is relatively untouched, I felt like I was being kept from seeing the reality of the situation. As we did our class, I felt guilty, guilty that I went about my herping business as though everything was fine, when my mecca was horrifically wounded. It was a terrible, powerless feeling.

I found myself taking a much deeper look at the non-herp things around me than I normally would. I looked at plants! And they were amazing! All around me, sprouts were bursting forth from the charred bodies of their parents.
I am not a plant biologist. I am not a fire ecologist. But I am an optimist. Maybe it’s because I cannot bear the idea of my beautiful mountains dying. That’s right, fire! Those are MY mountains! And you cannot take them from me. They’ll be back. And so will I.

Arizona Epic Part 4

2011-08-01T17:21:00.000-07:00

The past few days have been so herp-ful that I have not had to time to blog! Here are the cool critters we have unearthed so far on our Arizona Epic (one day left).

We spent a day setting traps for Sonoran mud turles (Kinosternon sonoriense) in Tex Canyon with Justin Congdon.

Caught one! In total, we trapped 10 or so.

Here's a nice one up close:

A wee hatchling:

Here's Justin using a portable X-ray to image the adult females for eggs:

We have been steadily chipping away at the rest of the snakes left on our list. Here's a gorgeous mountain patch-nosed snake (Salvadora grahamiae):

We saw lots of stinky checkered garter snakes (Thamnophis marcianus):

Ringneck snake (Diadophis punctatus):

Sonoran Desert kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula splendida):

Sonoran mountain kingsnake (Lampropeltis pyromelana):

Best snakey find of the trip, Chihuahuan hook-nosed snake (Gyalopion canum). These are super rare!!

The hook-nosed snake is not to be confused with this glossy snake (Arizona elegans):

A very wary looking female crevice spiny lizard (Sceloporus poinsetti):

Great Plains skink (Plestiodon obsoletus) out of a junkpile:

Elegant earless lizard (Holbrookia elegans):

A closer look:

Canyon treefrog (Hyla arenicolor) calling next to the SWRS pool:

And finally, for those of you still with me, the best find of the whole trip so far, an amelanistic male Plains spadefoot (Spea bombifrons)!

Arizona Epic Part 3

2011-07-27T18:37:00.001-07:00

We made a serious haul today on trips to Antelope Pass, NM and North Fork, Chiricahhus Mtns, AZ. Check out all the critters.

Find of the trip so far: a big, beautiful, yellowish green rat snake (Senticolis triaspis) found by our wonderful Chef Chip:

Matt showing a mean western hognose snake (Heterodon nasicus) to the class:

We found a teeny little night snake (Hypsiglena torquata) on Portal Rd.:

Alicia checking out a big male Yarrow's spiny lizard (Sceloporus jarrovi):

Check out this incredibly cute neonate short-horned lizard (Phrynosoma hernandesi):

We found lots of these round-tailed horned lizards (P. modestum) in Antelope Pass:

Look at this gorgeous female collared lizard (Crotaphytus collaris), about to pop out eggs any second:

The students caught a big male:

Steve showing the students a big two-striped whipsnake (Masticophis bilineatus):

Steve noosing a gray-checkered whiptail lizard (Aspidoscelis dixoni):

Jay Cole then introduced us to this all-female species, which is highly endangered (populations only in Antelope Pass, NM and Big Bend, TX):

I stumbled upon this pretty little female banded rock rattlesnake (Crotalus lepidus) in North Fork:

Here she is out on a rock:

Then a student found this big male:

And here he is in a tube:

A group of students later found another female out cruising:

Yearling (or two?) black-tailed rattlesnake (C. molossus) with a large food bulge:
The inverts didn't disappoint either. Huge vinegaroon:

Scorpions are good mamas:

Arizona Epic Part 2

2011-07-26T14:54:00.000-07:00

I am one of the instructors for a herpetology course at the Southwest Research Station in the Chiricahua Mountains in southeastern Arizona. I have been coming to these mountains for the past 13 years to go herping, so it is a real pleasure to share the amazing herpetofauna with others. We are keeping really busy, which means little time for blogging, so I will be brief and let the photos speak for themselves. Here are some critters and sights we have seen on our first three days.

The monsoons have been hitting hard. This is excellent news, because as you can see from the photo below, the southwest is in the midst of a drought, and the land is drinking thirstily from the sky these days. This is a view from NM of the Chiricahuas shrowded in clouds:

So, the anuran beasties are out in droves. We have spent the past two nights driving around the roads in southeast AZ and southwest NM checking out the critters. Here is a Mexican spadefoot (Spea multiplicata) sitting in the road:

There is a spot on the road to Animas, NM that flood every year during big storms. In addition to Spea and its cousin the Couch's spadefoot, we found lots of Great Plains toads (Anaxyrus cognatus) out calling. Check out the throat on this one- you can see the blood vessels in it. And look at those concentric rings going out into the water, enticing the ladies:

The fourth species in this pond was the green toad (A. debilis), also calling away:

We've seen some pretty cool reptiles on the road too, but I'll save most of those for a later post. Here's one quick example of a common denizen of the road, a neonate western diamond-backed rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox):

In the daytime we take the students on hikes around the mountains and the flats. So far, we've been focusing on the desert floor because it's a bit cool up in the mountains, and the habitat seems pretty devastated by a recent fire (more on this next time).

In a morning hike on the desert floor, Matt immediately found this black-tailed rattlesnake (C. molossus) coiled in the rocks:

Meryl, one of the students, got buzzed by this guy a little while later:

We saw some cool lizards, like this greater earless lizard (Cophosaurus texanus):

And this Chihuahuan spotted whiptail lizard (Aspidoscelis exsanguis):

The whiptail is definitely a female. That's because this is an all-female, triploid, parthenogenic species. We are lucky to have Jay Cole, one of the world's experts on this topic, here as an instructor, and he'll give a seminar on it later in the week so we can all learn more about it.

Check out this cool red velvet mite (Family Tromidiidae). There were thousands of them littering the desert floor. I looked them up and found out that their larval stages parasitize arthropods but their adults stages, pictured here, actively prey upon arthropods:

And then, we hit gold. Steve (one of the other instructors) found a juvenile Gila monster (Heloderma suspectum) out cruising around, but it ran under a rock before he could corner it. Here's one of the students Gillian checking it out:

There was some heaving, there was a little ho-ing, and there was much hefting, and I got my meaty hands on the beastie:

Here he is crawling around after we let him go:

We've been having lots of fun of other kinds, too. To spice things up, last night Matt and I taught the students a very important skill: how to make rock snakes to mess with the other vans:

Let's just say it was a success. I think the tire marks are still on Portal Rd.

More information coming soon, including an account of the damage from the Horshoe 2 fire. Until then, happy herping!

Arizona Epic Part 1

2011-07-23T11:35:00.000-07:00

Most people flee from Arizona in the summer, when temperatures commonly exceed 105 and even 110 degrees F. Not herpers. This week, hundreds of rattlesnake biologists flocked to Tucson, AZ for the Biology of the Rattlesnake II conference, which was cunningly planned by the organizers to occur smack at the beginning of the monsoon season. During monsoons, it might be hot but it’s also wet, bringing scaly critters (and their distant batrachian cousins) out in droves.

The first thing we did was ditch the opening night social to go herping. We met up with Karla M., a graduate student at Arizona State University studying Gila monsters. Although the rains have begun, Arizona has been hit hard by a drought over the past few years. But this didn’t deter us, because we were able to go to Stone Canyon, a gated upscale community and golf course that is heavily irrigated and therefore a heaven for herps. Karla is studying Gilas there, and a larger group of researchers mainly from the University of Arizona are conducting a long-term study of the snakes in the community.

Within 10 minutes of getting out of the car, we found two western diamond-backed rattlesnakes (Crotalus atrox) coiled up in the beautiful, lush Arizona Upland Sonoran Desert habitat. Here's a nice big male:

Next we began cruising around the road in Karla’s vehicle, looking for herps crossing the road. We immediately lucked out with this lyre snake (Trimorphodon biscutatus):

Lots of anurans were hopping around the roads, and several experienced the pleasure of meeting the grubby hands of my students. Here’s Scott admiring his first Sonoran Desert toad (Incilius [Bufo] alvarius), which he reluctantly refrained from licking:

Kory is holding a red-spotted toad (Anaxyrus [Bufo] punctatus):

Out wandering around the golf course, we found this big mellow blacktail rattlesnake (C. molossus), initially coiled under a plant right next to the green:

Back to the roads, we hoped to see one of the most common denizens of Stone Canyon, the tiger rattlesnake (C. tigris). This species is strongly associated with rocks, ranges widely in Mexico but has a relatively narrow distribution on the southwest US. We found this young of the year tiger on the road and he curled up nicely for a photo:

A few minutes later we found this adult out on the road:

Another photo of this guy:

We felt lucky to see some of the typical species, like C. atrox, C. molossus, and C. tigris, along with the amphibians, in this bad drought year. The lyre snake was a bonus. But we really lucked out when we learned that Karla needed to release a particularly prized and rarely seen snake that was caught earlier in the week. Check out this beautiful coral snake (Micruroides euryxanthus):

This guy got a lot of attention from the cameras:

To finish up the night, we jumped in Karla’s vehicle and drove out to her other field site, which incidentally was my field site during my graduate work, and is decidedly NOT benefiting from golf course irrigation. It was bone dry. Karla radiotracked four Gila monsters (Heloderma suspectum) she needed to check on, and along the way she showed us a contraption she built to monitor the temperatures within the nest of a Gila monster:

Despite the crummy, dry conditions, one of the Gila monsters was out walking around. This is a post-parturient female (check out the skinny tail):

Karla grabbed the Gila and took a blood sample because she is using doubly labeled water to examine water turnover and field metabolic rate in the animals:

Matt was very pleased to hold his first Gila monster:

The next night we went out for just a quick drive because we spent most of the evening snarfing fajitas and beer with the wonderful J-Ho and Keri. We went up the Catalina Highway and found two tiger rattlesnakes on the road. A young of the year:

And a good-looking subadult, 2 or 3 years old based on the rattle string:

Closer to Tucson there were a lot of anurans out and about, including spadefoot toads (Scaphiopus couchii):

By this time we had gotten about 8 hours of sleep total over the past three nights, and some of us couldn’t handle it:

Stay tuned for the next installment of AZ Herporama 2011!

Cal Poly Herpetology!

2011-07-11T09:44:00.000-07:00

Well well well, I have been a delinquent herper-blogger. What happened to me? My job happened. I have just recently been able to uncoil myself from my massive load of book-writing, research, and teaching. BUT- this spring has been herp heaven and I have lots to show you all. Plus I am about to embark upon a summer like no other, so the blogs will be flowing freely... until school starts again!

I taught my fourth annual herpetology class this spring, and since it was the biggest and best ever (43 students!!!), I thought I'd start with that. Every year we add a new field trip, and the class is in glorious peril of becoming a field-only herpetology experience. Below you will see photos from the 2008-11 Cal Poly ZOO 341 Herpetology classes' field trips.

Most of the photos are not just the herps, but rather, of the REAL subject of my class: students holding herps!

The students first learn about the amphibians and reptiles in lab using preserved and (whenever possible) live specimens. Learning about desert tortoises as they wander around the table:

Then, it's off to the field, where we hunt critters and the students get schooled in the use of their field guides and how to write Grinnellian field notes.

San Luis Obispo Co is NOT a hotbed of amphibian diversity. But we nonetheless have a great time catching our local anurans and salamanders in wetlands near campus.

There is a series of old constructed trout ponds on a property near campus that the owner has converted into amphibian habitat. Each year our class goes to the property and seigns and dipnets for amphibians. Our job is to remove the invasive bullfrogs so that the healthy populationf of California red-legged frogs is protected. The students jump right in and pull a big net through the water, capturing all the critters:

We then go through the contents of the net:

Here is my TA Matt showing students a bullfrog larva:

And a student showing off an adult bullfrog he grabbed:

California newts are very common in these ponds:

Newt eggs:

Reptiles, in contrast to amphibians, are abundant and diverse in SLO Co.! We take students on trips all over the county. One popular trip is to Chimineas Ranch in the Carrizo Plain, where my lab does field work. There are some juicy junk piles there that are full of herps. Here is my TA Tony showing the students a northern Pacific rattlesnake found under some junk:

My grad student Nick with a striped racer:

A teeny pond turtle:

Admiring a small California kingsnake:

Western fence lizards are by the far the most common herp we see. This one is missing a leg and getting around just fine!

Thumbs up for coast horned lizards!

Alligator lizard earrings:

A good-looking Western yellow-bellied racer:

Northern Pacific rattlesnakes are thick as thieves at Chimineas. This year we found 16 rattlesnakes in a 3-hour hike! Photographing a snake from a respectful distance:

Courting rattlesnakes. That's the very attentive male on the right.

The Mojave Desert field trip is the capstone experience for the class. We stay at the Desert Studies Center in Zzyzx California in the Mojave Desert and spend two days hiking and night driving for herps. Best field trip ever!

The PERL crew preparing to drive the vans over to the East Mojave:

We spend some time every year herping at the Kelso Dunes, where you can find loads of lizards. It is important to protect oneself from the sun:

A western whiptail lizard:

A huge long-nosed leopard lizard:

And one of the most special lizards around, a Mojave fringe-toed lizard:
Mojave rattlesnakes, among the most "stimulating" of all rattlesnake species:

We do lots of night driving because this is the best way to find snakes. Students checking out a sidewinder on Kelbaker Rd.:

And a shovel-nosed snake:

Posing with a glossy snake:
Sometimes we see herps on the road during the day, too. In 2009 we found over 20 desert tortoises along Kelbaker Rd. in a single hour! That includes the big mama below. This was likely because the severe draught forced tortoises to the road edges where runoff increases vegetative growth.

Pisgah Lava Flow is a gorgeous place that I was introduced to in my Herpetology class at UC Berkeley:

Here's a collared lizard from Pisgah:

And its speckled rattlesnakes are incredible:

I am so lucky at Cal Poly to have great students, awesome colleagues, and an administration supportive of our herpetological endeavors. So supportive in fact, that Dean Phil Bailey of Cal Poly's College of Science and Math joined us on a field trip!

"Those must be some really mellow snakes."

2010-11-27T10:17:00.000-08:00

That is a quote from my collaborator Ignacio when he measured the levels of stress hormone in the blood samples we brought back from Hog Island boa constrictors last year. They had such low levels that many were virtually non-detectable. If you have ever spent much time on a Caribbean island, you might have low stress hormone levels, too. My lab group ventured to Honduras last week to further study this phenomenon in island boas.

Arriving in La Ceiba, bodies and luggage intact (rather a feat in itself, considering my previous experiences traveling to this particular place, which you can read about here and here):

And then it was off to Cayo Cochino Menor via boat:

As my senior colleagues told me recently while I was preparing my tenure packet, "We really just want to see what you did, don't give us too much commentary." In other words, I talk too much. I'll take that advice here, too.

I will present photos in the following order: a tour of Cayo Menor, its herps, our boa work, then invertebrates, then the three S's: snorkeling, scenery, and screwing around.

A TOUR OF CAYO COCHINO MENOR:

It is a tiny island, inaccessible to the public and therefore a haven for boas, iguanas, cool invertebrates, and the biologists that love them. Here is a view of the beach right in front of our cabins:

A view of Cayo Cochino Mayor (the other Hog Island) from our island (Menor), with some amazing reef in between:

Our island to the left, Cayo Culebra off the coast of Menor to the right, with the mainland mountains in the background:

The "lagoon," a wet area teeming with boas and invertebrates:

The "lion's head," a small projection at the north end of the island:

HERPS:

Even though we spent most of our time searching for boas as part of our study, the other herps on the island were constantly throwing themselves at us, requiring investigation. Here are the common ones:

Mexican Treefrog (Smilisca baudinii):

Honduran Spiny-tailed iguana (Ctenosaura melanosterna):

They sleep inside stumps and logs at night:

Green iguanas (Iguana iguana), on the other hand, sleep in trees at night, making them accessible to curious students :

A lemur anole (Norops lemurinus) sleeping on a leaf at night:

An Allison's anole (Anolis allisoni) at the restaurant (don't worry, that's not lizard meat in the soup. I'm not sure what it was, but it was mammalian):

Geckos fighting over territories at the restaurant:

A heretofore undiscovered species of gecko on the island (Gonatodes? sp.):

A rather cute little forest racer (Dryadophis melanolomus):

An adult black-striped snake (Coniophanes imperialis):

OUR BOA WORK:

We captured and processed almost 150 boas in five days. Not too shabby. Results are forthcoming, of course, but for now here are some photos of us hard at work (honestly felt like hardly working).

Here is some typical boa habitat in the forest:

A boa in foraging posture. They blend right in with the branches, and when a bird or iguana is unlucky enough to choose the same branch, pow!

This apparently goes for bats, too, as this boa showed its appreciation for being captured by puking up a leaf-nosed bat:

When we captured a snake, we got a blood sample right away:

Then we took other data, like weighing the snake (there is a balance under this plate):

Lots of boas had ticks on them, especially on scars. These ticks are Amblyomma dissimile adults:

Then the boas were returned to their place of capture, and we went searching for more! Along the way, we encountered many cool invertebrates.

INVERTEBRATES:

The invertebrates on the island are absolutely amazing. During the day, you mainly see hermit crabs:

Some take advantage of the sea garbage to find new homes:

There are also gigantic tarantulas out day and night. Here's one eating a cockroach (that Matt fed to it):

Here's one that found its hairy way onto my hat.

A giant scorpion eating a cockroach:

This is another species of cockroach that is just huge:

A tailless whip scorpion (also giant, are you seeing a theme emerge here?):

A rather large centipede:

And crabs are perhaps the most populous denizens of the forest at night, clicking around and scavenging like Garthim from the Dark Crystal:

The island is covered in HUGE termite mounds:

A very cool yellow fungus (Yes, fungi aren't inverts, but this didn't fit anywhere else):

SNORKELING, ETC.

When all the research was done and there was a day to spare, we hit the water. Okay, so some of the students did this every day on breaks. Wouldn't you?

Here's Amber and I next to the pier (which was guarded underneath by a barracuda):

Nick and I chilling in some crystal clear water:

The boys sneaking in a quick snorkel before dinner:

Spotted eagle ray:

An incredibly cute little octopus hiding in a coral:

And then out he came!

Lion fish are invasive predators here. Scott took a late night swim to spear a bigun':

Jess is a visiting scientist from Australia in charge of removing as many lion fish as possible. Here she is cutting out the stomach of Scott's fish to see if it had recently been sampling tasty native fishys:

Our awesome cook Marina fried up one of Jess's spoils, all one square inch of it:

Some serious RnR was had by all. Chilling on the pier:

Some late-night dominos:

I tried to teach the group some yoga poses, with a Cayos flare, of course. Here are some of our asanas:

Boasana:

Green Iguanasana:

Flor de Canasana:

Here's Tony practicing Cervezasana. I think that this was the most practiced pose of the trip.

Overall, it was an amazing trip. Good research, good weather, good company, great experience for all. With some wicked Central American sunsets.

Accidentally Acapulco

2010-09-05T05:18:00.000-07:00

Every trip I take to Latin America is an adventure. I try to plan them that way, but they often end up being adventurous in ways I'd prefer to avoid. I've had my luggage stolen by banditos, I have made my way through Honduras during a military coup, and I've travelled around Guatemala on "goat and chicken" buses at a time when gringo buses were untravelable because they typically got hijacked. This past week Christy and I were supposed to be in Oaxaca volunteering at a sea turtle rescue, among other things, but the forces that love to tinker with my Latin American travel had other plans for us. Here's the tale of what transpired, along with the obligatory "photos of yummy food I ate on my trip" (and even a few herp photos at the end!).

A day before we left, Mexicana Airlines went bankrupt and cancelled all their flights. So our trip coordinator made us reservations on a bus (a nice one, no goats or chickens) that would take 13 hours overnight to get to Oaxaca from Mexico City. While we waited for the bus, we checked out a beautiful area of Mexico City called Coyoacan.

We ate duck taquitos and venison tostadas along with margaritas at an awesome little restaurant on the town square.

Then we were off to Oaxaca on the bus. Sometime in the middle of the night, the bus pulled over for a couple of hours to wait out a horrific deluge of rain. Apparently the road began falling apart in the rain because after that it was pothole city. At about 6am, over 10 hours into the bus ride, we discovered that the floods caused by the rain had knocked out a bridge on our route. Here's the spot where we hung around while the drivers figured out what to do.

And here's who we were sharing the wait with.

After a couple of hours, the drivers decided that the only choice was to turn around and go back to Mexico City. Why this took them so long to decide (as far as I know, even Mexican bridges don't regenerate themselves) is beyond me. You can imagine how we felt at the prospect of being in the bus for another 7+ hours. So I dashed into a tienda and got El Jimador and Squirt, and Christy made us gringo margaritas for the ride.

After a few hours it dawned on us that the bus was entering Acapulco. Having been on the bus for 18 hours, and unable to bear the idea of going back to Mexico City, Christy and I jumped ship at Acapulco and found ourselves a snooty hotel for a few days while we tried to figure out how else to get to Oaxaca. Meanwhile, everyone else in our group had gone earlier on a different route, so they were all smugly beginning the fun in Oaxaca.

Always adaptable and optimistic, we decided that Acapulco wasn't going to be so bad. We did a lot of this:

And quite a bit of this:

Check out this amazing prawn salad.

I must have eaten my weight in prawns the three days we were in Acapulco. I'm surprised I didn't turn into:

Molletes, one of the best breakfasts I've ever had:

Our lovely hotel even had Mexican versions of gringo condiments. In Mexico, soy sauce is called "jugo" (juice) and worchestershire sauce is called "salsa inglesa" (English salsa).

Meanwhile our trip coordinator was coming up with all sorts of plans to get us to Oaxaca. She could send a driver- no wait, the roads are out. We could go back to Mexico City and take a flight to Oaxaca. Why didn't we do that in the first place? Because Mexicana was bankrupt. Ah, there's another airline? Well, why didn't we do that in the first place? We got online to buy tickets, but this airline does not take American credit cards. Huh? Yeah, I know, makes no sense. We resolved to go to Mexico City in a few days and pay cash for the tickets at the airport.

In the meantime, we ventured into the city of Acapulco in search of El Mercado de Artesanias. Here's a panoramic view of the hotel zone (which was really quite icky and sewery; luckily we had chosen a hotel outside of the city, far to south).

At el mercado, we worked up quite an appetite haggling over ceramics, getting eaten by mosquitos, and goofing off.

We started looking around for food, and decided that chicken feet and unidentified meat laying around in the open was probably not for us, adventurous as we are.

We found a food stand and ate some yummy chiva tacos. Here's the vendor cutting into the goat's skull to make brain tacos. We didn't eat those.

In an effort to see something scaly, we went to a little botanical garden in the hills on the campus of Universidad Loyola. Here's a view of the outskirts of Acapulco from the garden:

Christy standing next to an incredibly giant green thing:

Beautiful very large ferns:

And even a few critters! Here are some Norops lizards in the garden.

A female Sceloporus:

Lots of Ameiva:

And even a forest frog! Pretty amazing, considering that the creek running through the garden was, in the same fashion as all creeks in Acapulco, a sewer.

It rained on and off while we were there, nothing major, but apparently inland and south there was A LOT of rain. Our final morning in Acapulco, I was getting some exercise at the hotel gym when the silent TV screen started showing images of severe flooding in Guerrero, Oaxaca, and elsewhere. The jist was something like this.

That was it. We had weathered the storms of cancelled flights, washed out bridges, and stone age airline websites, but we wouldn't weather this one. Back to the US we went. Yeah, not exactly the vacation we were hoping for. But it was still fun, and maybe I'll try the get to the turtles next year...

Cookin' Babies

2010-08-26T07:02:00.000-07:00

Viviparity is cool. It is characteristic of most mammals, no birds, and a relatively small proportion of invertebrate, fish, amphibian, and reptile species. In reptiles, it only happens in some lizards and snakes and their relatives. A few of our local herps like garter snakes, legless lizards, and rattlesnakes are viviparous. In fact, all rattlesnakes are viviparous, so don't be taken in by these gags:

Rattlesnake babies develop within little sacs in the mom's oviducts, seeing as how snakes do not have a uterus. Inside these sacs are the baby and a yolk sac, which are connected by an umbilical cord. A wee different from mammals, and perhaps even more cool.

Viviparity in reptiles is associated with interesting behaviors. Last week I was privileged to witness these behaviors in our local Northern Pacific rattlesnakes (Crotalus oreganus) at Montana de Oro State Park. A citizen herper called me up and invited me down to check out some snakes he has been watching all year. As we walked along a trail frequented by hikers, he pointed out a total of 12 rattlesnakes resting in loose coils on top of matted grasses. None of the passing hikers so much as noticed the serpents' presence. Probably a good thing, as noticed rattlesnakes often end up dead. Of the 12 snakes, two were males, one was a non-reproductive female, and nine were pregnant females. All photos are taken in situ, which is why the snakes are hard to see.

This guy is literally sitting right on the edge of the trail. We saw a bunch of people walk right past him.

And here are the prego girls. There are at least two reasons we saw so many pregnant snakes. First, we had lots of rain this spring, which intuitively means lots of primary production, which means lots of rodents, which means lots of snake food, which means lots of extra energy to make babies out of. Indeed, we witnessed tremendous mating activity this spring. Second, we likely saw more pregnant females out than non-reproductive snakes because the viviparous pregnant females need to sit on the surface to thermoregulate. I like to call this "cookin' babies."

Here's a female early in the morning on the way out of her rodent hole.

This female is stretched out in the grass, showing how hard the snakes can be to see at times.

Can you find the snake in this photo?

Here's a female sitting next to a shed skin that is clearly too large to be hers. There must be so many other snakes hiding nearby!

Typically after they emerge they will get settled into a tight or loose coil.

Here's a female doing a serious cookin' pose. Look at those swollen hindquarters.

Sometimes the pregnant females hang out in groups, in which case the location of the gathering is called a rookery. We found these two girls together, and my guide explained that there are often two others with them.

I am intrigued by this population of snakes, which lives in an environment so dramatically different from those we study inland. Here at the beach it is relatively cool year round, and importantly does not get very cold in winter. At our inland site, it gets incredibly hot in the summer and cold in the winter. There is a smorgasbord of small rodents here at the beach, and the snakes are somewhat small. Inland, the males are huge because they can grab ground squirrels and rabbits. Here at the beach (they are literally living just a few meters from the surf) the snakes probably experience an increased salt load relative to the inland population. How do their predators differ? Inland there seem to be more snake-munching badgers and birds of prey, like this redtail hawk parent feeding its baby:

(I got the amazing hawk photos here, and the photographer is not identified.)

Thank you to Dave for showing me these amazing beasties! I can't wait to see all the snake baby biomass that will result. Any day now!

Southeast Arizona Heaven

2010-08-23T06:57:00.000-07:00

Ever had a therapist or hypnotist ask you to envision yourself in your happy place, maybe a white sand beach or a fern-covered forest hideaway? OK, me neither, but I've seen it on TV. Love those beaches and ferns, but my happy place isn't quite so commonplace. It is the Chiricahua Mounatins in southeastern Arizona. Last month I took Tony and Scott on a herping roadtrip to this magical place and a few others nearby. I am not a good photographer, and the monsoon rains prevented me from takng many bad photos. Here are the ones fit to spit on.

After a shotgun visit through Phoenix to see Saskia Brad and Kai, and Dale and Dianne, we got to the herping. We started out by meeting my friends Roger and Wendy at the Suizo Mountains, which are in the Sonoran Desert lowlands outside of Tucson. Roger radiotracked some tiger rattlesnakes (Crotalus tigris) and western diamond-backed rattlesnakes (C. atrox), like this girl here.

Here's another doing its "summertime open air market" bit:

Roger was releasing a Gila monster (Heloderma suspectum) that had just had its transmitter removed. Here's Scott wishing him good luck.

Scott found a beauty of a glossy snake (Arizona elegans):

And I found this nice black coachwhip (Masticophis flagellum) in the morning:

We spent the next evening radiotracking Gila monsters at the Owlhead Buttes, my old field site, with some of Dale DeNardo's graduate students. But after tracking just 4 animals we got completely rained out. No photos, but amazingly 3 of the 4 Gila monsters were the same ones that I and Dale had first captured and implanted with transmitters 10 years ago!

Heading ever southward, we met up with my friends Justin Keri and Corbin who live at the base of the Catalina Mountains, and then my friends Melissa, Jeff, and John met us up in said mountains. I never spent a lot of time here when I lived in AZ, but they are gorgeous.

We saw about 7 or 8 of these Sonoran whipsnakes (M. bilineatus):

And the creek was full of black-necked garter snakes (Thamnophis cyrtopsis):

No rattlesnakes out though; it was pretty overcast and cool. We spent the next night in the Pinalenos, but again not much of anything out. Time to head to the Chiricahuas.

Here they are from Onion Saddle:

The creek near our campsite, which I have now been going to for 11 years:

Melissa, Jeff, Tony, and Scott at our campsite:

Now, some critters. Melissa is holding a big male blacktail rattlesnake (C. molossus) captured near the Southwest Research station:

Here's a nice rock rattlesnake (C. lepidus) from Cave Creek area:

Two Sonoran Mountain kingsnakes (Lampropeltis pyromelana) were found, here's one:

Tony and Scott with shit-eating grins over their first pyro:

The typical lizard mafia was everywhere. Here is a striped plateau lizard (Sceloporus virgatus) on the left and a Yarrow's spiny lizard (S. jarrovi) on the right:

We went up to Barfoot Park, which is a famous spot for viewing twinspot rattlesnakes (C. pricei). They have been researched heavily here, likely because the beautiful talus slide is so gigantic that it houses a massive population of these guys:

I love this next photo. It looks like the sky behind the trees, but it's actually the giant hillside of talus!

Indeed, we immediately found a few pricei, including this guy:

We did a bunch of night driving, but unfortunately many of the critters were dead on the road. I've never seen traffic on Hwy 80 like this before! 3 of every 4 vehicles were Border Patrol, and we got "harassed" constantly. I say that in quotes because they were in fact quite friendly, and of course I am happy that they are there doing their important jobs. But it's hard to stop for a snake when you are being high-beamed and tail-gated by a patroller.

Here's a nice longnose snake (Rhinocheilus lecontei) we found on Hwy 80:

We visited our friends at the beautiful new Chiricahua Desert Museum, and were overwhelmed by their beautiful displays of live animals (and those of us without Y chromosomes also greatly enjoyed the fabulous shop). Here are the three of us standing in front of their collection of booze bottles with herp labels:

Next it was off to the Patagonia Mtns. Again, weather and conditions not so perfect, not to mention severe time lost having to drive to Nogales on my spare to get a new tire, but it was still really fun. Tony found this gorgeous night snake (Hypsiglena sp.) under a log:

There was a big rain pool from the monsoons, and it was filled with tadpoles. Upon closer investigation, we realized that these tadpoles were odd-- oops, wrong phylum! They were tadpole shrimp, which Tony likened to wee little horseshoe crabs. I had never even heard of them. Dorsal view:

And ventral:

Of course we had to have a soiree on our last evening in the boonies, given that most of the previous ones were spent night-driving. Check out our spread, yum!

Overall it was a great trip, but we were a bit early in terms of the monsoons. The final tally was 5 species of anurans, 1 turtle, and 32 species of squamates. Here are the rest of the species we found that I did not mention above:

Hyla arenicolor - Canyon Treefrog
Bufo cognatus - Great Plain Toad
Bufo debilis - Green Toad
Bufo punctatus - Red-spotted Toad
Scaphiopus couchii - Couch's Spadefoot
Terrapene ornata - Ornate Box Turtle
Crotaphytus bicinctores - Mojave Black-collared Lizard
Coleonyx variegatus - Western Banded Gecko
Cophosaurus texanus - Greater Earless Lizard
Callisaurus draconoides - Zebratail Lizard
Sceloporus magister - Desert Spiny Lizard
Urosaurus ornatus - Tree Lizard
Uta stansburiana - Side-blotched Lizard
Plestiodon callicephalus - Mountain Skink
Elgaria kingii - Madrean Alligator Lizard
Aspidoscelis tigris - Western Whiptail
Lampropeltis getula - Common Kingsnake
Pituophis catenifer - Gopher Snake
Salvadora hexalepis - Western Patchnose Snake
Trimorphodon lambda - Sonoran Lyre Snake
Crotalus scutulatus - Mohave Rattlesnake
Crotalus viridis - Prairie Rattlesnake
Heterodon nasicus - Western Hognose Snake
Thamnophis cytropsis - Black-necked Garter Snake

Grantsy-pantsies (aka My Over-Achieving Graduate Students)

2010-05-14T10:34:00.000-07:00

I love my graduate students.

They are intelligent, inquisitive, fun to hang with, and exceedingly capable of securing funding. What more would an advisor want?

Tony Frazier is studying the development of a brain region associated with spatial ecology in rattlesnakes, specifically focusing on the effects of testosterone on neurogenesis within this brain region. He is a field rat but is now being handcuffed to the cryostat to analyze the brains from his field experiment last year. He was recently awarded a 2010 Gaige Award for graduate student research from the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. Besides snakes and brains, he enjoys going for runs in the oak woodland and PBR.

Nick Pollock is studying the reasons why male lizards are more heavily parasitized by ticks than female lizards. As of yesterday he has collected all of the data from his multiple lab and field studies and will now be crunching data and writing. He won a 2009 Gaige Award, and was recently awarded a research grant by the Chicago Herpetological Society. Besides lizards and ticks, Nick enjoys cooking and engaging in questionable photo-opps.

Matt Holding is a new graduate student in my lab who is studying the effects of translocation on neurogenesis and the stress response in rattlesnakes. He is currently in the middle of some serious field work, and is TAing my Herpetology class. Matt was recently awarded a research grant from the Herpetologists' League. He was also awarded a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship, which is perhaps the most prestigious award that a new graduate student in the sciences can get. Matt enjoys asking lots of questions and daydreaming about being David Attenborough.

Congrats to my boys for being fabulous and recognized as such by their scientific societies!

So Much Snakey Goodness

2010-04-06T04:41:00.000-07:00

There are two types of people in this world: those who hate snakes and those who love snakes. If you're in the former group, I strongly suggest that you refrain from walking around rock piles in hills this spring, because you will quickly see something like this:

The rocks are SNAKEY. We saw about 40 snakes over four days in the rocky hills at Chimineas Ranch during spring break. Of course, if you belong to the latter group above, head for the hills because I think it's just getting started. Here are some photos of snakes doing thier business over the past couple of weeks. Enjoy!

The wildflowers are out in force at Chimineas right now.

The ground squirrels have bred early this year, so babies are already running rampant and finding their way into the bellies of snakes. Some snakes were found in hunting posture:

This big boy was found out cooking his recently acquired meal, and upon feeling him up later I allege him to have eaten three baby ground squirrels (I felt three small skulls and a tangle of little limbs). Good boy!

(Recently some herper friends of mine on Facebook were debating whether posed photos of herps in the field are a good thing, or whether photos should be taken in situ. I like both kinds, but want to point out that all my rattlesnake photos are always taken in situ because I like to look back on what they are doing in various seasons over various years. That's also one of many reasons my photos aren't very good :-)

We saw about 10 male-female pairs of rattlesnake over a few days. This is called consortship, and usually entails a male sitting right next to or sometimes on top of a female:

Males will stay with females like this for days, presumably waiting until she is receptive to mate but we don't really know. We found one pair copulating, but my camera was- er- lost at the time so I didn't get photos. We also saw a rattlesnake eating a ground squirrel when my camera was lost. Luckily, Tony found it the next day under a fence we frequently cross, sitting conspiratorily next to an empty Hornsby's bottle. Oops.

So why are we out looking for rattlesnakes anyway? My graduate student Matt is beginning his thesis research studying the effects of translocation on neuroplasticity and stress reactivity in male rattlesnakes. He has been collecting big male snakes, getting blood samples, and putting radiotransmitters in the snakes to follow them around for the next few months.

We have lots of helpers out there to look for snakes, then Matt catches and tubes the snakes.

A blood sample is drawn from the caudal vessels:

Snakes are brought to the lab, surgically implanted with radios, then released. Here are two brand new radiotagged males out basking together the day they were released.

And of course, the omnipresent Western fence lizards lizards are especially abundant this year and are looking rather portly from a steady diet of the recent bloom of craneflies.

Good years for insects and rodents mean good years for lizards and snakes, but also birds of prey. The eagles have been soaring, and hopefully they will (1) refrain from eating any radiotagged snakes, and (2) reuse the nest they built last year on site:

Happy herping everyone!

Panamania

2009-12-05T17:09:00.000-08:00

Over Thanksgiving break I traveled to Panama for the very first time! Not much herping was had, largely because the purpose of the trip was for Chad to make arrangements for the class he is taking to Panama for 2 months next year. So it was a working trip! We still got a wee bit of herping in, as well as some RnR. I am facing final exam week, so I felt compelled to make my post before the grading monster got to me. So it will be lots of photos and little text! Too bad my camera is terrible (Santa has been asked for a new one).

We arrived in Panama City (huge, hectic, skyscrapery place) and got the heck outta dodge the next day. We headed to El Cope, the teeny town in the mountains where Chad did his postdoc years ago and where his class will be based.

There is electricity but no internet in El Cope, although that will change before the class arrives. In either of the two restaurants in town, lunch is $1.50 and dinner was somewhat steep at $1.75. We stayed with Chad's friend Julie Ray who lives in El Cope along with her dog Lucy, who enjoyed a downward dog session with me.

Julie is building La Mica Biological Station there. The station is currently under construction, and is situated in a beautiful spot along a small river in El Cope.

Chad pointed out that next to the river, four plants my mom has in her house were growing in one square meter:

Julie at the cabin at la Mica:

The dorm foundation:

Chad's class will stay in this dorm from Feb through April, doing research on anything from frogs to farms and taking classes along the way. They will also venture out into other areas of Panama for trips of varying lengths, including a five day stay in the town of Marta. This town is at the end of a long road only accessible by 4WD in dry conditions (or walking in wet conditions).

The students will be staying at the electricity-free homes of the town's residents, eating meals with them, interviewing them, working in the community, and improving their Spanish.

They will also make a long hike from Marta to a plane wreckage way up in the mountains. This is where Omar Torrijos, the leader of Panama in the 70's until his death in 1981, met his death when his plane crashed under sketchy assassinationy circumstances. Although a U.S. Special Forces team recovered his body, the local people believe that he actually survived the crash and lives in the jungle near the crash site.

Even the school is called Omar Lives.

The kids were excited to see their photos on my digital camera after I took them. Allegedly none of the families even own any print photos of their kids!

Like other nearby towns, the mandarin orange is an important crop so there are orange trees everywhere, a familiar sight to me in California. But here the trees are also covered in air plants.

Then it was back to El Cope to go for a night hike in Omar Torrijos National Park, where Chad did his postdoctoral work on the effect of the amphibian decline on snake populations. Up until a few years ago this place was CRAWLING with ectothermic creatures of all kinds. Then the montane frogs in Panama, like many other places in the world, were crushed by an epidemic of chytridiomycosis, a fatal syndrome caused by a fungus. With no frogs to eat, the starving snakes ate all the lizards, and then finally died out, so now there isn't much at all in the way of frogs, lizards, and snakes. It was a beautiful place, but eerily "dead" for such a lush forest. We did manage to see a few frogs:

Katydid:

Vine snake:

An awesome phasmid (so-called because we watched Master and Commander a few days later, and the name stuck):

This snail-eating snake was on the road next to Julie's house:

The next day we went to El Cano, an active archaeological dig site.

There are large burial mounds all over this site, full of bodies from before 1500.

One site is excavated and on display to the public:

A gringo archaeologist looted the site in the 1920's, tearing intricate stone carvings from pillars such that this is all that's left (the carvings are on display in a museum in New York):

There is a museum there that some of Chad's students will work at:

They will also help with the active dig (nothing going on this time of year because it's so rainy, but in spring it will be back on):

Next we went back up to the mountains to a town in a volcano called El Valle de Anton. I had a 24-hour bug that day and missed most of the fun including the beautiful scenery on the drive up there. I slept the day away and the next day we visited the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center (EVACC), a frog conservation center run by Edgardo and Heidi (who Chad knows from his postdoc days in Panama). The area is famous for its populations of the golden frog, which thanks to the chytrid fungus can now best be viewed in tanks inside EVACC. This center is doing some really important work and has some great stuff. You can read more about Panama's amphibian declines and conservation efforts here. Here's the public golden frog display:

And some others:

We also got a behind the scenes tour from Heidi:

Here are the golden frogs (gorgeous!):

After El Valle it was off to the beach for a very non-gringoy Thanksgiving at the fabulous Playa Blanca Beach Resort, complete with said white sand beaches:

And even some water aerobics in one of the two giant pools:

Then it was back to Panama City for a shoporama prior to departure back to the states. I found New Moon in Spanish on the eve of the movie's release.

But the real treasures were at an artisan market that used to be the YMCA in the Canal Zone. Check out the baskets:

The molas made by the Kuna Yala:

And the tagua nut carvings!

Overall, I was struck by how different Panama was from the other central American countries I have visited. Different in small ways (lentils instead of black beans) and big ways (the riches in city compared to the poverty of the country). Very few people speak English there, so I was thinking in Spanish for a few days upon my return. I had a great time and can't wait to return for spring break in March.

Oh, one more thing. The cigarette warning labels in Panama are awesome!

Did you see the suffering smoker visage in the hourglass? But my favorite is still the dead rat and cucaracha.

Mas boas por favor

2009-07-12T16:12:00.000-07:00

I spent the past couple of weeks on Cayo Cochino Menor and Utila, Honduras, working on boas at the former and working on relaxation at the latter. Well, that was the plan at least...

A day and a half before leaving for the big trip, the Honduran army forcibly removed their President from his house and exiled him to Costa Rica. This "military coup," although authorized by the Honduran courts, made me (and especially my dad) a bit jumpy about my travel. I mean, traveling down there is already chaotic, what about during the first Central American coup in 16 years? I went for it anyway, hoping for a miraculous trouble-free journey. Trouble-free it wasn't, but perhaps not for the usual reasons...

We arrived in San Pedro Sula and found that our connection flights to La Ceiba were cancelled. Because of the coup? Um, no. Because TACA airlines didn't pay their taxes and the gobierno grounded their within-country flights. Huh. So they got us an alleged bus, that would allegedly take us to La Ceiba, through an allegedly road-block-free city in the middle of a coup. Not so. Citizen roadblocks there were, and the alleged bus was a no-go. Would a lack of flights and a blockade of the only road out of town deter us? Of course not. We just hooked up with a group of Baptist missionaries and chartered a plane to La Ceiba. No problem!

We spent the night in La Ceiba, went to dinner at Ponderosa. No guns allowed!

The next day it was off to Cayo Cochino Menor, a beautiful small island in the chain of islands known as the Bay Islands.

This trip was a bit different for me from my last two trips in winter 2008 and winter 2009, because for the first time there were more people on the island than just those of studying boas. In summer there is a research expedition on the island called Operation Wallacea (or Opwall for short), and professors and students mainly from the United Kingdom live there doing research and volunteering. Most of them are marine biologists, doing two dives a day and learning about things like reef ecology. And then partying.

Some of the Brits (or Limeys, or lads n lasses, as PJ called them) chilling at the pier party:

Aaron and Clare, the boa dissertation students:

Bailando con los Hondurenos!

The first day went as usual: hunt boas in the morning, lunch, hunt boas in the afternoon, process snakes and samples, dinner, listen to presentations, beber Flor de Cana...

PJ and Chad on the beach on the way to some choice boa spots:

A boa lounging in typical posture on a branch:

A boa sporting two ticks on its face (parasitism of Boa constrictor by the tick Amblyomma dissimile being the subject of our study), as well as a cataract:

I suppose it's just a matter of time on a Boa constrictor-infested island before you see one doing what they're named for. We watched this one constrict for about an hour (don't know how long it was doing it before we got there), then it took maybe 30-45 minutes to swallow. Adult female Boa constrictor constricting and eating a medium-sized spiny-tailed iguana Ctenosaura melanosterna. This is a major staple item in the diet of boas on this island.

Alas, the boa-hunt fun was short-lived for me. On the second day I threw out my back and was completely laid out for the rest of the week. The medic offered me a choice between codeine and an injection (of something) into my back... ummmmm... none of the above! Instead I lounged on the beach (luckily I had in tow Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food to kill the time) and hobbled around between bed and eating place. Disappointing, but still had a good time!

Here are a few more cool photos from the trails and beaches.

A hermit crab making good use of beach litter:

An orchid blooming on the mountain top:

Sea grapes next to the surf:

Next it was off to Utila, another of the Bay Islands, for some RnR. Utila is a major dive spot and attracts the international 20-something backpacking crowd, with whom we were unfortunately unable to mix due to the nationwide curfew imposed because of the coup... okay, so really I wanted to lay round and nurse my back. Here are a few photos from Utila:

Typical scene early morning on the street:

The Treetanic Bar, which is essentially a big ship built up in the mango trees and insanely decorated by a loony glass artist:

The trip home was perfect until I missed my train from LA to SLO, but hey, it was all good once I got home to my doggie, who seemed to have doubled in size once again while I was gone. Fun times in Centroamerica, see you in the winter!

Monster in California!!

2009-05-13T18:26:00.000-07:00

Gila monster, that is!

This monster was recently discovered by Ron Ruppert and his Herpetology class from Cuesta College on a field trip to the Mojave Desert. Gila monsters are seen quite rarely in California because our eastern desert hills consitute the westernmost part of their range.

Here are excerpts from Ron's description of the find:

"When we sighted the lizard it was on the road and moving slowly to the north. The road is gravel at this location. The time was 16:20h and the air temperature was 76 degrees F as measured by my vehicle temperature gauge. The date was May 2, 2009. The Gila stopped by the bush it was near and all 21 of us exited the vehicles to watch and photograph it. After a few minutes it turned back south and crossed the road under the lead van which was parked at this point. It slowly moved into a loose bush where it stayed as we watched it for about 20 minutes longer. It was in this bush when we drove away. The terrain was rocky and gully washed. The canyon was fairly narrow at this point. The area was well covered with shrubs. There was mesquite, acacia, creosote, burro bush and cheesebush in the area.

The animal was bright in color. The coral color was bright and the black was deep black and the tail was banded as you can see in the photos. It’s tail was plump and the lizard looked healthy. Estimated length was 14-16 inches total length but no measurements were taken.

I have been in contact with Kent R. Beaman (his email is Heloderma, the genus for Gila Monsters). He sent a paper he published about the status of Gila Monsters in California. Prior to our sighting there have been only 26 individual sightings in California in 153 years (and 9 of those may be of the same individual on different days). California apparently has a different "banded" subspecies, Heloderma suspectum cinctum, from the more common Arizona subspecies (although it's admittedly a small sample size!). The last sighting in the Providence Mountains ... was in spring 1982. The last sighting in the entire state was in spring 2006 in the Kingston Mountains over 70 miles to the north of the Providence Mountains ... Prior to that there was one sighting in spring 1999 far to the south (Cadiz Mountains) and previous to that there were two separate sightings in 1982. The rest were previous to 1982 extending back through the 70's, 60's, 1906 and back to 1861. This is a rare animal in California!"

Indeed, this is quiet a find, and made the morning news today in SLO Co. (although our dingbat morning news reporter couldn't keep herself from exclaiming "I'm glad they're in the Mojave and not here!").

Hail Heloderma!

New season, new quarter

2009-04-17T20:19:00.000-07:00

I love spring! Both spring season, with the emergence of hungry, feisty amphibians and reptiles, and spring quarter, where I get to teach introductory biology and herpetology. Hail Herpetology! It's the king of classes. It just makes me... happy. Here are some random happy stories, naturally involving herps, from the last week.

We had our first amphibian lab in herpetology last week, so I went out hiking one morning with Cosmo to find some slender salamanders (Batrachoseps nigriventris) under logs on my property. This is the only time of year we have much rain, so it is green and beautiful with the oak trees leafing out:

Cosmo is in heaven on these walks (and so are the ticks who blend so stealthily into his coat, only to die an ugly death upon tasting Frontline, HA!). I might like ticks, but not when attached to the Dog-child.

About 100m from my house I spied the perfect log:

Alas, there was no slender salamander in residence. Instead I found this, a juvenile rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus). A much rarer sight!

(This snake was in the same spot and position yesterday morning, exactly one week later.)

By the way, I went on to find a salamander for lab, but my camera is macro-challenged and I don't have a photo that shows more than a worm-like blurr.

This week I took my herpetology class to catch amphibians and reptiles on some property near my old house, where the owner has converted man-made trout ponds into a herp haven. The students dove right in, quite literally, as their task included seigning (drag-netting) the pond to catch tadpoles:

One of the goals was to catch (and remove) these nasty bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana) tadpoles, which are invasive species. I donated some to the professor who teaches developmental biology so the students can watch the nasty babies metamorphose into nastier adults.

We also caught treefrogs (Pseudacris regilla), newts (Taricha torosa), fence lizards (Sceloporus occidentalis), and a slender salamander and alligator lizard (Elgaria multicarinata):

Max likes gator lizard earrings:

Much fun was had by all, and I think everyone is ready for some more field trips (next on agenda: Poly Canyon lizards, Home for Wayward Turtles and Tortoises, Mojave Desert reptiles).

The next few weekend are going to be so great! Read it and weep:

This weekend: Ride in Army Blackhawk helicopter, followed by rattlesnake and lizard catching at field site

Next weekend: Roided lizard-catching in Poly Canyon (you'll see)

Next n. weekend: Herpapalooooooooooza!!!

Next n. n. weekend: More rattlesnake and lizard catching at field site

Next n. n. n. weekend: Mojave Desert field trip

Next n. n. n. n. weekend: I don't know yet, but it's a 3-day weekend and is sure to involve some sort of herping shenanigans

Speaking of shenanigans, check out the crazy pet tortoises! Blacktop decided she needed to spend the night on top of the two little ones, and they were thus pinned with no say in the matter:

Happy herping!!!

Let the Field Season Begin!

2009-03-15T17:09:00.000-07:00

It's mid-March in sunny central California, and that means two things: reptiles and mayhem at Chimineas! Last weekend we had the first annual PERL field season kick-off party. Friends were in from out of town, many new students have joined the lab, and our favorite hormone testosterone is in the air (lizard and rattlesnake testosterone, that is), so we thought it right to celebrate. So PERL hosted a weekend event attended by about 35 people, with some snake-tracking, hiking, and evening festivities.

My students took people out radiotracking snakes, and looking for new ones. Only males were out! We found some out basking, like this one:

And some were peeking from under rocks but unattainable:

And some we managed to yank from under the rocks:

Jordan, an undergraduate in the lab, demonstrating perfect snake-tubing form:

A favorite spot for Western pond turtles:

Matt, a prospective grad student lucky to be visiting during the festivities, holding a turtle:

For the evening festivities, each student in PERL (plus some visitors) gave 5-minute presentations on their research. Here's the crowd:

My grad student Nick doing his presentation. Yes, that's a bull with a hat glued to it in the photo. We've switched from horses to cattle (and rabbits) as tick-breeding fodder.

And here are two undergraduates in the lab, Stephen and Ben, presenting their research. Yes, those are lizard tails sticking out of ice.

Now for the real fun:

The infamous hot tub:

And finally, it wouldn't be a party if Cosmo didn't join in the fun:

Honduras!!!

2009-02-14T13:28:00.000-08:00

I rang in the new year my favorite way- Central American style, on a beautiful Caribbean island full of snakes and friends. The purpose of the trip was to continue research on the ecology of boa constrictors initiated by Chad Montgomery and others several years ago, and also to begin a new study of the host-parasite relationship between boas and ticks. I spent New Year's Eve last year on the same island, but this year's trip was much better than last year's, considering that we retained our luggage and everyone smelled much better.

It's a beautiful place, not just because it is crawling with boas and iguanas.

The island is fairly small, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in relief. To get to the really good boa spots (places with names like the "Honey Hole" and "Bee Draw"), you hike up some very steep trails and bushwhack through some dense tropical vegetation.

Look at all the airplants!

The island also has some giant orchids:

The boas tend to be stretched out on horizontal-ish branches near the ground (or, there are probably lots up in the canopy too, but the ones we see are near the ground).

When someone finds a boa, we catch it, quickly take a blood sample from the heart for later analysis of hormone levels, collect data on the habitat, and bag the boa for measurements to be done later in the lab. Here are Chad and I bleeding a boa in the field:

Since so many boas could be found with six people searching for them, entire afternoons were spent processing these boas in the lab.

Boats brought massive tourist crowds to the island each afternoon. The tourists were allowed to traipse around the island for a grand total of about 10 minutes before being herded onto the boats again, and if they were lucky enough to commence traipsing during an afternoon processing sesion, Tony or Chad would treat them to an up close and personal lesson about boas:

One new focus this year was quantifying the number and placement of ticks (Amblyomma dissimile) in order to examine how things like sex, body condition, and hormone levels of the boas relate to tick load. Ticks mainly congregated on wounds or scars on the boas:

In addition to our studies, some goofing off was had by all. There's snorkeling, hiking, swimming, exploring beaches, iguana-catching, etc. As usual my favorite extracurricular activity involved food. Our cook Jani showed us how to make tortillas from scratch. Yummy gooey manteca-filled tortillas. Yup, that's lard. That's what makes them actually tasty, unlike the heart-healthy cardboard we call tortillas here.

And of corse, no Cayos trip would be complete without a party or two or three.

New Year's Eve dance party Central American style (lots of food, straight booze, hyper children, and really, really bad hip hop music):

We finished up the trip with a day on the mainland. PJ got some choice garments at Carrion (yes, the department store does indeed appear to be named after rotting flesh):

And Honduras trips always end with some beers n cocktails at Ex-Pats:

This summer we'll be heading back down for a longer, hotter and sweatier trip!

... And here's a completely unrelated photo, simply to show off my very cute dog getting his first bath yesterday. He finally forgave me a half hour later, but a rawhide was exchanged in the bargain.

Cosmo!!!

2009-01-18T17:45:00.000-08:00

Introducing Cosmo!

I brought him home yesterday, after six weeks of waiting that seemed like six months.

No, he's not named after the drink or the magazine. Nor is he named after Kramer, because then he would be Kosmo. Although I don't mind that so much, because he's a spaz. But, he is just Cosmo.

Right now he is spending all of his time sleeping, playing, and eating. He's adjusting well to his new home. A particularly poignant moment for me was when he spent 10 minutes sniffing every inch of Kuma's dog bed, which hasn't budged from its position next to my bed. He just wanted to know whose smell was on his new turf. :-)

There will be lots more pix later! We're going to the beach tomorrow.

The Kumonster

2008-12-06T11:00:00.001-08:00

KUMA: May 1, 2001 - December 5, 2008

When I brought my new puppy home in 2001, I named her Kuma because she looked like a little bear cub (Kuma means bear in Japanese).

She came to be known by many other names, including Kumba, Kumbaya, Kumonkey, and especially (and perhaps most appropriately) the Kumonster. But to me, she will always just be the best dog in the world.

Kuma died unexpectedly on Friday from liver tumors that caused her to bleed internally. She felt sick in the morning, so I took her to the doggie ER, and had to put her to sleep later in the afternoon. She was 7 1/2 years old, too young. I thought I would have her with me for at least another few years. She was my best buddy.

Ever the optimist, I do have things to be thankful for. I am thankful that she got be spoiled in often ridiculous fashion for over seven good years. I am thankful that she got to snack on fancy dog treats from her nonna during visits at least several times per year. I am thankful that she got to sniper-lick the faces of many an unsuspecting house guest.

I am thankful that she got to hang out at the beach a lot.

I am thankful that she got to chase (and lose) many tennis balls in the ocean. I am thankful that my students spoiled her constantly at my house and at the field site:
Snoozing after a long day in the pool at the field site:
Playing volleyball with my grad students on Thanksgiving:
Staring longingly at the turkey remnants on Thanksgiving (and she got more than her share of scraps, if you call breast meat scraps!):
Hanging with Auntie Laini and dog brothers Darwin and Anakin.
Checking out the German Shepherd socks mom got from Auntie Christy for her birthday :
Hiking in Arizona with mom and Darwin:
Resting during a hike on the Central Coast:
Feeling nice and cool after a clean shave on a hot summer day:
Just laying around being beautiful:

I have a permanent reminder of Kuma, a "present" she gave me when I broke up a fight between her and Christy's dog. A broken finger that never healed right! (Kuma started it, by the way. :-)

I am thankful that she was loved by many people.

Last but not least, I am thankful that I had a couple of hours to say goodbye to her.

A last wrestle (kisses included, as always) with Marty:

I made a donation in Kuma's honor to the Woods Humane Society, our fabulous local no-kill shelter. Now some doggies, who weren't as lucky as Kuma to have a loving home, will get some nice holiday treats.

You can visit Kuma on Dogbook and virtually pet her. :-) http://apps.facebook.com/dogbook/profile/view/5263415#

Rest in peace, little baby. I hope there are lots of nice people to lick and quail to chase in doggie heaven.

Chameleons in Morro Bay!!

2008-12-03T13:20:00.000-08:00

I heard a rumor a while back that there is a population of chameleons living in Morro Bay, California. That's right, chameleons-- which are native to the Old World. There is an entry showing the chameleons on a California herp website, including some photos from Cal Poly students back in the 90's. Apparently 10 captive Jackson's chameleons were accidentally released in Morro Bay during a raid by a regulatory agency, and established a population because the climate (alternately foggy and sunny, never too hot) is similar to their native climate at high elevation spots in Africa.

My students put flyers in mailboxes, and many residents called me to confirm that yes indeed, they have seen chameleons in their yards over the years. So on the day after Thanksgiving, we went out a stared at branches all afternoon in the hopes of finding one.

Success! Craig found a female Jackson's chameleon sitting about head-height (well, Craig's head-height, which is actually freakishly high) on a branch in a Cal Poly professor's front yard.

We took the chameleon home and put her in my ficus tree to hang out. She tended to stay there pretty well (aside from one instance in which I returned home to find her across the house in my bed. ? ).

Chameleons are strange animals. For one thing, they tend to move extremely slowly, which has inspired an interesting legend in the A-Louyi tribe of the Upper Zambesi. Interestingly, it somewhat resembles our tortoise and the hare fable, but the consequences are much more dire and in this one the hare wins! The chameleon is the messenger of life and the hare is the messenger of death, but the chameleon is slow and keeps "constantly turning about," so the hare arrives first, and "That is why, when men die, they die once for all."

Here's the full text of the legend:

They say that Nyambe, whom they identify with the sun, used to dwell on earth with his wife Nasilele, whom they identify with the moon. But Nyambe retired to heaven from fear of men. Whenever he carved wood, men carved it also ; when he made a wooden plate, so did they. After he had withdrawn to the sky, it happened that Nyambe's dog died. He loved the animal, and said, "Let the dog live." But his wife said, " No, I won't have it. He's a thief." Nyambe still persisted. " For my part," said he, " I love my dog." But his wife said, " Throw him out." So they threw him out. By and by Nyambe's mother-in-law died, and his wife said to him, " Let her live," just as Nyambe himself had said to her about his dog. But Nyambe answered, " No, let her die and be done with it. I said to you that my dog should live, and you refused. It is my wish that your mother should die for good and all." So die she did for good and all. After that the husband and wife sent two messengers, a chameleon and a hare, to men on the earth. To the chameleon they said, " When thou art come to men, say to them, ' Ye shall live'; but as for thee, O hare, when thou art come to men, say to them, ' Ye shall die once for all.'" The chameleon and the hare set off with their messages. Now the chameleon, as he went, kept constantly turning about, but the hare ran. So the hare arrived first, and said that men should die once for all. Having delivered his message, the hare returned. That is why, when men die, they die once for all.

From Folk-Lore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend & Law by Sir James George Frazer

The Healing Properties of... Alligator Blood?

2008-11-19T11:53:00.000-08:00

It's now "winter" on the Central Coast, which means it is time to start reading group at my house on Sunday nights because weekend field work has come to an end. Here is a group of Cal Poly's finest eating Fatte's pizza and getting ready to discuss a paper:

And spoiling Kuma:

I chose a paper out of Mark Merchant's lab on the antimicrobial properties of alligator blood. This is really fascinating stuff. Alligators have proteins in their blood that can kill virtually any microbe, including the bacteria E. coli and even MRSA (the antibiotic-resistant bacteria)! Better yet, the blood can kill HIV!

Alligators engage in territorial disputes that often end in wounds. Also, they get chopped by boat propellers now and then. Either way, it can be hard to heal when you live in the water. So, with their amazing immune systems, alligators appear to have solved that one. The really cool thing about this study was that they ran the samples alongside human samples, which were puny and pathetic in terms of killing microbes.

In totally unrelated news, I went to a roller derby game on Saturday night. It was AWESOME!

A Snakey Halloween

2008-11-04T10:05:00.001-08:00

I love Halloween.

I love it because all the ghouls, goblins, ghosts, and other maligned creatures come out of hiding to be celebrated for the creepy beings they are. So of course it was befitting that my mean, nasty, bitey, stinky, poopy, hissy pet snake Bluster come out on the town with me.

Bluster was a big hit in the San Luis Obispo Halloween scene. Before I knew it (okay, so I didn't know it at the time, but found out from looking at my photos the next morning :-), everyone in the bars were passing him around and posing with the ghoulish creature. Apparently he had used up all of his bite on me earlier that night.

Not all the partiers were convinced... check out the woman in the upper right. Here's Bluster joining the festivities by taking a sip of rum and coke.

Don't worry, he doesn't bite! Mwoo ha ha!

The night ended when I got distracted with something and the bartender was unhappy to find Bluster crawling across the bar toward him. We got kicked to the curb.

Happy Halloween!

Lizards on Ice

2008-04-20T20:26:00.000-07:00

So, it's been three weeks since I posted, and what do you know, it's been three weeks since the new quarter started! I am teaching a new class and am having a blast and a nervous breakdown all at the same time. More on that later... but for now an account of my weekend with chilly lizards (plus a snake or two).

Two students and I began their research project on healing rates of lizards. These lizards sometimes suffer attempted predation, or fight with one other, resulting in wounds (like this bite scar shows).

How well they heal can tell you some interesting things about reproduction, hormones, etc. This technique was developed by my friend Susannah French and has been used by several groups as a measurement of immune function.

So... it was an unseasonally cold California spring weekend, hard freezing at night and daytimes in the 50's! Not your typical lizard-catching conditions, but we managed to process a comfy 72 lizards in two days:

The adult female lizards are huge right now, in the throes of vitellogenesis.

A male rattlesnake basking at the entrance to an active ground squirrel burrow:

Students collecting data on him:

A consortship between two new rattlesnakes (female in foreground, male in background at burrow entrance):

Snake in the grass = savoring spring before green California goes brown...

Atrocity alert: Kitten vodka

2008-03-26T20:03:00.000-07:00

Check out this news article, it's so disturbing what they do to the poor kittens!

March 26, 2008
SANTO, Texas - A cat breeder who calls himself Bayou Bob found a new way to make money: Stick a kitten inside a bottle of vodka and market the concoction as an "ancient Asian elixir." But Bayou Bob Popplewell's bright idea appears to have landed him on the wrong side of the law, because he has no liquor license.
Popplewell, who has raised kittens at Bayou Bob's Brazos River Cat Ranch for more than two decades, surrendered to authorities Monday. He spent about 10 minutes in jail after the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission obtained arrest warrants on misdemeanor charges of selling alcohol without a license and possessing alcohol with intent to sell.
If convicted, he faces up to a year in jail and $1,000 in fines.
Popplewell said he will fight the charges. His intent, he said, is not to sell an alcoholic beverage but a healing tonic. He said he has customers of Asian descent who believe the concoction has medicinal properties.
"It's almost a spiritual thing," said Popplewell, 63.
But alcohol commission agent Scott Jones pointed out that investigators confiscated 429 bottles of kitten vodka and one bottle of kitten tequila. At $23 a bottle, that's almost $10,000 worth of cat booze.
Even if Popplewell intended his drink be used as a healing tonic — an assertion the alcohol commission disputes — his use of vodka requires a state permit, authorities said.
"It's sold for beverage purposes, and he knows what he's doing," commission Sgt. Charlie Cloud said.
Popplewell said he uses the cheapest vodka he can find as a preservative for the kittens. The end result is a super sweet mixed drink that Popplewell compared to cough syrup.
"I've honestly never seen a person drink it," he said.
An Asian studies lecturer at the University of Texas said there is some merit to Popplewell's claim that kitten vodka could be seen as a tonic.
There's a street nicknamed "Cat Alley" in Taipei, Taiwan, where street vendors put the gall bladder of a freshly killed kitten into a glass of strong liquor. The drink, sold to the highest bidder, is supposed to improve eyesight and sexual performance, said lecturer Camilla Hsieh.
"It's like the ancient version of Viagra," Hsieh said.
Santo is located 60 miles west of Fort Worth.

Well, what do you think? Sick, isn't it? Can you believe that the police and journalist are only worried about the liquor license, and not the welfare of the poor kittens?

So, what if I told you that the article was actually about rattlesnakes put into alcoholic beverages, and I simply substituted the words kitten and cat every time there was the word "rattlesnake"? Does that change how your feel about it? If so, think long and hard about why.

In fact, this is an actual article I found on Yahoo news today. You can read it at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080327/ap_on_fe_st/odd_snake_vodka;_ylt=AtSwFQp2WK60_UEKmiPWBO7tiBIF

You may think I am incredibly clever and brilliant to pull the old bait and switch on your emotions, and of course this is indisputably true, but I was not very original here. Years ago I got an email titled "puppy roundups", in which the clever author described a rattlesnake roundup and simply substituted "puppy" for "rattlesnake." Unfortunately I cannot find that wonderful composition on the web, but it was quite formative for me.

Why is one type of animal's life worth more than another's? More pointed, why are rattlesnakes' lives considered worthless to the point that they are not even considered when worrying about a redneck selling cheap vodka?

As a sidenote, I found the adorable kitten photo above on a World of Warcraft forum, and the entry was titled "I will kill this cat." (!!!)

Soul (Snake) Searching

2008-03-23T18:20:00.000-07:00

Life has been presenting some strange and unique challenges to my sanity lately, so I decided to head out on Sunday for some soul-searching in the field. What better way than to look for snakes? Well, I don't think I found my soul, but I did find a sunburn, and a good number of our snakes. Here are a few quick photos of the beautfiful beasties:

#10, a huge male who has earned many questionable nicknames that cannot be posted here, due to his proclivity for courting the ladies (another week or two, and we expect more of those antics!):

#6, another large male:

#5, one of our biggest males:

#3, a beautiful black male:

A nice-looking male, not part of the study, who rattled at me from the exact same spot two weeks ago (I went back specifically looking for him, and there he was):

#19, a skinny female who will definitely not have babies this year:

#12, a gorgeous little female with a large meal in her belly (see how her scales are all stretched out, showing the skin in between?). Maybe it was a baby Easter bunny?

And finally, the wildflowers are beginning to put on quite a show. I had to pull over and take a photo on the way home:

Happy Easter, even to the bunny-eating snakes!

Spring is here!

2008-03-18T06:13:00.000-07:00

It's official. Spring is here. I don't pay any attention to calendars, etc.; it's spring when the lizards and snakes come out in force. And this has just happened on the Central Coast.

A couple of weekends ago my students and I took our first big group outing to our field site in the Carrizo Plain. I spent Saturday with the lizard crew, catching and marking lizards as part of a long-term study.

Ben and Kelsey photographing a pretty blue male Sceloporus:

Saturday night we had the first big dinner of the year, yum!

Sunday I joined the snake crew to track the rattlesnakes. About half of our snakes were out basking, and we found several new snakes as well. Here's a large male on SnakeOut Hill (so named by the students because so much snake amor has been witnessed there).

All of the snakes we captured, whether they were radiotagged or new captures, were well under normal body weight. In fact, the lizards seemed quite skinny as well. The drought last year took a terrible toll on the animals, and I really hope they recover this year so we can see how their movements and behaviors change.

Stay tuned for some snake amor photos soon! It will be happening any day now.

Who's afraid of snakes?

2008-02-29T17:30:00.000-08:00

Chances are that if you're reading this blog, the answer is: not you. But we all know how many people out there have a snake phobia. Have you ever wondered how much of this is ingrained and how much is learned?

A study I read about today supposedly shows that the fear of snakes (and spiders) is "hard-wired", meaning NOT learned, in humans. Now, I firmly believe that this is true in some animals, and am reminded of this every time my big bad 85-lb German Sherpherd, who has never had a traumatic run-in with a snake, runs cowering into the other room when I remove a shed skin from one of the snake cages. But in humans? This study, which unfortunately will not be published until next month so I can only rely on the media, supposedly shows that snake phobia is hard-wired because pre-schoolers and adults alike notice snakes in a montage of other animals much more quickly. Without having read the paper, and shaped by my own experiences, I am not inclined to believe this science is rigorous in theory or practice. By the way, if anyone thinks that pre-schoolers are too young to have already "learned" to fear snakes from TV, listening to their parents, etc., think again. A recent study of 3-5 year olds found that they thought food tasted better if it came in a McDonald's wrapper. I'd say that's pretty good evidence that pre-schoolers have already begun to form opinions about things based on their experience (and advertising!).

Until I am able to read the paper myself, I will share with you why I believe that the fear if snakes is mainly LEARNED in humans. Put plainly, little kids like snakes. No, they LOVE snakes. I had the priviledge of visiting Georgia Brown Elementary School in Paso Robles this week to teach second graders about snakes.

[I had some photos but removed them due to privacy issues- suffice it to say the kids were thrilled and LOVED those snakes!]

Most adults hate snakes. I believe that this is largely a learned behavior, from watching stupid movies like Anaconda and Snakes on a Plane. Even the nature channels on TV, especially Discover Channel, hype up the snake shows to the point where they misrepresent snakes as being aggressive when in reality they're only trying to defend themselves.

Anyway, thanks to Mrs. Knowlton at Georgia Brown for inviting me to hang out with snakes and second graders, my favorite kind of people (that includes the snakes!).

A Sign of Spring

2008-02-20T20:10:00.000-08:00

We went out to the field site this weekend to check on our radiotagged Northern Pacific rattlesnakes. The snakes have been "hibernating" underground in rocky outcrops since November. The weather had been quite warm following our recent heavy rain. Here's what typical rattlesnake habitat looks like in the Carrizo Plain:

We were thrilled to see one of our 18 snakes out basking in partial sunlight. We needed a blood sample to measure the snake's hormone levels, and we wanted to measure and weigh the snake to see if last year's drought had a negative impact. This is C4, a medium-sized male we've been radiotracking since Oct 2006.

Marty tubing the snake:

Marty and the students (Bree, Ben, and Craig) examining the snake:

In a few more weeks... hopefully a few more snakes!

Yawn!

2008-02-10T06:32:00.000-08:00

Ah, February is a strange month. It is a somewhat boring month, because it's still too cold for herps to be out in force. But it is also an exciting month, because March is on the horizon! Ah, how I love almighty March, when the oak trees are covered in sleepy lizards and the rock outcrops are full of amorous rattlesnakes.

February hasn't been all bad, especially for amphibians. This is why my yawn was followed by an exclamation point! We've had a lot of rain lately followed by a few days of warm weather. So there have been some signs of ectothermic life. Check out what Marty has found, mainly under logs, in our yard in the past few days:

California newt

California kingsnake

Ensatina

Slender salamander

Western fence lizard basking

Here are a few photos from a recent trip to Tucson to visit da Rev.

Hiking in Pima Canyon

A cardinal (which is a reptile. Ask me why.)

After the Gem and Mineral show:

In other news: revenge of the ticks! I came home recently to find Marty sporting a mild case of Conjoined Twin Myselexia.

Normally the twin is big, grey, and stinky (our old doggie Darwin, who never willingly lets Marty out of his sight), but that day it was one of my good old Ixodes buddies. I tried to talk Marty into letting the tick feed to repletion so I could get its offspring, but he was having none of that!

Hunting for ticks

2008-01-23T11:33:00.001-08:00

No, I am not referring to the hunt for stowaway ticks in various body crevices after a hike. I am talking about actually going out on a hike to look for ticks on purpose! What mad hatters would do this? I did last weekend, along with my friend and collaborator Larisa, a veterinary entomologist.

Our mission was to collect ticks for a research project, which brings me to why there is a post on ticks in this Herpblog. Briefly, the goal is to infect lizards with tick larvae to study various aspects of host-parasite relations in a lab setting. (By the way, the root word for herpetology is herpetos, which is Greek for "crawling," another very tick-like word!) We collected adult Western Black-legged ticks (Ixodes pacificus) in order to breed them and obtain larvae.

Larisa and I met at Montana de Oro State Park, an area with sufficiently moist vegetation to support heaps of these ticks. At first glance, the area looks quite dry:But when you hike into the trail a bit, it becomes quite moist and lush:

Collecting ticks is easy, and fun! We use "flags," which are big pieces of fabric attached to a metal pole. We simply drag the flags along the ground as we hike, periodically checking them for unsuspecting ticks that thought they were grabbing onto a big piece of animal fur. Here is a photo of Larisa flagging (Incidentally, if you take a close look at her belly, you'll see that she currently has more than a casual interest in parasites! :-):

And here is a photo of endoparasite-free me:

Female Ixodes are larger than males. Here is a photo of a female (left) and male (right) on the flagging:

We caught about 60 ticks in a couple of hours and placed them in these vials:

We are going to place all of the ticks on a horse on campus to breed them. The males will crawl around the horse looking for females, and they will mate with the females. Larisa told me that the males deliver sperm to the females through their mouths! The females will attach to the horse and become engorged, and we will then take them into the lab and put them in a humid chamber, where they will lay their eggs, and thousands of little tick larvae will emerge. Then we will finally have the larvae we need to infect lizards!

After a day of hiking and tick-collecting, I spent the evening lounging with my tick-free buddy Darwin on the couch.

Boas, beaches, and banditos... Oh my!

2008-01-20T11:40:00.000-08:00

I ushered in the new year with a trip to the Cayos Cochinos islands in Honduras to help some friends of mine in a study on boa constrictors. I knew there would be some good adventures, but I had no idea that a whole week of these adventures would be done in one pair of socks...

All four of us flew in from different states -- Chad from Missouri, Phil from Florida, Leslie from Georgia, and me from California-- and spent the night in La Ceiba before heading out to the island. Here are some pix of us at the Expatriates Bar.

We ended up staying an extra day in La Ceiba, however, because our baggage had not arrived on the planes with us! The airline assured us that they had loaded up dozens of bags onto a truck and were transporting them from San Pedro Sula to La Ceiba. So, we left Phil behind to get the bags, while Chad and Leslie and I went out to the island.

Here's what the island looks like from the boat:

We arrived at Cayo Menor the morning of December 28. There is a beautiful little research station on the beach, as well as a nice hilltop restaurant with great views of the mainland.

After breakfast it was time to get started! Chad started gathering up every snake bag he could find at the research station, as though we were going to catch a dozen snakes. How many boas would we find before lunch? I aimed high because I'd been told the boas were common on the island-- 3!! Chad just grinned and kept gathering snake bags. Then we set out on the first big hike up the center of the island, and I soon saw the source of grin-- boas were everywhere!

The pink boa constrictor of Cayos Cochinos is much smaller in size than boas on the mainland. Chad and other researchers are trying to determine why this is, and what consequences it has for the ecology of the snakes. The goal on this particular trip was to measure the total body water of the snakes (in the rainy season) to compare to the value in the dry season (they had already collected these data the previous summer), using stable isotopes. Time to get out those deuterium samples! Er- they are in the luggage, which hasn't arrived yet. We'd better wait for Phil's arrival with our bags the next day.

Phil did indeed arrive the next day, but we grew suspicious when we saw him wearing a La Ceiba tourist shirt. The truck the airline has hired to deliver our luggage had been hijacked by banditos! Of course, the island we were on has no stores. As the reality that we would be spending a week on the island with 1) no clothes but what we had on our backs (except Phil with his new gay shirt), 2) no research equipment to do the body water study, and 3) no toothpaste, soap, sunblock... well, you get the idea. We were four stinky kids.

So what did we do? We alternated between pouting, boa hunting, and iguana catching. Considering the circumstances, we had a really great time. Our discomfort was somewhat ameliorated by Leslie lending us some toothpaste, etc. (she had packed her stuff into a carry-on and escaped the banditos!), but especially by the Flor de Cana rum we talked one of the staff members into getting us from another island.

Here are some more photos:

Tarantula:

Weird cocoon (about 5 inches long!):

Anoles mating:

Treefrog:

Vine snake:

Lessons learned on this trip:

1. Carry on if you can!

2. Get travel insurance! (We still haven't been reimbursed by the airline, and will likely only get a small fraction of the value we lost)

3. Six-day-old socks aren't nearly as offensive when used properly, with Flor de Cana.