A Day at the Creek

Thursday's Field Biology lab was one of my favorites, both when I took the class and now as a TA. We took a break from looking at dead things in jars to look at live things swimming in creeks. The class hiked on over to Cascadilla Creek, just south of campus, armed with D-nets, seines, buckets, trays, and plastic baggies (they are actually quite useful as you will see).

After a brief introduction to proper use of seines and D-nets, the class broke into groups and hit the creek:


We had the class hit both pools and riffles for maximum diversity. When each group had a good, representative sample of the fish and inverts from their area, we gathered and went through them all.


First some inverts:

Water Strider (Gerridae)

Water Scorpion! (Nepidae)

Then some herps, where the baggies come in handy - for passing around and viewing all angles. Of course we only kept them in the baggie for a short time, so you don't have to worry about the herp's welfare.

Larval Salamander (Gyrinophilus)

Green Frog - Rana clamitans
What is this confused beast?

Oh, it's a Toad (Bufo americanus) and two N. Two-lined Salamanders (Eurycea bislineata)

And then, the fish!

Behold, the Fish Bowl!

The Fish Bowl, it is indeed a wonderful thing.

The biggest catch - a White Sucker, Catostomus commersonii

The biggest species of cyprinid - Common Shiner (Notropis cornuta).

Look into the bowl - what will you see?

A dace, a darter, and a sculpin, all lined up nice:

Mottled Sculpin, Cottus bairdii

Foreground: Blacknose Dace (Rhinichthys atratus)
Background: Creek Chub (Semotilus atromaculatus)

Creek Chub (Semotilus atromaculatus). Note the atro maculatus on the dorsal fin.

We let all but a few representatives of the smaller species go. Those lucky few that were chosen get to live in the aquarium in our lab for a time. They take readily to fish flakes.

I'm a big fan of darters, I always love finding these: Fantail Darter, Etheostoma flabellare. The first dorsal fin has low knobs on it, which serve as egg mimics when resting in the nest - eggs are laid to the undersides of rocks.

Longnose Dace (Rhinichthys cataractae)

Mottled Sculpin, showing very dark colors compared to before.

Another E. flabellare

School of Blacknose Dace

Hopefully, I'll be getting some better photos in the near future. I just need practice shooting through glass.

More on Alaskan vagrants

They day after I make a post about Siberian vagrants in Alaska, David Sibley updates with even more on his blog. Paul Lehman reports directly from Gambell here with pictures of many of these vagrants. So many cool birds - too bad they're in remote Alaska. If I'm going that far I'd almost rather go see them in their native lands.

Rediscovery and Bad Journalism

A small treefrog, Isthmohyla rivularis, has been rediscovered by a researcher in Monteverde, Costa Rica, after not having been seen since the 80's. These kinds of discoveries are always pleasing to hear. This one, however, was accompanied by an amusing bit of bad journalism.

I first saw the link on fieldherpforum.com (hat tip to this thread). Here it is:
http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/blackpool-news/Expert-finds-39extinct39-frog.3224531.jp

I started reading, and my heart was racing -

An endangered frog – thought to have become extinct – has just been rediscovered by a Blackpool amphibian expert.

Andrew Gray came across the Golden Toad – or Bufo pereglines – when trekking in Costa Rica.

The Golden Toad is one of the hallmark cases in herpetology about amphibian declines and extinction. A good overview can be found on wikipedia. So, naturally, I was excited. Then things didn't add up. This is the description this article gave:

"One look at the frog in my hand and I knew it was something very special."

The brown and metallic green tree frog, a nocturnal species, had not been seen for almost 20 years and was believed to be extinct.

Wait a minute... that in no way describes Golden Toad. It describes the little treefrog in the accompanying picture. Light is shed on the issue when someone posted a link to a respectable version of the press release:

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1017496_extinct_no_i_just_hopped_off_

Comparing this article with the messed up one, you can clearly see where the first article minced and mangled the press release in ridiculous ways. The correct article mentions Golden Toad here:

His discovery has excited zoologists, biologists and conservationists around the globe as it raises new hope that other species considered to have become extinct as a result of climate change may have survived.

These include the fabled Golden Toad of Costa Rica, believed to be one of the first casualties of global warming.

This is a case example of why I find science journalism extremely lacking. The story does have a happy ending - it is a rediscovery, after all! - from the correct article:

Although Andrew could have collected the prize specimen, he decided it would only be right to leave it in the wild. After taking several photos, he released the little frog where he had found it.

He now plans to publish his findings in a Costa Rican scientific journal before returning to the country next year with the goal of setting up a breeding programme.

Bird Oddities 5

First some hybrids:

Violet-crowned x Broad-billed Hummingbird (Amazilia violiceps x Cynanthus latirostris)
Beautifully photographed on Nature Photographers

A stock hybrid:
Golden-winged x Blue-winged Warbler (Vermivora chrysoptera x V. pinus)

Now some vagrants (or thought-they-were-vagrants):

Another Green-breasted Mango (Anthracothorax prevostii), this time in Wisconsin.

What looks like a Black Kite (Milvus migrans) spotted among migrating raptors in Florida, turns out to be a Snail Kite.

What looks like a Common Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus) but is actually a Chickadee.

And many real vagrants:

There is an invasian of asian migrants happening in Alaska this year, as detailed on David Sibley's blog. In addition to the sightings Sibley lists, there have since been -
The first North American Sedge Warbler and the second NA Grey Heron. (you may need to scroll through to find them).

Bio-nerds and babies

Sometimes I think I lead a normal life, with normal friends. Then I get this email from a professor and it reminds me that I am deep in Bio-nerd land.

[They] are getting close to the moment where they have quantifiable direct fitness -- an event greatly worthy of a collective celebration in our cooperative, group-living species.

The invitation (attached) may be pink, but even those of us with Y-chromosomes are included!

Yes, he was talking about a baby shower.