Moths, Salamanders, and a couple of Snakes

Cool, wet nights are great for finding salamanders. Which is both a blessing and a curse. It is wonderful, because it is fun to see so many salamanders and it means we have more data. But it is a curse because it takes so much longer to process (measure and mark) them! After 4 continuous nights of sampling until about 4 am (or later) I was both exhausted and exhilarated...and officially on a nocturnal schedule (for better or worse).

The first three nights we sampled long-term hybrid capture-mark-recapture plots. Tiny, yearling salamanders were incredibly abundant. We caught record numbers of salamanders all three nights, but especially the last night. We caught 66 salamanders on one 10m by 10m plot. That is an average of .66 salamanders per square meter and and estimated 6,6000 salamanders per hectare!!! That is a lot of salamanders! And only one genus!!! We caught a total of 110 salamanders on all six plots. 

Baby and adult Plethodon salamanders climbing below:

 

During the sampling I also saw some Ocoee salamanders (Desmognathus ocoee) climbing vegetation. These guys really seem to like climbing and were very abundant on the higher elevation plots. One was even poking it's head out of the PVC pipe we have marking the center of the plot.

 

Tiny Seepage salamander

On one plot we saw a garter snake wrapped up in the Rhododendron: 

We also saw some neat moths by the vehicle shed:

  

We also saw some parasitic plants that do not have chlorophyll. These just looked like little shoots sticking out of the ground:

 Indian pipes (as mentioned in a previous post) also lack chlorophyll:

 An arachnid called a harvestman was eating a cricket!

The fourth night of sampling we walked the Rhododendron removal transects. We saw this gorgeous salamander with gold spots on her back:

 Saw another small garter snake, though this one was on the ground and had a bit more pigmentation:

What was really exciting thought was that we recaptured 4 salamanders that we marked last month. Though that is not a very high recapture rate, it is better than nothing and 3 of the 4 were climbing on vegetation in May and in June!!!! This might suggest that individual salamanders have certain behaviors, which is a really neat idea! More to come on this as we (hopefully) continue to recapture animals.

Cute mushroom on a tree

Last week we went to a few of my lab mate's transects just to see how many salamanders we might expect to find. One of the sites was busting with salamanders, and a BUNCH of them were climbing on vegetation. For example, on the walk to the transect the first night, we saw these FOUR salamanders all clustered together in about 1-1.5 square feet: (!!!)

Lots of other salamanders were climbing. It was insane. Some of them were about a meter off of the ground, but most were about a foot off the ground or less. They were climbing on anything, sapling trees, herbaceous vegetation, and Rhododendron, to name a few. We also saw several salamanders climbing on ferns. The Plethodon below looks a bit too big for her fern...but the Blue-Ridge two-lined salamander (Eurycea wilderae) looks quite at home.

 We saw a few more E. wilderae climbing...on basically everything! One below was even on a PVC pipe, thought they seemed to favor herbaceous vegetation and ferns.

 

We saw a couple of very large spiders: a fishing spider and some sort of orb weaver

 The mushroom below had a yellow center on top and a purple stem!

We also found this adorable yearling: 

The color patten was so unique! 

It was a fun couple of days. Mostly because of the densely climbing site. I can't wait to try and figure out what is going on there that makes it such a good place to climb!

Mountainsides and Mountain Streams

Conducting fieldwork on several projects simultaneously can get a little chaotic, but it means I get to be outside a lot. :) 

A couple weeks ago caught a few good pictures of climbing salamanders while conducting nocturnal surveys.  

Even saw these two climbing on one tree. They didn't move much over about an hour between sightings.

 

As part of this project I am attempting to quantify the proportion of different salamander species see climbing on vegetation. Though I have not analyzed the data yet, it seems like the smaller, more aquatic Ocoee salamander (Desmognathus ocoee) are almost constantly climbing on vegetation. 

D. ocoee and a large millipede

It is a little hard to see in this picture, but I also saw a large Black-bellied salamander (Desmognathus quadramaculatus) eating a dead crawfish. I have seen crawfish eating salamanders before, so it was interesting to see the reverse as well.

Just by being out at night, I saw some really pretty salamanders in general. The one below is a good example of a hybrid between Plethodon shermani (which have red legs) and Plethodon teyahalee (which have white spots). 

Cute little face!

Another project I am working on this summer is sampling a few streams for salamander larvae and aquatic salamanders. The sites we are surveying have a dense up-growth of Rhododendron where hemlock trees have died. These densities were so high in some areas that we had to crawl to get through!

When setting up the sites (putting out leaf-litter bags as a way to standardize sampling effort), we also saw this adorable eft. 

Other than the steep slopes and thick Rhododendron making navigation difficult, the streams are really beautiful.

Jack-in-the-Pulpits

Last week I started conducting surveys in areas with and without Rhododendron to try and get a better idea of the relationship between different species and Rhododendron. Additionally, I am using these sites to try to get more information about the climbing behavior of salamanders. To start out we are recording the type of vegetation and hight climbed, along with basic information about the salamander (including species and size).

The two below are both Ocoee salamanders (D. ocoee). The one on the left is a gravid female (she is carrying eggs), and you can see the eggs through her side! The one on the right is just sticking it's face out of a knot about 1.5 meters up a tree. 

The four pictures below are different species from the same area, and all climbing on herbaceous vegetation. 

Also noticed this brightly colored beetle:

The day between surveys was a bit foggy and rainy (which is great weather for salamanders!). The fog drifting through the mountains:

We saw a couple of especially pretty salamanders the second night: 

These two (above) might even be pure P. teyahalee! Which is pretty neat, considering most of the salamanders in the basin are hybrids. The one on the right had some unusual gold flecking on her back.

Plus this really cute yearling climbing a tree! 

The Indian pipe flowers (Monotropa uniflora) are coming up this time of year, and are really pretty! These are a type of parasitic plant to fungi associated (micorrhizal) with trees. This relationship is also called mycohetrotrophic. 

Other incidental encounters of the night include a cute spider, a cool mushroom, and a strange looking growth on a Rhododendron leaf. We decided it looked like a giant cheerio! 

Overall successful surveys we managed to find salamanders at all sites, which is promising for future work! And we managed to avoid bad luck during our excursions on Friday the 13th.

Full moon through dead pine trees on Friday the 13th