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!