One Hail of a Week

A couple of weeks ago, we did the first week of our annual stream sampling as part of the Rhododendron Removal project. As a reminder (because I have many projects and I don't expect you, the reader, to remember them all), this is a collaborative experiment between the Forest Service and the Coweeta LTER (aka many scientists) to look at the impact of different methods for Rhododendron removal on the forest. The first day we set leaf litter bags in the stream. This method is a common way to sample for stream salamanders and their larvae. The leaf litter packs provide cover for salamanders and standardize sampling effort. It rained while we were out, but that is nothing new or unexpected out here. We try to set them all in one day then let them acclimate for the second day and start sampling on the third. But we didn't have enough people to set all 4 of the streams the first day, so we set the rest on the second day.

The morning of the second day we found a Spring Salamander climbing a tree. During the day...just the first of a week of strange occurrences. Unusual for this salamander to be climbing (though not un heard of) and for it to be out during the day.

Gyrinophilus porphyriticus

The next day we started sampling leaf litter bags. On the drive to the field site, we saw a ruffed grouse with 3 babies!! They were very cute, but fledging so all flew away before I could get a picture. 

Near one of the leaf litter bags we caught an adult Black-belly salamander (Desmognathus quadramaculatus). Once we had it in a plastic bag (for idntification purposes) I noticed it had a tail sticking out of it's mouth. Due to stress, from being in the bag or being captured, it started to spit up it's most recent meal. I noticed the tail was round and black, so I started to suspect it was a Plethodon sp., but I had no idea it would be quite so big! This salamander was almost as large as the one eating it! Salamanders are known to eat other salamanders, but it seemed unusual for a highly aquatic salamander to eat a fully terrestrial salamander. I am rather curious about how this came about, unfortunately I will never know for sure.

We stopped for lunch during a pretty intensive hail storm. The timing worked out pretty well though. At the second stream we caught a small fish! I believe it is a brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis). We have seen a few of these between last year and this year. They are very pretty fish. There is an incredible diversity of freshwater fish in the Southern Appalachian Mountains.

That hail storm turned out to be even heavier in other areas. As we were driving home, we saw what looked like foam on the sides of the road. Turned out to be hail drifts. Some of these were a few inched deep and covered up to half of the road! Beginning of June and it looks like the middle of winter...Ok mountains, you do whatever you want...

The next day (Thursday for anyone trying to keep track), we stumbled across another incident of salamander predation. This video pretty much speaks for itself, but I will point out a few details. First, the salamander with a white stomach (the one being bit) is still alive. After the few first second you can see it's throat moving. Second this is actually fairly common. Spring Salamanders (the orange one) primarily eat other salamanders. It was awesome to see it wrestling its prey. Video courtesy of Erin Cork.

During our lunch break I found a four leaf clover! Although I know this was the result of a genetic anomaly, it was still exciting. After a little more looking we found 4 more and a 5 leaf clover! 

 The streams we survey have both Black-belly and Shovel-nose Salamanders. These two species are the most aquatic and largest of their genus (Desmognathus). They can be hard to tell apart, but one of the distinguishing characters is that shovel-nose salamanders have more forward facing eyes. The two pictures below are fairly distinctly different, unfortunately many of the animals we see look intermediate to the two species. I am starting to wonder if they are hybridizing. They are closely related, so it is possible, but it has not been recorded in this area. Genetic samples would be the best way to answer this question. 

Desmognathus marmoratus

Desmognathus quadramaculatus

We found an egg clutch of one of the aforementioned larger species:

After these eggs hatch they will remain as larvae for several years before transforming into their adult forms (without gills). 

In contrast, one of the more terrestrial species metamorphoses incredible small.

Desmognathus ocoee

No better way to end a long work day than with a rainbow! I was just looking out at the mountains and noticed a yellow band in the trees. I started wondering why I had never noticed it before, it seemed like a strange way to arrange a treatment, because most experiments here were done on a watershed level. Then I realized it was a rainbow and not a strange coloring of the trees... Signs of a very tired mind after a long day in the field. :)

That night, after the afternoon shower, a few of us decided to go out and explore at night (because we were not exhausted enough I guess...). Turned out to be a pretty great idea, in the end. We saw an incredible number of salamanders on the road. We assumed it was because it rained, because they generally do not care for gravel surfaces. Three of us waled along about 400 m of road for less then 10 minutes and counted 84 salamanders!! If we walked for an hour and this number stayed consistent, we would have seen over 500 salamanders!!! The density here is awe inspiring. 

 The last day of sampling nothing exciting happened (shocking considering the week we had had), but we did find these cute mushrooms.

 And finally to end a long week, I was driving home and saw this incredibly bright double rainbow.

Beautiful reminder to appreciate the little things in life. Mother Nature keeps sticking those reminders right in my face, exactly when I need them. You just have to remember to see them and recognize the beauty. 

Then Came the Rain

A few fun adventures the last couple of weeks. When went to check on the in-stream terrariums (See Why did the Ruffed Grouse Cross Road? and Wandering in the Water for more information about this project) to take in-term measurements in case something happens to the terrariums. Well...some time in the month between setting and checking there must have been a large storm through the area because several were washed out. A few were only slightly broken and most of the salamanders were still present. I stitched any holes together with fishing line. However, several others were completely crushed. 

 

This happens frequently with this type of study, which is why we were taking intermediate measurements in the first place. We shall see in another few weeks how much information we have and if we want to try to do the study again next year (to get more information). 

We saw this nice Mayapple flower when out at the streams. 

And cinnamon ferns, the spore stalk gave off a cloud of spores when tapped. 

We also saw a Turkey with about 6 chicks. They were not particularly fast, so we caught one and took obligatory selfies. After we put it down, it played dead for a bit which was bizarre. We checked on it again after we were done at the stream, but it was gone so we assume it recovered. 

Right as we were leaving, we found this large black rat snake (Elaphe obseleta). It was not pleased we interrupted its basking and flared the back of its head to make itself look intimidating (imitating the shape of venomous snake's heads) before fleeing into the vegetation on the side of the road. We saw two others dead on the road on the drive home. A good reminder to watch out for snakes on the road. They are an important part of the ecosystem and there is no need to drive over them.

The next day I had off and intended to read and relax in preparation for switching to nocturnal sampling. However things don't always go according to plan, one of my lab mates lost her phone in the woods...She came back to the dorm to use the 'Find my iPhone' app. Thankfully, her phone was high enough in elevation that it had service. But we couldn't find coordinates to put into her GPS, so I offered to help. We pulled up the app on my phone and set out into the woods. We had a ways to walk before we would even be close enough to use the app (to make her phone make a sound). She knew the general place that she last had her phone, so we headed toward a couple of her study points. On the way we found this box turtle! He was not super happy about being picked up and hissed a couple times. He was clearly a survivor, as evidenced by the mussing chunk from his back and the crack in his plastron (underside). We put him back and kept moving.

When we started to get close, we tried to use the app to find her phone, but we were too far away. This is where our combined map reading skills came in handy. By looking at aerial imagery on the app and on the maps app (to see where we were) we navigated closer. One of the most distinguishing features were dead hemlock trees which stood out a stark grey against a green backdrop.  We did find the phone (in case the suspense was killing you) and headed back out of the woods. When we were almost back to the road Heather stopped and when we looked down there was a medium sized garter snake. We didn't bother the snake at all (neither of us really wanted to smell like snake musk), but it got extremely agitated and puffed up both its head and body and started to strike. Of course I started filming...(see below, the yelp at the end was Heather... =] ).

 

That evening I decided to get out of the field station for a bit and drove up to Wayah Bald. I didn't really know what to expect, but I had driven by the road several times on the way to my field site and decided to explore. The view was beautiful, despite it being about 10 degrees colder than it was in the lower mountains (a temperature different I was not prepared for!). There were clouds rolling in as I made it to the top of the mountain which added to the experience.

The next week, we were scheduled to do our first round of Capture-Mark-Recapture for the year, this marks the beginning of the 6th year of data on these same plots. We frequently capture animals that we haven't seen for about 2 years in the same 10 m X 10 m plots. It started raining right at dark, the first rain for about a week. This made for a wet and slightly uncomfortable night for us, but all the salamanders came out to play. We found this cute little eft, which had water drops beading up on its back. 

The first night we caught 125 salamanders on 6 (10 X 10 m) plots in about and hour and a half of searching. This resulted in an extremely long night of processing (measuring and marking). We ended up releasing the animals at dawn. Thankfully it was still raining so I felt less bad about letting them go when it was getting light. We found this pretty box turtle out in the rain, we helped her cross the road. 

It continued to be wet, though not raining, the next two days so we were up until 5 am and caught a little less than 100 salamanders a night. We saw a few climbing animals over the 3 nights:

3 climbing in this picture!!

When processing we get to see the salamanders more closely, this one below was regrowing its foot! The process is in the early stages, but it is neat to see the foot when it still looks embryonic. :)

We found this tiny bug in a back with a salamander, despite its minuscule size, it had pinchers! I was intrigued enough to take a picture...

On of the especially tiny Plethodon salamanders we found was busting with color. In addition to red legs, it had red spots on it's back! We rarely (if ever) see this retained on adults.

When we were headed out to do some Plethodon removal sampling (3rd year of removal to look at the impacts of fewer salamanders on ants and plants) the next night, 3 people walked right by this Copperhead snake (one of the few venomous ones around here).We tried to get it off of the sidewalk but it curled up at the end of the dorm and refused to move. It was gone a few hours later, no one got hurt (including the snake!) :)

While out looking for Plethdon, we also found some especially charismatic salamnders

Bright red cheeks on this Ocoee salamander, sitting in some bark

The face off. in situ (not posed)

Climbing salmander!! 

Pretty hybrid, white spots and bright red legs

The largest black belly salamander I have ever seen!!

In addition to the extremely large Black belly pictured above (one of the largest salamanders in the genus) we found the smallest and most terrestrial salamander in the same genus, the pygmy salamander. It was about the size of the larger salamander's leg...It was neat to see the contrast, much less to find them on the same plot! 

A couple of cool moths seen while out and about:

Polyphemous moth

Thanks for reading! That's all for now!