A long overdue update

June 2019 I posted an update about our struggles to find ribbon snakes. Not surprisingly, those continued for the rest of the summer and we were hoping for better luck spring 2020...So much for that. Although the weather was great for snake hunting, not a lot of research got done due to the pandemic. A lot of other things happened in 2020, so here I am, giving you an update over 2 years later.


One of the really fun observations in the summer of 2019 was seeing 3 different kinds of tiny (I'm talking less than an inch long) brown frogs and realizing they were different species based on the way that they moved!

The Rio Grande Chirping frog took long jumps (no video because it was in the grass):

The Narrowmouth toad juvenile (unsure if it is Western or Eastern) little hops with a small sit in between:

And the gulf coast toad (I think) juveniles alternated between hopping and bounding. Bounding is a behavior where they take consecutive hops on their toes and look a bit like they are running:

We also saw a cute little ground skink and a bright green treefrog (Hyla cinerea):

  

Bonus tiniest of toads: 

We even encountered a cottonmouth, which was not happy to see us. We kept a safe distance (photo is zoomed in), but it still "rattled" its tail in the water. I had no idea they would do that!

We saw plenty more water snakes with a range of personalities:

 

...and at long last found one juvenile ribbon snake!

And this character once the pond dried out for the summer:

I also worked on a lab-based project with juvenile horned lizards and their anti-predator responses. Our experiments did not work very well though we worked out some of the kinks in the procedure by the end of summer. SO I will just share some adorable baby horned lizard pictures (plus a few adults) and call it a day. They were so sassy!

It was really cool watching them grow their horns <3

In the summer of 2020, I did see a bunch of ribbon snakes but mostly from a distance. One pair seemed to be interacting with each other in the middle of the pond! Maybe some kind of courtship? (Hard to see but they are the two little heads poking up through the water).

I also unintentionally saved this toad, who continued to posture and show me their poison glands. 

Managed to get a couple of pictures of these quick snakes! I do hope I get to work on them again one day!

In other exciting news, I moved to NC and started a tenure track position. I am not sure which or how much of these projects will continue, but it certainly started a new direction of questions to explore! I am excited to share new projects and updates with you all, as soon as I get myself organized. Exciting things ahead! So until then, stay safe and healthy. 

For The Nest Generation ; Guest article by Andrea Nebhut

Hello all! Sorry for the delay on the remainder of my summer research, some exciting stories left to tell about that... in the mean time enjoy this post written by one of my conservation biology students! -Kira

For The Nest Generation: the Impacts of Land Management on Overwintering Grassland Birds

By: Andrea Nebhut

Savanna sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis)

Unless we practice conservation, those who come after us will have to pay the price of misery, degradation, and failure for the progress and prosperity of our day.

-Gifford Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation

Every year, dozens of bird species migrate from their winter homes in the north to warmer grasslands and scrublands in the south, but each year these flocks grow smaller. According to the 2016 State of the Birds Watch List, temperate grassland bird populations from across America have declined by 33% since 1970 and are projected to continue to plummet over the next several decades as expanding development and agriculture continue to destroy these birds’ winter homes. In turn, birds have shifted from living in natural ecosystems to living in areas that have been altered by human activity, such as pastures, hayfields, and abandoned fields. These lands face frequent human disturbance, such as mowing and the application of agricultural pesticides and fertilizers, but the cumulative effect of these disturbances on the quality of bird wintering habitats was not known. It is important that we understand which management strategies promote suitable winter habitat for the birds, as high-quality winter habitats allow the birds to return to their summer range sooner and produce more surviving chicks. Therefore, a group of scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and George Mason University lead by Dr. Amy Johnson set out to find out how habitat structure and the timing of grassland management affect bird populations.

Overall, the scientists found that fields managed by humans can be a suitable habitat for many bird species. While more bird species were found in native warm-season grass fields such as switchgrass compared to non-native cold-season grass fields like hayfields, there was some overlap in which species were found in each habitat. Spatially varied, enclosed fields that had been shaped through practices such as patch-burning and grazing offered more shelter and food during the winter and were home to more bird species than more uniform fields with short and open vegetation. In contrast, most managed fields of non-native cold-season grasses are usually uniform in habitat structure, which limits the number of bird species that can comfortably reside there by simply narrowing down the types of potential homes and food resources.  In addition, Johnson’s team found that fields managed in the winter were home to fewer species than fields managed in the spring or summer growing seasons. They suggested that when fields of non-native cold-season grasses are left undisturbed throughout the growing season, their structure becomes similar to fields of native warm-season grasses and, as a result, can sustain more bird species. Even so, relatively uniform fields of spring and summer managed cold-season grasses make excellent homes for grassland species and there are a handful of flexible bird species that are suited to both varied fields of native warm-season grasses and uniform cold-season grass fields.  Simply put, diversity in habitat structure welcomes in a diversity of bird species by providing a wide variety of potential homes and food sources, which means that people can support bird populations by planting native warm-season grasses and managing their fields in the late spring or summer.

While these results may seem obvious, gathering the data to produce the mathematical model comparing the two habitat types was no easy feat.  Over the course of three years, Johnson’s team traveled to 25 properties around Virginia, categorized each plot by the types of plants present and the season when the field plot was last managed, and surveyed the area for birds. Of the 41 bird species observed, the scientists selected 16 for analysis based on the available information about their habitat preferences and the high number of sightings for each. In addition, the group gathered vegetation information about each plot, including plant height, the amount of visual obstruction, and the percentage of each plot taken up by bare ground, grass, woody plants (e.g. trees and shrubs), and forbs, which are non-woody flowering plants such as wildflowers. With this data, they created a mathematical model for how likely a given species was to appear in a field of either non-native cold-season grasses or native warm-season grasses. Next, they expanded their model to include other variables such as visual obstruction and percent groundcover. Finally, Johnson’s team used their model to compare the number of species sighted between the two habitat types and the different management seasons by simply taking an average of the number of species estimated by the model for each combination of habitat type. 

With this new information, Johnson’s team recommended that, whenever possible, farmers should defer their annual mowing to late spring or summer and replace non-native cold-season grasses with native warm-season grasses. Together, these two actions will produce a varied landscape with abundant shelter and food that a diverse range of bird species can call home following their annual migration south and, in turn, return to their breeding grounds ready to produce abundant healthy offspring. 

References

Cornell University. (2016). State of North America's Birds: 2016. Retrieved from http://www.stateofthebirds.org/2016/habitats/grasslands/

Johnson, A. E., Sillett, T. S., Luther, D., Herrmann, V., Akre, T. A., & McShea, W. J. (2019). Effects of grassland management on overwintering bird communities. The Journal of Wildlife Management.