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