Hellbender Trip 2013

The Herp Club kicked off the year with our annual Hellbender Trip. Where, as in the past, we ventured to western New York to find hellbenders, Cryptobranchus alleganiensis, (we kept our eyes out for other herpetofauna as well). The 14 individuals in our group were led by Mr. Kenneth Roblee, from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC).
Hellbenders are incredible animals, and not just from their immense size (they can get up to 30 inches in length). They are also 1 of 3 species of giant salamanders (Family: Cryptobranchidae), the other 2 are the Japanese and Chinese Giant Salamanders. These animals spend their adult lives fully underwater. They also have a unique breeding system, where after fertilizing the eggs, the males will remove the females from the den and guard them by themselves (they guard them ferociously).
However, these animals have also been seeing declines in populations recently. Luckily there is a headstart program going on for the hellbenders, where various zoos (like the Buffalo Zoo) are collecting eggs from the wild and raising the hellbenders to an age where they can survive in the wild on their own and then they are released. Similar to last year, we were able to collaborate with the Buffalo Zoo and assist in releasing about 20 of their headstarted hellbenders. We were also able to find some adults while we were wading around, including two large adults measuring about 22 inches in length! The trip was very fun, and we would like to thank Mr. Roblee and the Buffalo Zoo for giving us such a great experience:

Group picture with Mr. Roblee

Photo Courtesy of Mrs. Richard Bothner

Most of the group gathered around Mr. Roblee to see the proper way to release a young hellbender.

A herp club member releasing a young hellbender into its new home.

Beautiful in their own way, right? Can you believe that these guys are also called 'snot otters' or 'devil dogs'?

Photo Courtesy of Jonathan Gorman

An adult that was found early on, measured 17 inches!

Taking measurements for the newly found adult male. We helped to gather data which included length (snout-vent length and tail length), weight, GPS location, depth of its den, and size of the den. After which, a transmitter was placed in it so that the animal could be readily identified in the future.

Their skin has a wrinkly edge, the animals themselves are coated so well in a slime that they feel very smooth to the touch.

A look at the underside of their feet.

An adult with a wound on its leg, which is a regular occurrence. As was mentioned earlier, they will defend their dens ferociously, to death even.

Another adult being measured. We ensured that the animals remained moist, to prevent desiccation, and to reduce their stress.

At times, they would allow you to pose them, however, when they struggled it was highly difficult to maintain a hold on them (imagine gripping a wet, wriggling bar of soap).

We also saw some other cool animals:

A mountain dusky salamander (Desmognathus ochrophaeus)

Slimy salamander (Plethodon glutinosis)

Bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana)

A little American toad (Anaxyrus americanus)

A lovely lamprey, being its parasitic self.

Photo Courtesy of Jonathan Gorman

For more information on the work that Mr. Roblee and the Buffalo Zoo have been doing, see: http://www.dec.ny.gov/public/73572.html

 Post and Undesignated Photos by:
Joey Chase

Herp Club Alumni Describe Smallest Known Vertebrate

Early this year, several online journals including National Geographic and the BBC reported on the latest vertebrate described as the world's smallest at an average body size of only 7.7 mm, a tiny frog species from Papua New Guinea (Paedophryne amauensis).  The news especially excited us in the Cornell Herpetological Society because three out of five authors of the paper that described it are among our recent club alumni and former presidents: Eric Rittmeyer (class of ’08), Derrick Thompson (class of ’09) and Mike Gründler (class of ’10). You can find their article on PLoS One.

Paedophryne amauensis on a dime

 

Eric, Derrick, and Mike started the journey that would ultimately lead to New Guinea while they were still undergrads at Cornell. The idea came from a vertebrates class guest lecture by Ed Scholes, who studies birds of Paradise in New Guinea. In the fall of 2007, they went to Dr. Kraig Adler (the herp club’s advisor) and presented their idea. Dr. Howie Evans of the vet school also helped them out, giving them valuable information drawn from his own experience in New Guinea. They decided to do a transect starting on the coast of New Guinea and heading up a mountain into the interior of the country in an attempt to examine the turnover in herp species composition across an elevation gradient.

 

Once their plan began to form, they needed to raise money for the venture, which they estimated would require roughly $25,000. Dr. Adler had friends affiliated with the Bishop Museum who were starting a field station in New Guinea, and Allen Allison of the museum agreed to help the three undergrads after Dr. Adler sent Mike’s proposal.  More help came in the form of $2,000 from a herp club grant provided by an anonymous donor. By the time Eric, Derrick, and Mike went to New Guinea, they had managed to raise $13,000. The Bishop Museum covered their other expenditures in the the country.

The trio worked hard to prepare for the trip. For the fall field trip, the herp club visited Harvard’s Museumof Comparative Zoology, which has a very large collection of New Guinea herps. Dr. Adler tipped off the museum’s director Jim Hanken, who made a point to show the club many of the New Guinea specimens. He also allowed the future explorers to come back to Harvard during spring break to familiarize themselves with the animals and take photos in preparation for their project. Their preparation also included a trip to get a feel for working outside of the temperate zone: in January 2008 they went to Costa Rica with several other herp club members to practice working in a tropical environment.

Finally the summer arrived and our heroes made the long trip to New Guinea. When they got there, it turned out that the coastal village where they were staying had been in recent conflicts with a neighboring village farther inland, and carrying out their original transect up the mountain would put them in danger from the conflict. They could not safely go more than 1000 meters above sea level, so they ultimately did general surveys and collected specimens at several low elevation sites.

Mike and Derrick

Eric

The transects provided baseline data for long-term frog population monitoring and also produced species unreported from the area, including several previously undescribed species: Paedophryne amauensis, now the world’s tiniest known vertebrate, Paedophryne swiftorum, a close relative, and a species of Choerophryne, another microhylid frog with a distinct elongate snout. The latter species was known from a single specimen, and during one night they managed to collect a female and five male specimens as well as record the calls of three different males.

Paedophryne swiftorum

Paedophryne amauensis

Eric Rittmeyer graduated from Cornell in 2008 and went to Louisiana State University to pursue his PhD in the lab of Dr. Christopher Austin. He returned to New Guinea in 2009 and collected specimens and tissues of Carlia eothen, a species in a group of skinks that he is focusing on for his dissertation. Eric will be giving a talk about his research to the herp club on April 23.

Derrick Thompson graduated in 2009. He moved to Thailand, where he now teaches.

Mike Gründler  graduated in 2010 and spent time in Trinidad studying guppies, then at Archbold Field Station in Florida studying sand skinks and beetles. Now he is a Luce Foundation fellow in Mongolia translating Futuyma’s evolution textbook from English into Mongolian.



Photos courtesy of Eric Rittmeyer

Post by Jessica Tingle

Salamander Migration

The weather is getting warmer and rainy, and that means it's about time for salamanders to start migrating from the woods to breeding ponds.

The salamanders you will see in vernal ponds around Ithaca are in the family Ambystomatidae. The two likeliest species are spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) and Jefferson's salamanders (Ambystoma jeffersonianum), though just north of Ithaca is a hybrid zone between Jefferson's salamander and it's northerly relative the blue-spotted salamander (Ambystoma laterale). They are relatively large salamanders measuring 5-7 cm and sporting heavier bodies than many of our other local salamanders.

Spotted salamander, Ambystoma maculatum

They spend most of the year under debris or underground, but like most amphibians their life cycle is tied to the water. Unlike reptile eggs, amphibian eggs don't have a shell to protect them from desiccation, so females lay their eggs in small ponds or other moist locations. Spotted and Jefferson's salamander courtship and fertilization also take place in the water. 

In the early spring, warm rain signals to these salamanders that it is time to breed. Males and females migrate to their breeding ponds, where the males court the females using pheromones released from their cloacal glands. They may use their their tails to fan the pheromones towards the females underwater. When a female becomes interested, the male walks and she follows him. He deposits a gelatinous packet of sperm called a spermatophore onto the bottom of the pond, then she walks over it and picks it up with her cloaca. Fertilization is internal, as it is with all other salamanders except for Cryptobranchids such as hellbenders.

Ambystoma maculatum in shallow pond

Jefferson's salamanders generally come out earlier in the spring than spotted salamanders do, and have even been known to crawl over snow on their way to the pond.

Ambystoma jeffersonianum braving the snow to breed

Many years, tens or possibly even hundreds of salamanders will come to a pond during a single night in a phenomenon often called explosive breeding. It is a fantastic thing to see and it attracts many people. While going out to see the salamanders provides an exciting night and a good learning experience, we must take care that we do not negatively impact the salamanders and their habitat.

-If you drive to a pond, make sure to park your car far enough away that you do not run over any salamanders that may be crossing the road.

-Each person in your group should have a bright light to see the ground around them. Keep your eyes on the ground and walk slowly, taking care not to step on any animals.

-Salamanders, like all amphibians, have very delicate skin. They easily absorb anything in environment, so touching one when you have lotion, bug spray, or anything else on your hands can harm them very badly. In addition, their skin must stay moist at all times. It is best not to pick them up, but if you do, first get your hands wet with damp leaves or water from the pond (not tap water from a water bottle-it has chlorine that can hurt them).

Notice how he got his hands damp before holding the salamander.

While you are out at the pond, you may hear or see other breeding amphibians. Some that we have locally are spring peepers, pickerel frogs, and wood frogs.

Happy spring and please enjoy the amphibians responsibly!



Photos: Brian Sherman

 Post by Jessica Tingle

Rochester/Buffalo Trip

On Saturday, October 22, the Cornell Herpetological Society took an all day field trip to the Glor lab in Rochester and to the Buffalo Zoo. It was really exciting to visit the Glor lab because Rich Glor is an alum who was president of the herp club in 1998 and 1999 and who is now a professor at the University of Rochester. His lab focuses on questions of speciation and diversification, mainly in Caribbean Anolis lizards.

Part of the lab consists of a room filled with anoles. Here, lab members can carry out hybridization, behavior, and other types of experiments that require live lizards. Keeping so many live animals in a lab is a lot of work, but it pays off with the ability to do cool studies, like a current one investigating factors influencing male dewlap displays (if you don't know what a dewlap is, check out this clip from Life In Cold Blood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoDHaXzmaT4).

After visiting the Glor lab, we headed west to Buffalo to check out the zoo. Remember the hellbender trip? Many of the juvenile hellbenders there had been head-started at the Buffalo Zoo, so we got to see where they started out. At the beginning of the program, the zoo collected egg masses and hatched them in captivity. Some of them were released this past summer, more will be released next summer, and the rest will have more time to grow larger before being released. In all cases, they are PIT (passive integrated transponder) tagged before release so that they can be found and identified later.

Behind the scenes, they have quarantine and a breeding program for endangered Puerto Rican crested toads, Bufo lemur. When the eggs hatch, the tadpoles are shipped to Puerto Rico and released. Introductions are more successful for tadpoles than for older toads. Quarantine for amphibians in the zoo is important to prevent the spread of Bd (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis), a fungal disease that has been wiping out amphibian populations worldwide.

Venomous snakes are kept in a separate room.

Eastern massasauga (rattlesnake), Sistrurus catenatus

Eastern diamondback rattlesnake, Crotalus adamanteus

Lots of turtles!

Pancake tortoise, Malacochersus tornieri

A big uromastyx, Uromastyx sp.

Gator

What's a visit to the zoo without seeing some of the big cats?

Group shot in the reptile house: Zach Hempstead, Sage Hellerstedt, Jessica Tingle, Anna Kusler, Rachel Ruden, Brian Worthington (photo taken by Dr. Kraig Adler)

Glor Lab Website:

http://lacertilia.com/

Blog on anoles:

http://anoleannals.wordpress.com/

Buffalo Zoo:

http://www.buffalozoo.org/index.html

Photos: Jessica Tingle

Post by Jessica Tingle