The Long and Winding Road

As of today, I have been writing this blog for an entire year. In the first post, I alluded heavily to the essay I wrote four years ago to apply to college. I decided to post the entire thing here, without changes, as much as that pains me.

Save the midges! Collect the whole set! Yes, there is an endangered species of midge, at least in Ohio. There are also five endangered snakes, four endangered amphibians, three endangered lampreys, forty-three other endangered insects, and twenty-four endangered mollusks in this state alone, all of which get slim to nil media attention. The black bear, newly reintroduced, has made local TV often, but what about the Indiana bat? Or the Allegheny woodrat?

Therein lies my goal: inform the public of species on the brink of extinction that people either do not know about or do not care about. People care about animals to which they can attach certain traits. The bald eagle is majestic, the panda is cute, the black bear is powerful. However, these traits have nothing to do with the species’ importance in nature. The midge, which is most easily equated with annoyance, is a vital food source to many larger animals.

The only way to accurately determine the necessity of a certain species is through ecological surveys, which, as a wildlife ecologist, I hope to conduct. We can only mess up nature so much and get away with it. Maybe we have already crossed that line. The only way we can know is by these environmental studies. The disappearance of a species of freshwater clam could affect nature just as much as the disappearance of a species of falcon.

To achieve this lofty goal, I plan on attending college and majoring in biology, to get a well rounded view of the field. After obtaining my bachelor’s, it is off to graduate school, where I can focus in on my desired field of study.

I have, in fact, already begun the journey toward research ecology. Throughout my high school career, I have been advocating for animals that people have problems finding cute even when they are alive. For the past four years, I have been conducting a road mortality survey of snakes in the Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area. This study involves driving all the roads in the wildlife area, which is about thirty-three miles, and recording each snake found, of which, about eighty percent are dead.

Along with the cute and cuddly species, the ugly ones, the annoying ones, and the gross ones have to be saved just as well. We cannot ignore killing things, saying, “It’s just one species of insect,” when it causes a species of fish to die, which is, “just one species of fish.” We must remember we are just one species of ape.

Looking back at it, it seems a little cheesy, especially the ending. Well, let’s look at my track record. I’ve written about two of the snakes, one of those amphibians, one of the lampreys¹, and one of the insects. Remember, that’s just on the Ohio Endangered Species List². In the first post, I talked about American Burying Beetle news posts, Ohio Lamprey plush toys, and Save the Wartyback Mussel t-shirts. Well, I only managed one of those, but if I knew how to do the other two, I would be on them before you could say Nicrophorus americanus.

One common thread you will see between the essay and the first post is the midge on the Ohio list. Its name is Rheopelopia acra, and now you know as much about it as I do. At one point, I asked Beetle Lady if she could find anything about it. She couldn’t. I asked Bug Girl if she could find anything about it. She couldn’t. There has to be something that differentiates this midge from all the rest of Diptera, since none of them are listed. On a high note, when I searched Google for the scientific name, I came up as the fifth hit, simply from a footnote on my post on the Puritan Tiger Beetle.

I’ve become more attached to this project than even I expected, and I will keep at it as long as I can keep finding ugly things that need my help³.

¹The other two were non-parasitic. That’s no fun.
²From which I’ve also taken two other fish.
³“Whenever a beetle cries out from habitat loss… I will be there.
“Wherever a salamander finds a dam… you will find me.
“When a fungus finds it can go no further… there I shall be.
“For I… am a blogger!”

Pretty Fly for a Cayman Guy

A while ago, a friend of mine suggested that I get in contact with the Blue Iguana Recovery Program to study those intriguing animals. A few days ago, he sent a request for me to write about another animal from his home island¹. And since I’m always ready to take suggestions, here’s a disgusting, semi-parasitic fruit fly from the Cayman Islands.

Image by Hampton Carson. Please note the white, seed-looking things around the crab's eye--those are the eggs.

Drosophila endobranchia has no common name, though if it did, it would probably be something such as the “Cayman Islands Land Crab Fly.” It is, from birth, completely attached to the land crabs found there. The eggs are laid around the eye of the crab. Once hatched, the larvae make their way to the gills, where they have a veritable feast on the microorganisms living there. Afterwards, they wander to the mouth, where they will grab whatever bits of food they can from the crab. When they’ve had their fill, they fall to the ground and pupate. Don’t think they’ve left the crabs alone, though, because, after pupating, they hitch rides on the crab’s backs until they lay the eggs.

What makes them interesting (or, at least, what this article found interesting, I think it’s pretty neat too), is that there are three separate species of Drosophila in three different locations that have given up the usual fruit fly method of eating bacteria off rotten fruit, and have taken to stealing from land crabs. The strangest part about this is they evolved these methods completely separately from each other. One is from an island in the Indian Ocean, while the others (including D. endobranchia) live in the Caribbean, and each of their life histories are different enough to show that they evolved independently.

I can’t find them on any endangered species list, but with the small size of their habitat, which is frequently being taken over by resorts, I wouldn’t be surprised if their numbers were dwindling. Also, my friend is working with a man who likely knows more about Cayman Island ecology than anyone. If he thinks they’re endangered, I’d take his word for it.

¹The entire message was:
Re: Your endangered species blog.
Drosophila endobranchia
Whaddya say?

Gut Feeling

Well, this week I had intended to write about the African Wart Frog, which is both incredibly cute and unbelievably ugly at the same time. Alas, I couldn’t find enough information about it, so I had to find another amphibian to take its place¹. This one seemed to fit due to the fact that the WWF catalog that I mentioned in the last post was about “Wildlife Families.”

Image by Ella Tyler via EDGE

This is an image of the Southern Gastric-Brooding Frog (Rheobatrachus silus). In 2002, they were moved from their status as endangered to extinct². They looked like the typical grey and semi-aquatic frog, but their name gives away everything they were as parents. After mating, the female eats the eggs. Literally—there is no special mouth-pouch or anything like that; the eggs go straight into the stomach. This isn’t too much of a problem, since the female shuts down her digestive tract and does not eat anything from six to seven weeks. By this time, the frogs turn into froglets, and are ready to hop out of her mouth.

Living in Southern Australia, they were never found more than 12 feet from water. When they weren’t raising the kids, they’d eat all the insects they could catch. Their extinction is a mystery. The feral pigs that reside in the same habitat and the disruption of the water flow obviously couldn’t help, not to mention the problems that global climate change is causing all amphibians, what with more drought and higher UV levels. I suppose this makes the real mystery which one caused the most damage. If anyone was wondering why we care about the extinction of the Gastric-Brooding Frog, medical science will never know how the females turned off their stomach acid. Looks like I’ll have to stick with Nexium. Scientists have been on the lookout for them, but alas, none have been seen since 1981.

¹All right, it didn’t have to be an amphibian, but I really do try to be all-inclusive when it comes to the major taxa. Since it’s been about two months since the last amphibian, I thought it was time for another one.
²I was really trying to avoid using the past tense to make this a blow at the end, but the thought of writing three paragraphs without any forms of “be” seemed too difficult.

Some Crazy Bastard

I’m sorry that I’ve been slacking; I’ve got no real excuse, but I am having problems finding EUTs with enough information for a blog post. It’s exactly the problem I mentioned in the Hunter Slug post: the species that really need our help are the ones that we don’t know anything about. On a different note, the WWF has once again given reason to explain the existence of this blog. My grandparents just got their 2008 calendar last week. Out of 13 pictures, one is an amphibian¹, two are birds, and the rest, of course, are fuzzy, fuzzy mammals (well, I suppose the hippo and the whale aren’t really fuzzy, but you get the idea).

Image from IUCN

On yet another note, I believe this plant’s name ranks among the worst possible for a plant. It is the Bastard Quiver Tree (Aloe pillansii). Again, no explanation is given for the name, but it may be a, ahem, bastardization of the local term “Basterkokerboom²”. If you know your houseplants (or skin products) well enough, you probably recognize the genus Aloe. Yes, this thirty-foot tall tree from the deserts of Africa is a close relative to Aloe vera (which is found growing, among other places, rampantly in pots at my parents’ house).

I suppose saying it lives in the African desert is being unspecific. It inhabits the semiarid Karoo³ region of southern Africa, specifically on the north end of South Africa and south end of Namibia. Being one of the very few plants over about a foot tall gives it some important roles in the ecosystem, such as bird roost and food, and moisture provider through its thick leaves. It more than likely is pollinated by birds.

With fewer than 200 plants, it easily qualifies for IUCN’s critically endangered category. Why it’s endangered is a harder question, with answers ranging from grazing baboons to overgrazing to mining--or, of course, all of the above. At least some people are worried about it: International trade of the plant has been banned by CITES, so it struck me as odd that many of the informative sites about the plant were by horticulturalists. Local South African schools received puzzles, information packs, and worksheets about saving the Basterkokerboom.

¹The Red-eyed Tree Frog, only the most photographed frog in the world.
²This is complete speculation through minimal evidence. Don’t cite me as a source for this.
³Off topic: Microsoft Word’s spellchecker doesn’t know the words “monotreme,” “echolocating,” or even “blog,” but it takes “Karoo” without a second thought.

Echidna's Arf

Six months ago, Greg suggested a few animals which I could write about, all listed at the EDGE website. I’ve already written about two of them and I recently saw some news about the third one that suggests I should write about it. I wouldn’t call it ugly, but obviously someone would, since it’s named after the Mother of All Monsters in Greek mythology.

Image from BBC News

This is the Attenborough Long-beaked Echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi). I suppose I should clarify that Sir David Attenborough is a famous TV naturalist and a co-founder of ARKive, not the Mother of All Monsters. That distinction belongs to Echidna. Actually, this is the only Attenborough Long-Beaked Echidna photograph. More on that later.

Long-Beaked Echidnas are insectivorous monotremes found on the island of Papua New Guinea. I’m not sure how much my readership knows about echidnas¹, so I’ll give a basic description. Imagine a hedgehog with a long beak to help search for invertebrates, with a tongue like an anteater. Also, they lay eggs, which may seem strange. The term “monotreme” means “one hole,” which refers to their cloaca, as opposed to our… uh… two holes. There are three Long-Beaked species and one Short-Beaked Echidna.

While their smaller short-beaked cousins hunt for ants and termites, the Zaglossus² forage for earthworms in the leaf litter. Echidnas are creatures of the night, and use their strong front claws to dig the burrows in which they sleep. Like the marsupials, they have a pouch, into which echidnas lay one egg. After hatching, the puggle³ laps milk which flows from patches, as monotremes have no teats. The young echidna is kicked out of the pouch, understandably, soon after the spines begin to develop.

The Long-Beaked Echidnas are endangered due to habitat loss and hunting for food. The reason the Attenborough Long-Beaked Echidna doesn’t look healthy in the photo is that it is the only specimen of the species, which was collected by a Dutch Botanist in 1961, and currently spends its time in a drawer in a museum in the Netherlands. Understandably, people thought it might be extinct. The good news is, new evidence suggests it might not be. In the area where they are found, the Cyclops⁴ Mountains, scientists have found “nose pokes,” which are holes made by the echidnas as they forage in the mud. Also, the locals say that they’ve been seeing them for about two years. The plan is to mount a full-scale expedition next year to find and photograph a live Attenborough Long-Beaked Echidna. If I’m still blogging by then, I’ll be sure to give you an update.

¹I’m guessing quite a lot, but that doesn’t seem to stop me from explaining.
²Something to do with their tongues, right, Mike?
³Yes, this is the proper term for an infant monotreme.
⁴Alas, the Cyclopes are not among the monsters birthed by Echidna.

Hunter S. Slug

Much the same way I found the Astingy Leaf Chameleon, I was searching ARKive for some good invertebrates. I could probably spend a good month on animals picked solely from that section, but the two that stuck out the most were the Pondoland Cannibal Snail and the Snake Skin Hunter Slug¹. Since I was having problems deciding which one to write about, I asked a friend who randomly picked the slug. Don’t worry, I’m sure the Cannibal Snail will show up soon.

Image by Dai Herbert via ARKive

The Snake Skin Hunter Slug (Chlamydephorus dimidius) is everything its name suggests²: dark grooves on the skin give it a scaly appearance; it is a vicious predator, eating snails and millipedes, and possibly earthworms. How it hunts, I can’t find, but I’m sure any videos of the kill would be ripe material for Animal Planet. This hints at a serious problem with the Hunter Slug. There’s a lot unknown about it. So, we know it lives in the forests of the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, and it’s carnivorous. Other than that… there’s not a whole lot. How and when they reproduce, who knows? What are its major predators? No idea. The Hunter Slug’s only protection come from the fact that they live in a few protected areas.

I know this is a short post, but this lack of information is a big issue for literally thousands of species like the Snake Skin Hunter Slug. Scientists simply don’t know enough about the organism to properly protect it. The only way to help these species is to learn more about them. This is my form of activism. If I can teach people about things that need their help that would otherwise go unnoticed, I feel that I have done my job.

¹Others include the Hairy Marron, which is a fuzzy crayfish, and the Poor Knight’s Weta, which is a giant cricket-like thing.
²Unlike some, such as the Puritan Tiger Beetle, the Hermit Ibis, or the Three-toothed Snail.

Paddlin' Madeline Home

Phantom Midge¹ gave me a few good suggestions recently, but alas, neither the Yeti Crab nor the Zombie Worm are listed, whether or not they are actually in danger of becoming extinct. There are gobs of disgusting-looking deep-sea critters, but since so little is known about their populations and habits, there is not enough information for them to be placed on an endangered species list. There is, however, an aquatic animal that I had known about for a while, but about which I have neglected to write.

Image from Texas Parks and Wildlife

This is the American Paddlefish (Polyodon spathula), which I have seen for years at the Columbus Zoo, and was sure it was on the Ohio Endangered Species List. It wasn’t which slightly upset me, since I was planning on writing about it for most of the week. Turns out it’s listed as vulnerable on the IUCN redlist, so I get to write about it anyway. It lives in large rivers of the Mississippi River basin, growing up to a size of seven feet, and living up to about twenty or thirty years.

The protruding…thingy (actually called a rostrum) from which the Paddlefish gets its name is covered with electroreceptors to help it find groups of zooplankton on which it feeds. The minute prey are swept unceremoniously from the water by the gaping maw of the Paddlefish, and then filtered from the water by raking protrusions on the gills. The fish’s mouth is specifically designed to open to an immense size to filter the largest amount of water possible. Wikipedia suggests that the rostrum also acts as a hydrofoil to help keep the head level in the water as filter feeding occurs, but I don’t really like to cite them as a source.

The American Paddlefish live in rivers, so of course dams affect their populations by impeding their moving patterns. Much like the sturgeon, they have been harvested for meat, and their eggs have been harvested for caviar. Agricultural runoff causes the streams to silt up, making filter feeding a difficult prospect. To help relieve some of these threats, farm-raised Paddlefish are released into the wild. Stricter regulations on Paddlefish harvesting have also been put into effect.

¹Still no blog, so here’s her sister’s link again.