Lab #2 

Habitat: Pine/Hardwood Forest

Temperature: 53.1 F

Wind: 11.5 mph

Humidity: 47%

       For this lab we set up a linear drift fence and pitfall combo. This consists of digging a narrow trench in a more or less straight line and placing some pegs covered linked by tarp inside of it. After that is done you dig more holes and place buckets inside of them. The idea is that when an animal meets the drift fence it will then travel along it looking for a way around it, but instead ends up falling into a bucket.

       We took some precautions with this set up. First we drilled holes through the bottom of the bucket so that they wouldn't fill with rain water and drown anything caught inside. Also we placed some vegetation inside so that anything which found itself trapped would have something to hide under. Lastly we placed the lids on the buckets before leaving. The purpose of this was because we hadn't planned on coming back for a few weeks and we didn't want anything to starve in the buckets while we were gone.

Ground Skink (Scincella lateralis)

    Ground skinks can be found throughout most of the southern United States and prefer areas with loose soil and plenty of leaf litter cover. You are likely to find them underneath something like a log or a coverboard, in the case of this skink under the leaf litter. 

    

    Ground skinks have proportionally tiny legs and even though they use them their means of locomotion is best described as a wiggling like motion. Skinks move through the leaf litter similarly to how a crocodile moves through the water.