Lab #11

Date: 4/13/16

Location: Lumber River Conservancy

Lab Activity: Checking Turtle Traps and more Radio Tracking

Habitat: Freshwater Pond

Temperature: 69.5 F

Wind: 1.7 mph

Humidity: 45.5%

    Hooped turtle traps were set up and baited the day before and left out all night. There were several traps but only one them had turtles.

    We also tracked another Eastern Box Turtle, please refer to the entry to Lab #9 for more information on how that is done.

Box Turtle #050 

Y-3864818

X-0650505

   No measurements were taken.

    Another Box Turtle was found dead that had been captured previously. By looking at its notches we were able to determine that its three letter code was "MNO".

    Because many zoologists use capture and recapture techniques in order to determine population sizes of animals they need a way to determine if the turtle in their trap is an individual that they have seen before or if it is new. In the case of the Lumber River Conservancy they mark the turtles by putting notches in its shell, where each notch represents a number. The notches that are on the anterior end of the carapace represent whole number while the posteriorly located notches represent decimals. 

 #050 a particularly colorful male

 MNO not so colorful (Gender unknown to me)

 Hooped Turtle Trap

    

Lab #8

Date: 3/23/16

Location: Lumber River Conservancy

Lab Activity: Searching for spotted turtles

Habitat: Vernal Pool

Temperature: 81.1 F

Wind: 3.5 mph

Humidity: 33%

    Myself and the rest of the Field Zoology class went out to the Lumber River Conservancy looking for spotted turtles, unfortunately we didn't find any.

Southern Cricket Frog (Acris gryllus)

    

    The Southern Cricket Frog, is a small frog and member of the family Hylidae which makes it a treefrog. You can find Southern Cricket Frogs in coastal plain bogs, ponds and in our case vernal pools. 

    They have a distinct linear "Y" shaped marking on their back, though often green the marking can vary in shade and color as well as pronouncement.

    Though they are called cricket frogs they mostly feed on smaller insects like mosquitoes, some crickets would actually be the same size as this frog and would prove difficult to swallow.