A professor of vertebrate zoology
Yesterday (9/27/2023) on a class field trip, my students and I found a baby milk snake (Lampropeltis triangulum) in the woods at Wooster Memorial Park (WMP). In ~15 years of working on amphibian and reptiles at this site, this is the first milk snake I have found. It is the seventh snake species documented from WMP (the others being eastern garter snakes, ribbon snakes, black rat snakes, northern water snakes, Dekay’s brown snakes and ringneck snakes). Hope to see more in the future!
On Saturday August 26th, volunteers from the College of Wooster swim team helped initiate a reforestation project at Wooster Memorial Park. About 80 native trees were protected from deer browsing in the Ostroski meadow (using tree tubes, see below). With this assistance, these young trees will gradually turn a old field into a young forest, providing valuable wildlife habitat and carbon sequestration benefits. Many hands make light work – thanks all for your help!
I recently published a new paper providing some of the clearest empirical evidence for the demographic rescue effect that I know of. But this was based on field work I did over 20 years ago in the rainforests of Madagascar for my dissertation. To say this has had a long gestation period is a major understatement! When you start a new faculty job, you often focus on starting new projects and sometimes the old ones get (temporarily) forgotten. Glad to have this out and I hope someone reads it!
I presented a poster on long-term changes in salamander body size at the annual Ohio Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (OHPARC) meeting yesterday in Columbus. This was part of the thesis of Sarah Longville (’22) – got lots of good feedback!
Since 2005, I have been formally cataloguing the amphibians and reptiles of Wooster Memorial Park (Wayne Co., Ohio). As of the spring of 2022, I was aware of seven species of salamanders, five species of frogs, six snakes and two turtles that occur at the park. In the last ten years, I have only added one or two to that list and figured I had probably found most of what was out there. Then came 2022, which was a banner year for amphibian discoveries. In early October, I found not one, but two new salamanders in the park: (the four-toed salamander, Hemidactylium scutatum) and the smallmouth salamander (Ambystoma texanum, thanks to Caileigh Briggs for finding and photographing this one!). I was still basking in the glow of those discoveries when in late October, I found a pickerel frog (Lithobates palustris) in one of the narrow ravines found throughout the park.
So, a new frog was added to the park to the park list as well. So that puts the official list at: nine salamanders, six frogs, six snakes and two turtles (23 species of amphibians and reptiles total). Not bad! Who knows what else is out there? I guess you just have to keep looking!