Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
me to liken the motion of salamanders shooting down insects to that of squeezing wa-
termelon seeds between fingertips—their muscles project the slippery Y-shaped throat
skeleton, its forward-facing base armed with a sticky tongue pad for prey capture. I also
sought aids from colleagues elsewhere, like raptor biologist Stan Temple's photos of
Round Island skinks cracking bird eggs by rolling them off rocks, then eating the con-
tents.
My TAs, themselves accomplished herpetologists, familiarized undergrads with di-
versity at local to global levels. Students watched captive rattlesnakes to safely dif-
ferentiate species using color patterns; they hunkered over microscopes to distinguish
frogs from all over the world on the basis of pectoral girdles, tadpole mouthparts, and
other anatomical peculiarities. Twice during the semester we administered “practic-
al exams”—preserved red-bellied newts, for example, were accompanied by questions
regarding identification, sex, distribution, and predator avoidance. Together lectures,
readings, labs, and tests provided a scaffolding of facts and concepts that would make
more sense when the class went looking for salamanders in creeks and lizards in sand
dunes.
Our field trips took advantage of California's extremes: cool and moist in the north,
hot and dry in the south, with emphasis on amphibians in the former and reptiles in
the latter. Pretrip handouts laid out routes and schedules, emphasized safety, and lis-
ted things to bring: shorts and pants, long-sleeved shirt, hat, bandana for dust storms,
jacket, sunscreen and sunglasses, boots, water bottles, binoculars, camera, notebook,
sleeping bag, eating utensils, and so forth. M.V.Z. supplied stoves, pots, pans, and ice
coolers, and everyone chipped in for groceries. Students were responsible for cook-
ing and cleanup, with instructions that I expected plenty of tasty food and good cof-
fee! There were humorous interludes, of course, like when we were calculating how
much toilet paper to buy and one guy bragged about making do with two squares per
“event”—whereupon the gal next to him muttered, “You are
not
cooking!”
The course's shakedown cruise, to Mendocino County, commenced on a Friday in
March, with Saturday's sunrise revealing frost on our tents. Otters prowled the Eel
River by camp, and nearby rocks harbored western fence lizards and a western skink
or two, although once we uncovered only a suspiciously fat, brown-and-yellow-ban-
ded California kingsnake. Ranging over grassy, oak-dotted hillsides, we palpated dusky-
footed woodrats out of western rattlesnakes and counted dozens of black salamanders
under bark and rocks. Wading chilly streams, dwarfed by massive old-growth conifers,
my students inverted their binoculars to magnify the gills of torrent salamander lar-
vae and a tailed frog's mating appendage. Flipping planks in a meadow yielded readily
identifiable northern and southern alligator lizards as well as three confusingly similar
species of gartersnakes. And with rough-skinned newts in hand we inspected the male's
slimy skin, tail in, and swollen feet, temporary transformations for aquatic mating in an
otherwise terrestrial amphibian.
Meals really hit the spot after hiking such breathtaking locales, and later I'd drift off
to sleep as students joked and sang around a bonfire. Driving home Sunday we'd picnic
beside a coastal pool replete with red-legged frogs and their jelly-blob eggs, then make
two last strategic stops. Checking under boards at an abandoned sawmill usually turned
up at least one rubber boa, temperate outlier of a mainly tropical lineage, and in a road-
side gorge further inland, an especially gnarly old log sheltered a Pacific giant salaman-
