Woot Woot. Alright, so I do research on local herps and I've been banging my head against walls for almost a year trying to get funding to radiotag a population of Emys marmorata (western pond turtles) that live on my research site as a tie in to another field project I have going. Anyway, I finally convinced someone to donate 4 transmitters and another someone to loan me a receiver and antenna for the year. :wamma: So, starting in Feb, provided I get my proposal in to DFG, I get to stalk the turts. Even better, I found another local guy willing to buy 2 additional transmitters, so if I can find 4 more, I can tag the entire adult population. WORD. Science just rocks. Watch your backs, turts.


http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj217/janeothejungle/t1c.jpg

http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj217/janeothejungle/turthead.jpg

Cheers,
Kat

Awesome, Kat!!! Good luck with it!!! :yourock:

Very cool Kat. That's great!

Very nice !!!!!!
We are trying to get funded to get a few N.A.woods and Eastern boxies transmitted!

Hhah thats funny stalk the turds.

Good luck.

That :rockon: turt

That's aweome :yourock:

Grats. That is very exciting!

Congrats on the donations for the project. That is the hardest part of science. So what kind of data are you wanting to collect with the transmitters?

Congrats and good luck Kat!!!

Congrats on the donations for the project. That is the hardest part of science. So what kind of data are you wanting to collect with the transmitters?

Background: I'm shooting bullfrogs (not native to CA) and eradicating them from a 4500 acre range where I work. One of the reservoirs I am clearing out has a small population of turts. When we dragged them out of the res last year, we discovered they were all the same age class (8-10 years old). No variation. No younger generations. So we wondered, is it the bullfrogs. And it was. Last year we had surviving hatchlings for the first time in 10 years.

http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj217/janeothejungle/07kidsb.jpg

http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj217/janeothejungle/adult_kidsturts.jpg

So, there is actually very limited data collected on Emys, some of the published lit implies they need water year around, yet on the range, the reservoir these guys live in dries out every year for 2-3 months. Where do the little buggers go?? Do they hibernate?? Where are the females nesting and what do those nests look like?? How large of a range does each sex utilize? By contributing data, we can hopefully establish better conservation plans for these guys (which are a species of special concern in Cali). It's a bit of a gangbang due to these guys being a protected species, so I have to do a lot of butt kissing to my university, DFG, and the Forest Service, but worth it in the end and hopefully I can pull a pub out of it. Done raving now back to compiling my research proposal.


Cheers,
Kat

Where do the bullfrogs go when the water dries up. They probably go underground like the turtles do.

I had a pond on another piece of property I owned west of here (Riverside County) that had marmorata living in it. We would see babies and various sizes in it. The neighbour in the next parcel had a pond several hundred yards downstream with bullfrogs in it started from tadploes he got with his koi fish. He had no baby turtles in his after that, just adult turtles; not even crayfish were left in his pond. He was lucky the bullfrogs only reproduced a year or two because I got him some Gambusia for the pond (Gambusia eat bullfrog eggs but don't get any ideas because Gambusia eat non target amphibian eggs too) and by the second year the Gambusia were too numerous for the frog's eggs to survive. Evenings, we shot all the frogs with laser sighted CO2 air rifles. Beer was there too. That was challenging because we found we had to aim for the head otherwise the pellet would just drill them and they'd get away. So we shot probably a hundred frogs in all over the summer.

Bull frogs are really cool, I like listening to them and seeing them, but they have no place here because they eat all the baby turtles and spade foot toads.

That's great Kat! I really envy you and your job hon :D Good luck with tracking them, make sure you let us know how it goes with getting the other two transmitters :yourock:

Hey Kat, how expensive is that equipment. I've always wondered.

Good luck. Keep us posted

Sounds like a great research project!

That's great Kat, good luck with the project :yourock:

Kat, good luck with this project. Would be nice to get something published eh? Maybe then you could get some government money to back this thing.

Quig

WHat a fun project and congrats on the transmittors but more so on babies after 10 years

Hey Kat, how expensive is that equipment. I've always wondered.

The aquatic transmitters we are using have active/inactive signals, last for up to a year and are around $280 a pop. If I had to buy a receiver setup, it would be another 2k.

That was challenging because we found we had to aim for the head otherwise the pellet would just drill them and they'd get away. So we shot probably a hundred frogs in all over the summer.

We're somewhere around 1,286; with ~50 to go. You have to get at least an 80% kill rate on breeders to effectively squelch the population. And yes, it's brainshot or nothing. They are resilient little buggers.

http://www.centralvalleyherpproject.com/pics/frogs/bullfrog/frogsinabucket.jpg

Cheers,
Kat

The aquatic transmitters we are using have active/inactive signals, last for up to a year and are around $280 a pop. If I had to buy a receiver setup, it would be another 2k.



Wow, that's more than I was guessing. To get them to last longer, maybe you could ask the turtles if it's alright to install a solar panel on their roof. :lol:

Background: I'm shooting bullfrogs (not native to CA) and eradicating them from a 4500 acre range where I work. One of the reservoirs I am clearing out has a small population of turts. When we dragged them out of the res last year, we discovered they were all the same age class (8-10 years old). No variation. No younger generations. So we wondered, is it the bullfrogs. And it was. Last year we had surviving hatchlings for the first time in 10 years.
Cheers,
Kat

I'm assuming that the bullfrogs are eating the hatchlings?

Nevermind , found the answer. Thats what I get for skimming.

I'm assuming that the bullfrogs are eating the hatchlings?

The bullfrogs (which we collect and dissect for stomach contents) at my site apparently eat all of the following....

pond snails
earthworms
black leeches
****leburrs
wolf spiders
unidentified spider (tarantula?)
red leeches
small stones
spent shell casing
grey scorpions
Sierra millipedes (which produce cyanide)
Whirligig beetle
Backswimmer
Jerusalem Cricket
Butt Waving Beetle
libellulid Larva
Grey w/orange edges millipede
small white larva caterpillar
water boatmen
land beetle
black field cricket
wormy white midge larva
small tan caterpillar
dusky wing moths
red centipede (scolopendra)
red ground beetle
rough-dead looking' beetle
oriental ****roach
sulphur butterfly
no ID moth
aeshnid larva
caddisfly larva
earwig
White crowned Sparrow
No ID bird (purple finch?, very digested)
Lesser Goldfinches
Deer Mice
Myotis Bat
Pacific TreeFrogs
Bullfrogs
Western Fence Lizards
Common Gartersnakes
Sierra Gartersnake
Western Toads

and yes,

Western Pond Turtle (Juv)


~Kat

AHHH HHAAAAA HAAAA HAAA I love the censoring. Now who can guess the bleeped word?? (it's the same one in both places). :lmao::lmao:


Cheers,
Kat

The bullfrogs (which we collect and dissect for stomach contents) at my site apparently eat all of the following....

pond snails
earthworms
black leeches
****leburrs
wolf spiders
unidentified spider (tarantula?)
red leeches
small stones
spent shell casing
grey scorpions
Sierra millipedes (which produce cyanide)
Whirligig beetle
Backswimmer
Jerusalem Cricket
Butt Waving Beetle
libellulid Larva
Grey w/orange edges millipede
small white larva caterpillar
water boatmen
land beetle
black field cricket
wormy white midge larva
small tan caterpillar
dusky wing moths
red centipede (scolopendra)
red ground beetle
rough-dead looking' beetle
oriental ****roach
sulphur butterfly
no ID moth
aeshnid larva
caddisfly larva
earwig
White crowned Sparrow
No ID bird (purple finch?, very digested)
Lesser Goldfinches
Deer Mice
Myotis Bat
Pacific TreeFrogs
Bullfrogs
Western Fence Lizards
Common Gartersnakes
Sierra Gartersnake
Western Toads

and yes,

Western Pond Turtle (Juv)


~Kat

WOW that is one heck of a menu...stones?? (LOL)

AHHH HHAAAAA HAAAA HAAA I love the censoring. Now who can guess the bleeped word?? (it's the same one in both places). :lmao::lmao:


Cheers,
Kat

What the heck it is a **** roach or ****elburrs....lmao

wow very nice

I think marmorata are handsome turtles. The first time I ever saw one was swimming in Bass Lake as a little kid probably about eight years old. One surfaced right next to me, saw me and immediately dived again. I sure wanted to catch that turtle. That was on a camping trip and I think I bored my friend's parents to tears with nonstop talk of that turtle rest of the trip. My friend's mother also had an absolute shit-fit when I grabbed a large gopher snake by the tail, in camp..

WOW KAT! GREAT PICS! Congrats, I hope that you get the other transmitters that youa re looking for. That would be AWESOME! I bet you are EXCITED! :D Love Turtles....I nicknamed my son Turtle :D