Roads and Red Efts

The sun hadn't yet risen as we drove down 33 towards Charlene’s research site.  I looked out into the blackness and yawned.  The cloudy night sky was offset by the solid silhouettes of trees, giving the landscape two-tones of darkness.  Red taillights and reflective traffic cones emerged out of the fog as if from nowhere.  We turned off of the highway and instead of heading left towards Marcel’s site, Charlene turned right.  We parked along the side of the road just off of the exit and stepped out into the chilly morning air.  A light, blue outline of sky peeked above the trees and reflected against the wetland—the only hint that it was 6:30 in the morning and not midnight.  I shivered and rubbed my arm as my breath formed little clouds of water vapor. 

I had recently been hired by Charlene Hopkins, a PhD student at Ohio University studying the effects of roadways on amphibians.  Like Marcel Weigand’s project (which you can read about HERE), Charlene’s study is situated around the Nelsonville Bypass.  I met Charlene a few weeks into my freshman year at a research talk hosted by the OU Wildlife Club.  Volunteering with her project was my first formal introduction to ecological research.  The nature of Charlene’s study makes it perfect for someone like myself who is interested in seeing as much of Ohio’s biodiversity as possible.

A series of 4 pitfalls, each with a different front and top for amphibians to choose from.

Along the road, Charlene has constructed tarp fencing which directs and funnels amphibians and other small animals into a series of pitfall traps.  She has recorded more than 30 species of native reptiles and amphibians dead or alive at her site.  This includes eleven species of snakes, four species of turtles, nine species of frogs, and eight species of salamanders.  She has even found a few dead copperheads, but, “no live ones yet,” she informed me, sounding disappointed.  

Small mammals are another commonly trapped vertebrate.  In spring, Charlene puts a branch leaning up against the side of the pitfalls so that the shrews and voles can escape.  If there is no way out, mammals are at risk of dying of hypothermia when it rains.  Later in the season, when it is warm enough for the amphibians to start moving and breeding, shrews will kill anything trapped with them.  This includes snakes, frogs, salamanders, and even other shrews.  “They are like little zombies,” Charlene explained, “and will usually start by feeding on their prey’s brain.”

We donned headlamps and began our survey of the road for bodies.  Amphibian bodies, that is.  Each and every morning, weekday or weekend, rain or shine, Charlene heads out to her site to survey the road and check her traps.  Impressive, to say the least.  The Nelsonville Bypass is situated between a series of ephemeral wetlands and forested hillsides.  The ideal amphibian highway—now trampled by vehicles.  

The night before had been rainy; it wasn't long before we found our first casualty.  The newt appeared nothing more than an orange smudge on the pavement.  I suspect that even the most observant of herpetologists would have walked right past it.  Charlene didn't even flinch.  She nonchalantly waited for a car to pass, before walking out onto the road to scrape up the smeared body with her fingers.  She spread the gelatinous innards around, exposing some of the newt's defining skin spots.  “One red eft,” she said as she tossed the sludge into the grass. This might sound gross, but it is a reality of field research.  To work with live animals, you must also be able to work with dead ones.

A tiny red eft found on the road.  One of the few lucky survivors.

Red-spotted or eastern newts (Notophthalmus viridescens) exhibit a fascinating three-phase life-cycle which puts them at particular risk from roads.  The newts hatch from eggs laid in a wetland or vernal pool.  There, they grow as aquatic larvae, before emerging as tiny "red efts" in the fall.  The lizard-like efts are fully terrestrial, venturing away from the wetland and into the surrounding forested hillsides (often crossing roads in the process).  The efts are bright orange in coloration and are easily spotted wandering around the forest floor.  This boldness is due to the extremely potent tetrodotoxin excreted by glands in their skin.  The efts will grow for the next 2-3 years before returning to the wetland and metamorphosing into the adult stage (forcing them to cross roads again).  Fully grown newts are entirely aquatic, with a rudder-shaped tail used for swimming.  

An adult red-spotted newt.

We continued walking, scanning the road with our headlamps, trying to pick out the minute reflections from squished bodies.  On days when it has rained recently, the amphibians will be out in force.  We paused every few feet to remove entrails and record data.  During heavy migration events in the spring and fall, Charlene might see somewhere in the vicinity of 800 amphibians dead on the road in a single night.  It is truly shocking how much damage one road can do.  Seeing DOR (dead on road) animals is a reality for all herpers.  Reptiles and amphibians are slow and vulnerable, making them particularly susceptible to collisions with vehicles.  Charlene’s site isn't unique.  Countless roads throughout Ohio (and the world) account for untold numbers of amphibian deaths every year.  

Systematic surveys of amphibian road mortality are rare—for obvious reasons.  Prior to Charlene taking over the project, surveys had been done in cars.  Driving at any reasonable speed would mean missing nearly all of the tiny bodies.  It wasn't until she started walking the mile-long stretch of road every morning that the true impact was realized.  In order to prevent further road mortality, mitigation structures were clearly an imperative.

The Ohio Department of Transportation, which funds Charlene's research, has already installed two amphibian tunnels beneath the road.  Charlene's findings, however, have shown that not only are these tunnels built in the wrong places, but they are also poorly designed for amphibian use.  The bulk of amphibian movement occurs upstream of the tunnels.  Even if frogs and salamanders did have the option to utilize the structures, few would risk entering.  The tunnels are dark and narrow, and don't provide a view of the other side.  Would you want to venture into a huge, black cavern that might not even take you where you want to go? 

Using Charlene's findings, ODOT has recently finalized plans to build a new amphibian tunnel beneath the road.  This tunnel will take into account where most of the amphibians are crossing.  It will be much wider than the previously-built tunnels, as well as provide a level view to the other side.  The top will be grated, allowing sunlight to reach the soil-covered floor.  This tunnel will not eliminate road mortality for amphibians, but—if all goes as planned—it will greatly reduce it. An encouraging step towards ensuring the long-term survival of our native herpetofauna.

No Ordinary Black Snake

Read part one HERE. 

The black snake lay stretched across the pavement, slinking in the direction of the woods.  Had we been a minute later, we would have missed it completely.  Carl slammed on the brakes and we both leapt from our seats.  I raced around the passenger side, my view of the snake obscured by the truck’s hood.

When I heard Carl make the ID, my heart stopped.  “Hog-nosed!” he shouted from the opposite side of the vehicle.  I skidded to a halt.  “Oh my goodness,” I stammered in stunned elation.  This was too good to be true; was I dreaming?  First green salamanders and now my long sought-after lifer eastern hog-nosed snake!  I had wanted to see a hog-nosed ever since I first read about them nearly ten years ago in my reptiles of Ohio field guide.  During my teenage years, posters depicting Ohio’s native snakes decorated my bedroom walls.  The hog-nosed, with its peculiar upturned snout, always drew my eye and captured my imagination.  I never believed I would actually get to see one.

The hog-nosed snake (Heterodon platirhinos) was a sight to behold—three feet long, jet black, and hissing.  Her head was flattened out in the hog-nosed’s characteristic, cobra-esque defense display.  As we inched closer she reared up, showing us the broad side of her neck and seething with deep, rattling sibilations.  The snake's mouth was elongated into a wide grin; with those unblinking eyes, her expression had the intensity of a madman.  As we got closer, the snake’s apparent rage only increased.  We needed to move the furious serpent off the road; other cars would soon be upon us.

To the reader, if you have never heard of the hog-nosed snake you might be quite surprised at what comes next.  Gingerly, I picked up the pseudo-cobra.  She continued to hiss furiously, but never attempted to strike.  Hog-nosed snakes are all bluff.  They put on a show to scare off would-be predators by appearing big, confident, and dangerous.  Hog-noseds are in fact completely harmless.  They are toad hunters, with fangs in the rear of the mouth used to pop the inflated bodies of their warty prey.  These fangs contain a mild amphibian toxin, but this poses no real threat to humans.  

For a hog-nosed to envenomate you, it must first bite (which they are not typically inclined to do—unless you smell like a toad).  Hog-nosed snakes may strike when encountered; this is usually a feint.  If the snake were to make contact, its nose would just glance off your body, mouth clamped tightly shut.  If the snake does somehow bite (this is only likely during an accidental feeding response from a captive snake), the recipient would have to allow the snake to hang on and chew.  Chewing slowly works the back fangs and mild venom into the wound.  Most people who are envenomated allowed the snake to chew because they thought “it was cute.”  Even if all this comes to fruition, the bite shouldn't be any worse than a bee sting (though like a bee sting, some people may have an allergic reaction—making a bite more serious).  

As I held the rapidly contracting and expanding body of the hissing hog, a pickup pulled up beside us.  Two county sheriffs looked out at me and my apparent cobra with stunned curiosity. "That's no ordinary black snake," one of them observed.  His tone was somewhere between horror and reverence.  We explained to them that the snake wasn't dangerous and that we were moving it off the road so it wouldn't be hit.  They seemed intrigued by this bizarre and apparently ferocious creature living in their woods that they had never seen or heard of before.  They drove off likely thinking, “Those guys are crazy.”

We placed the hognosed at the edge of the road for a few more photos.  When we heard the engine of another car approaching, I grabbed the snake again.  This time, I squeezed her tail just a bit too hard—a fact I would soon come to regret.  A shudder ran through the snake’s body. Suddenly, the hog began to thrash about violently as though it had been shot.  Epileptic seizures gripped the hog-nosed for several seconds.  Finally, its bowels discharged and the snake hung limp.  “So much for photographs,” Carl said with disappointment.

Hog-nosed snakes play dead when feeling threatened.

Surprised?  This is the second act in the hog-nosed snake’s playbook.  If pretending to be big and bad isn't sufficient to scare the threat away, the hog-nosed will play dead.  This two-part performance has earned hog-noseds the affectionate title of “the drama queens of the snake world.”  Hog-nosed snakes take playing dead to a whole new level.  After her Shakespearean death scene, our hog rolled onto her back, gaped, and let her tongue hang out.  Defecating on herself helped to give that final stinky touch.  Who would want to eat a dead snake that had been laying in the sun all day?  

There is one famous flaw to the hog-nosed snake’s death act.  I gently flipped the ‘dead’ snake onto her stomach, hoping to snap her out of it.  Instead of coming back to life, however, the hog just rolled over again.  There is no convincing a hog-nosed that a dead snake shouldn't be laying on its back.  I asked Carl if there was any chance we could wait out the hog’s performance to get some more pictures.  He assured me there was not. 

Carl has seen around two dozen or so hog-nosed snakes in Ohio over the years.  Sadly, about half of those have been dead on the road.  “I have no formula for finding that species,” he explained to me when I inquired about hogs during one of our first trips.  When conditions are right, they might turn up.  Just what those conditions are, however, isn't quite clear.  Warm, cloudy days seem to be good for snake movement.  Today was one such day.  On our drive down, we stopped every few miles to inspect the bodies of recently road-killed snakes.  Herps were definitely out and about.

Once, Carl had the good fortune of flipping a cover board with two hog-nosed snakes under it!  Whatever it was about that day’s conditions had brought not one, but two hog-noseds to utilize his boards.  Does the great rarity with which they are seen mean hogs are sparse in Ohio?  Not so!  Hog-nosed snakes are likely much more common than we realize.  They occur in several counties along Lake Erie as well as the hill counties of southern Ohio.  It is the hog-nosed’s fossorial nature that makes them so mysterious.  Hog-nosed snakes are most commonly found where there is sandy soil.  That upturned snout allows them to dig for toads—their main source of food.  Much of a hog-nosed’s life is subterranean, out of sight of eager herpetologists. This was only the second live hog-nosed snake Carl had driven up on in nearly 15 years of searching.  

I was honored to have seen an eastern hog-nosed snake in the wild.  Our female was a particularly large and stunning specimen.  Hog-noseds generally have a pattern of spots or blotches, with shades of peanut butter brown, tan, black, orange, and even brick red.  Our girl was completely melanistic—solid black except for a rim of white around her lips.  If we hadn't been in a hurry to get home, I would likely have spent the rest of the day with her. I released the still limp snake into the woods in the direction she had been heading.  As we drove away I expressed my disbelief at our find.  It didn't feel real.  "It'll hit you when you don't find another one for four years," Carl said knowingly.  I can only hope it won't take that long.

Green Eggs and Herps

I scanned my headlamp across the glittering surface of an enormous wall of lichen-covered sandstone.  I felt like a contortionist as I twisted my head in order to peer into every crack and dimple in the stone's face.  Eventually, I reached a long crevice that separated two of the immense rocky outcroppings.  The crevice was little more than an inch wide, and grew progressively tighter the farther back I looked.  My small headlamp illuminated different degrees of rock as I moved along, casting the surroundings into deep shadow.  All of a sudden, my light fell on the elongate body of an amphibian.  The salamander was small, only a few inches in length.  Its skin was covered in little, splotchy markings—but were they green markings?  I quickly turned off my light, not wanting to scare the creature away before I could be positive what it was.

A northern slimy salamander.

At that moment, I heard Carl’s muffled voice from the other side of the ridge top.  “I found one!”  he called.  I left my snake stick as a marker, and rushed to the rock face where he was searching.  “I didn't get a great look, but it’s a big one,” Carl said as he rummaged through his backpack for his camera equipment.  As he started snapping shots of the salamander, the flash revealed the creature’s glistening black-body and light colored markings.  The longer we looked, however, the more apparent it became that the makings were not in fact green, but white.  “It’s a slimy,” Carl corrected.  Plethodon glutinosus: not our green, but still an interesting find.  At several inches in length, it was the biggest northern slimy salamander I had ever seen.  

Carl and I had traveled down to southeastern Ohio to search for the state-endangered green salamander.  “Each of these ridges with exposed rock should have them,”  Carl explained, pointing out hotspots on his topographic map.  He had searched this location in past years with a 100% success rate.  I had looked for green salamanders once before with no luck.   Read about my adventure in The Henslow’s Sparrow and the Search for the Green Salamander.  This time, I felt good about our odds.

Green salamanders are a curious species.  They occur in Ohio at the extreme northern tip of their range, only extending into a few southern most counties.  They inhabit the crevices of limestone and sandstone cliffs in forested areas.  Often wedged deep within the rock’s pockmarked visage, the salamanders take some ingenuity to find.  

I led Carl back to the fissure where I had discovered the little, freckled salamander moments earlier.  He took one look with his flashlight and confirmed, “That’s exactly what we are looking for!  A green salamander!”  We sat hunched over for the next 20 minutes, angling our cameras so the flash would hit the salamander just right.  Photographing in such tight quarters is no easy task.  The salamander was small for a green.  At only a few inches in length, it was likely a hatchling from the previous year.  

To finally have a green salamander at hand was a relief.  Ever since my efforts had been thwarted a few months prior, I had been counting down the days until I could hunt for them again.  On this search, I was determined to check every stretch of rock, even if it took all day. Finding our green turned out to be much easier than I had anticipated.  This was only the second series of rocks we had checked, and I found the little salamander just minutes into our search.  It sat parallel to the vertical rock wall, calmly ignoring my light.  Some green salamanders grow nervous when illuminated, retreating deeper into the rock.  Its body was purple-ish black with yellow-green markings similar to the lichens that cover its abode.  It would have been easy to overlook.

Green Salamander Habitat.

As we hiked on, we continued to scan each large stretch of rock for salamanders.  “The tiny cracks that reach deep into the stone are good places to check,” Carl explained.  Salamanders (and most herps for that matter) tend to hide in spaces just big enough for their own bodies to fit.  This keeps them hidden and prevents larger predators from entering.  At most of the holes I examined, I was met with the bizarre, curled body of a large species of cave cricket.  Below overhangs of stone, where sandy soil had been deposited, we found the funnel traps of ant lions (small larval insects that dig pits to trap prey).  As we came to one rounded slab of stone, we hit pay dirt.  Along a section that stretched several meters, we found four more small green salamanders!

As we photographed and marveled at our luck, Carl made another fascinating discovery.  Hanging from the ceiling of one rock crevice were several green salamander eggs!  Green salamander mothers will remain with their clutch until they hatch.  The mother was likely hidden behind the egg mass, out of our line of sight.  Green eggs usually hatch by September, so finding a clutch was a real surprise.  Green salamanders skip the tadpole stage (direct development) and emerge from eggs as miniature adults.  The hatchlings may remain with their mother for a few weeks and reach sexual maturity by year three.

Green salamander eggs.

We had found our target species for the day: the rare and beautiful green salamander. I couldn't have been happier.  Across their limited Ohio range, green salamanders likely occur in most areas with suitable sandstone cliffs.  Much of their habitat is hidden away on private lands, limiting the number of populations herpetologists can discover.  The rough, rocky terrain that suits these amphibians will hopefully protect their homes from being demolished or developed.  

As we were preparing to head home, Carl decided to drive the final stretch of road we were parked along.  The day was warm and cloudy—perfect for reptile movement.  The paved road was a light, uniform gray.  Anything on it would jump out like a sore thumb.  As we crept along, the asphalt seemed to radiate with potential.  We both saw the snake at the same moment.  

I never would have guessed what we found.

To be continued. . .