Field Herp Forum

Other than lighting the most consistent issue I see with all the pictures is not enough attention to the background border. The 3rd one in particular would have been particularly good with just an inch or two more of the background around the border, but not too much. Once I have a subject in the vi...

It seems the H. cinerea is returning to the same spot within the bromeliad every day while being absent at night. I've often been curious about the territorial habits of various frogs and how familiar they were with that territory. I do know that year before last, after a cricket explosion, a Bufo a...

We have seen them quite frequently in Chattanooga this summer so I don't think Dalton is that far out of range... The guides I referred to showed that their range to be limited to about 100 miles further south. That puts Chattanooga even further out of range, or about the same if you measure from A...

Very cool, John. Thanks for showing them and the great looking habitat. Alas, what birdinggal says is true. In older field guides, that general area is devoid of H. cinerea , but newest guides like The Amphibians of Tennessee by Niemiller and Reynolds (an excellent book by the way), Greens are foun...

More complete pic set can be seen here: http://imgur.com/a/mQtnz#0 Tuesday Morning (9/24/2013) about 2:30 AM it had been raining hard and steady all night and I spotted this Hyla cinerea on the window of a friends house. This is in Whitfield county Ga very near Dalton roughly a hundred miles north a...

Funny, I initially read the title to mean the snakes survival. :) Don't step over logs without looking at what's on the other side. If in high grass or brush travel slowly enough and make enough noise to give snakes a chance to avoid you. Can you also talk about myths and issues that shouldn't be an...

This is my favorite frog and I have spent a lot of time watching them. They also breed in pools I create with child's swimming pools around my house. Gray Tree Frogs are not water frogs and only associate with vernal pools for breeding. Often when they call they do it from brush or up in a tree at a...

I wouldn't hesitate to sign a liability waiver for both the organization and any land owners or other people incurring risk of liability. I think anybody that would have a problem with it probably shouldn't be that involved in field herping.

Mywan- thanks for your take. Admittedly, I hadn't seen the term "superinfection" before, but after reading, it made sense that it was an infection caused by an antibiotic/antifungal-resistant strain. The term "superinfection" is actually much more inclusive of all types of simultaneous infections o...

I doubt that a superinfection is the problem here, Please elaborate! I can do this. Since a "superinfection" can involve a range of causal factors I will only deal with the subset of causal factors implied by implicating the use of antibiotics. This generally results when medication used to treat a...

The mound looks like a fire ant mound to me. They are all over my property and will cap over the top during winter months like that. Disturbing the mound a bit should tell you for sure. If it's fire ants you can get them to surface and just under the crust it should be riddled with passageways.

My yard is where I do a lot of my herping. I should do a picture album of different structures, but here's a list I would consider important beyond basic tin and board cover. Many pics are linked to a facebook album where displaying the images don't work. Pools: My favorite is to place child's swimm...

Photosensitivity seems to be a basal trait shared by even earths most primitive organisms. How fossorial would an organism have to become to lose such archaic pathways? In general, from a genetics perspective, what tends to happen is that the genes responsible remain but become functionally degrade...

Handled my first queen snake (Regina septemvittata) today, about 18 inches and about 1.5 hours before dusk at 70 degrees. Sorry no photo, was at an apartment complex with a friend and took her 8 year old daughter for a short walk. The snake did a body roll during handling so I limited my handling to...

I know birds can see UV, has anyone tested whether any herps can? I linked a study on page #2 showing ball pythons can see UV. THE PHOTORECEPTORS AND VISUAL PIGMENTS IN THE RETINA OF A BOID SNAKE, THE BALL PYTHON (PYTHON REGIUS) Sillman et al. (1997) provided the first evidence of the retinal sensi...

Herps may be basking under non-heat UV bulbs simply because in nature, UV, visible light, and heat are highly correlated, and they may not have the ability to identify these diffferent features. Even the ability to sense UV at all is an unusual capability. Nor is UV, visible light, and heat signifi...

Here is a more linear image of the light spectrum. http://www.nsinails.com/images/naillab/uv-overview.jpg Below the 400 NM wavelength is UV, which humans generally can't see. The infrared wavelengths, most responsible for heating, are above 700 NM. Again generally outside the spectrum of what we can...

I have noticed snakes will not bask under radiant uva unless it is their only form of potz. I use cable for potz. There are thermal influences with sunlight as it is comprised of uva and uvb wavelengths. They are also both present in uvb tubes. But they have very minimal thermal capacity and are a ...

Can you log how constantly you get basking behavior under identical conditions with and without UVB? Then log changes in basking behavior, with and without UVB, under specific modifications to environmental conditions? What's needed is enough observations to form a statistical picture of behavioral ...

This morning, with this thread in mind Im sure, I replaced the bulb in my MBK with a fresh one. Within 15 minutes he was beneath - the temperature was the same as the room. (76 degrees) I'm attempting to survey the peer reviewed literature we have and it's quiet obvious we have a lot to learn. A ge...

But this study didn't tell us whether the D3 production was ore than needed by the liver alone. For all we know, corn snakes have access to both systems, but preferentially use one or the other. It doesn't tell us that they receive any benefit from the extra D3 production. This is true. The snakes,...

John Vanek wrote:By this logic, shouldn't be worried that millions of mice and hamsters don't have access to vitamin C drops?

This was one of the arguments I used against UV for D3 production. I wasn't arguing differently here, just pointing out that more research was a good thing.

This is a good starting point for your own research. This company doesn't appear to be making absolute claims, and even advises against such lighting for high morphs. Even lacking hard data this company is at least avoiding sensational claims, but leaving the details of the research up to the owner...

Yep, these are always the first frogs of the year to use my kiddy pools around the yard as a breeding pool. I like when the Gray tree frogs show up. That's why I get a lot of snakes in my yard, and even a few that came in my front door.

We, or at least I, understand why you take your position and I respect you for it. I'm more a hard science guy that digs deep for factual, and don't put much stock in evidence that falls short. As a breeder you have to work with what you have and your showing more than enough conscientious integrity.

I understand how that can be done artificially - but when are visible light and ultraviolet separated in daylight? By lots of different factors, from time of day, latitude, ozone, etc. A phenomena called partial reflection can entail that with just a few degrees difference in the suns position the ...

Oversight bodies, not funding cuts, are the best way to improve government agency efficiency, but of course the same people who have been duped into marching for "smaller government! lower taxes!" have been persuaded to think of oversight bodies as something to eliminate, as well. Ever heard the te...

I think the probability of me getting a citation is pretty slim myself. When I went to different agencies asking questions about legal interpretations of what had occurred, I made no bones about my own involvement or the species involved. They were generally quiet nice in expressing their opinion th...

I don't know the full cost/benefit ratio any more than you do. Virtually nothing of benefit is without cost. Even Sickle Cell Anemia has benefits wrt conferring resistance to malaria. That's why I said "both benefits and cost" and "outweighed by the benefits". Hence I'm speaking on balance rather th...

As a general rule of evolution, functions like D3 synthesis tend to come with both benefits and cost, and those benefits tend to only be meaningful in the context of the environmental conditions the organism is likely to find themselves in. Natural boom bust cycles are a major environmental factor t...

"Standard Husbandry" practices as people here have defined in terms of the lack of intent to use UV lighting.

This is an interesting topic wrt ecology, which is more in my interest than keeping or breeding snakes. Though I do enjoy some direct interaction at times. The kind of information, insights, and observations keepers and breeders have to offer is of value to me, and I hope strong opinions on variatio...

Aside - who among us has not seen a cottonmouth or ribbon snake pulling a nasty, stuck-on DOR frog off the asphalt? This reminds me of something I seen as a kid. When I was 6 or 7 I was told that it was a myth that a cottonmouth would bite underwater. When I seen a cottonmouth attempting to scaveng...

http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/landuse/vol102/2davison.html When the Fish and Wildlife Service adopted this definition of "harass" on September 26, l975, it did not explain the definition's basis.[129] The House Report on the Endangered Species Act of 1973 may give some insight into the basis for t...

I disagree with you. While the legal definition of hands off photography on a nonendangered species may seem like "take", I doubt it will ever be held up in court unless there are some other circumstances. The problem I see with this is that the opinion that it doesn't constitute a take is predicat...

I am not aware of any case law where a private individual, not involved in private enterprise, was convicted of an incidental take without a death of the specimen occurring. If you know of any I would like to hear it. The present definition of "harass" can involve actions or omissions with a mere po...

This came up in the context of the thread " For Discussion--the Future of Herp Organizations ". In particular starting here: http://www.fieldherpforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=182814#p182814 Many tend to feel that photography and observational, hands off, herping is a legally sanctioned right, and ...

I am interested in the discussion currently taking place (definition of "take") but think it deserves a thread of its own, for two reasons: 1. People similarly interested in that topic won't know to find discussion about it buried within a "herp organization" thread. 2. It's driving this particular...

You can't assume this applies only to species that fall under the ESA either. Since any law using the term "take" is legally defined in context of the ESA definition. It is simply not correct to say "the ESA definition of take is, or can be, generalized to non-ESA-jurisdiction species". The vast ma...

For more read: http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/landuse/vol102/2davison.html Photography would fall under what is called an "incidental take", in which a take occurs "if such taking is incidental to, and not the purpose of, the carrying out of an otherwise lawful activity." Case law is very limited o...

How big does it need to be? There is this from January 2011: http://www.fieldherpforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=4126 If you want the full logo from the top of the main page like: http://www.nafha.org/images/nafha_logo.png You can blow it up significantly, but you need the background image for ...

You can't assume this applies only to species that fall under the ESA either. Since any law using the term "take" is legally defined in context of the ESA definition. "Take" under wildlife management extends well beyond take in the usual sense, and getting close for a photograph is a "take" under t...

You can't assume this applies only to species that fall under the ESA either. Since any law using the term "take" is legally defined in context of the ESA definition. "Take" under wildlife management extends well beyond take in the usual sense, and getting close for a photograph is a "take" under th...

I Regarding your remark about keeping what we want (=compromise), I think that we in the field herping community who collect only pictures and keep only memories…are the most fortunate to have the least to lose. We can go and do our thing regardless of laws, because no law can prevent a person from...

Many years ago, in my youth, I placed a small black rat in a shoe box with some cotton cloth along with a very small speckled king to travel about 50 yards to another building. When I opened the box at the door all that was left of the rat was a tail sticking out of the kings mouth. This kind of thi...

Night vision goggles
All weather radio
Snorkeling gear
Parabolic mic
Wildlife cam
Emergency medical kit

With respect to stating personal beliefs my perspective is not so easily classified, even for myself. I'm pro herp keeping and pro breeding, though I don't tend to do either myself. At the same time species restrictions (injurious species notwithstanding), take limits, breeding records, etc., are al...

3. Collection allowed. A. Activities permitted in #2 (above) are adopted. B. Collection is permitted according to a license issued by the agency having jurisdiction over the place and over the animals. C. Animals collected may not be sold or used in trade for any other animal or thing of value. D. ...

I should heed Chris' message myself. Herpetoculture is not a major interest personally, and the herp community issues are fairly new to me. My main interest is ecology in general, and spans all indigenous life, which requires a lot of information from both professional and non-professional sources i...

There should be an option for no notable envenomations. I selected "No envenomations", but this is obviously my intent. Been stung by an assortment of bees, and my whole arm swelled slightly once after a honey bee sting. Not sure why because it never happened before or since. Nothing that ever slow...