May 20th

This is the last morning to check the traps at Dry Bay and we found another deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) in one of the Sherman traps. Like the mouse we found yesterday I didn’t hold him until we were done processing him because I’m not 100% confident in my hold yet, but I did hold him after we were done. It’s really odd that the mice we have caught so far this week have not had any ticks. There are a few explanations but none that can be completely supported right now. First let me explain that resent research has shown that the deer ticks (Iscap) of the south (from Tennessee and south) are of a slightly different genetic strain than those else where in the country. They still considered the same species but there is little work on Iscap in the south. The time of year the nymphs, larvae and adults are not known or if they prefer to feed on the same Iscap in the north. It is possible that the adults aren’t searching for food yet and one or both of the other life stages are (but we have found all three life stages). Another possibility is that the southern Iscap does not like to take a blood meal from mammals or that the adult Iscap are not out when the mice are foraging. Another possibility is that the larvae stage is on the mice and we are not seeing them because they are basically see- through and the size of a poppy seed. In the pitfalls we found more spiders that were the size of my palm than lizards. Along with the spiders we found a ground skink (Scincella lateralis), several southern leopard frogs (Rana sphenocephala) and southern toads (Anaxyrus terrestris) in the pitfalls.
We finished at Dry Bay fairly fast (since we didn’t find much all we had to do was close the traps) and off to Four Mile we went. All the Sherman traps were empty but the three pitfalls that we finished yesterday had a lot of frogs and toads in them. They are all the same as yesterday except we also found a Woodhouse’s toad (Bufo woodhousei). These look very similar to the southern toad but the major defining feature between the two species are the parietal ridges. The Woodhouse’s toad ridge is very prominent especially when compared to the southern toad’s ridges.

The picture is of a juvenile broadhead