Madagascar – The Other Creatures

So it’s been a few days since my last update; I won’t be able to do them on an every-other-day basis for the rest of the year unfortunately, as university life, coupled with my report writeup, is going to be absorbing all of my time. I will try to at least do a blog post every week though (ha! that’s worked so well in the past)

The reptiles were of course not the only things we came across while we were working in the forest.

This shrew was trapped in our pitfall traps

So there were of course other things in the forest besides the herps. Those are what this blog is all about. I didn’t get many shots of them (difficult to spend time doing photography and research. lame, I know), but I’ll share with you now those that I did manage to get.

Birds:
So, as you know by now if you’ve read the previous blogs, before we were able to go into the field, we were delayed in the acquisition of our permits. And we coped with that delay by going to a crocodile farm, and a rainforest. The crocodile farm was the only place I managed to get a single decent bird picture on the whole trip. Sad.

A night heron in the Crocodile farm in Tana

These birds stalk the water's edge, hunting for small fish that stray too near

This individual posed beautifully for us in the fading light

Lemurs
I was however quite fortunate, in that I managed to get quite a few fairly decent lemur shots.
These first three were shot in Ranomafana National Park. This park has some awesome stuff, and we were fortunate enough to come across several lemurs during our two hour time there.

The Indri is the largest of the living lemurs, and several are found within well protected forests

Which framing do you prefer?

Humans are causing these gentle giants to decline in number.

So these are fun. But they’re rainforest stuff, which is totally not what we were working with. The following shots are of Sifakas (pronounced Shee-fak) – the kind of things you would see in a documentary by David Attenborough on the spiny forest.

A sifaka peers down at us from an octopus tree

There is no risk of human predation when you are nicely surrounded by spines

The female of the group, carrying her baby on chest, stands guard

She watches us intently

Another angle

She climbs down the tree to get to a better spot to leap from

Her position as matriarch leaves her responsible for distraction while the rest of the group make a swift getaway

This is the first sifaka we came across

The only jumping shot I was able to get. At least it's in frame, eh?

So that’s fun. The good jumping shot continues to elude me. I shall just have to work on that next time, eh?

Bugs:
Lots of bugs. Few shots of them, sorry.

These praying mantises were everywhere!

A different dragonfly, shot with the same technique I used two years ago.

I got so close to this dragonfly that its wing touched my lens. If you approach them right, they rarely fly off.

It allows you to work lots of fun angles

Damselflies are much more difficult to shoot in the same way - they are more flighty, and much harder to focus on

The fact that they are so much lighter than dragonflies means that the slightest breeze takes them out of your depth of field

And that’s all for this post, and unfortunately, all for the animals! I hope it was good enough – I really wasn’t concentrating on my photography at all this trip, and that is reflected in the poor output.

The next post, which will follow sometime (crazy week ahead of me, so probably not till after the 15th of October), will be on the little details, and possibly also bread.

Until then, keep clicking.

Madagascar – The Reptiles

So my research was focusing primarily on reptiles. I have a lot of experience working with reptiles of all kinds in Madagascar. I have worked in the dry spiny forest once before in 2005, but never for such a long period, and never quite so exhaustively (back then I was only in the spiny forest for five days – not quite seven weeks). My main research interests lie in the evolutionary history of a group of geckos, which are found mostly in rainforest, so working in dry spiny forest was a bit of a broadening of interests.
I am not going to go on about the reptiles – I’m just going to show you some of the better pictures, as that’s what you’re here for, after all. Hopefully the captions will pretty much explain everything.

First: a snake from my favourite genus

Lycodryas pseudogranuliceps climbing down a tree

All the while, flicking its tongue in and out

L. pseudogranuliceps against the leaf of a medicinal plant

Slithering down a branch

Playing with the depth of field - deep.

Playing with the depth of field - shallow

S. granuliceps on a branch - the first photo of this individual I took.

He adopts a typical tree snake pose

The light was very difficult to work on this occasion

And then he wouldn't stay still

When the light was right, you could almost see through this snake

Moving over leaves

A really active individual - hard to handle, but worth it

He kept approaching me, as the tallest nearby tree-like thing.

The Mouse Meal

A Madagascarophis meridionalis (?) devouring a mouse

Eating back feet first is a common method of consumption

The mouse is long dead by the stage, having been constricted to death during the original attack

The mouse is significantly larger than the head of the snake

Slowly, the snake progresses down the body of the mouse

Nearly finished the meal

Some fun with the same snake the next day

The tongue flick

A head macro of the M. meridionalis (?) flicking its tongue out

These snakes rely primarily on smell/taste to sense predators and prey

And one last snake shot:

A new species of snake for our survey - but we failed to catch this one!

And then there were tortoises:

Charlie, the tortoise

A bit of a different view of Charlie

One of the largest tortoises we found

And skinks:

A Trachylepis elegans on a tree - unusual for these typically terrestrial lizards

Lizards are easy to get close to if you know how

Trachylepis aureopunctata, in the log where it was found

And geckos – I tried to do more context shots than I have done before. I think it went well:

Hemidactylus mercatorius on a tree in the forest

Geckolepis typica, in its day-time roost

A Phelsuma mutabilis at rest on a tree

A male P. mutabilis on its family tree

And, of course, chameleons:

The biggest chameleon we found. An enormous male

A young male spiny chameleon

A chameleon stares at me through the lens

These usually bland coloured chameleons can be quite colourful sometimes

Madagascar – The Science

It’s about time I got round to posting some science stuff on here, so that I can finally get to the fun stuff – the animals! But before I can get to that, I have to go through the part that made the trip happen, and that was the science.
I’m not going to bore you with the particulars of the science and how it worked – that I will save for the project website. I just want to let you know a little bit about what we did.

Herman, a student at the Centre Ecologique Libanona, records a skink

Myself and Matthew were working with three students from the Centre Ecologique Libanona, a university in Fort Dauphin, who were gathering data for their dissertations. Herman (above) was my counterpart. We were investigating the affect of disturbance on reptilian diversity and abundance within the spiny forest. Matthew (below) was working with Rivo (also below), investigating the status of the radiated tortoise, Astrochelys radiata within the same area of forest. The third student, Morulla, was working independently from us on a plant study of the area, but his data will also be put towards the analysis of my own studies, as his transects were concentrated around my traps.

Matthew with Charlie, our most commonly found tortoise

Rivo, the CEL student working with Matthew, takes a break from digging

Herp Work
One of the main ways I was gathering my data was through the use of pitfall traps – a line of buckets sunk into the ground with a fence inbetween them that stops things from going through, channeling them into the buckets. These are one of the most commonly used forms of passive capture, but putting them in is hard work. Especially when the ground is made mostly of rock.

Natalie gathers sticks for the pitfall traps

The three ladies of the expedition sharpening sticks for the pitfall trap lines

Once in, the traps ran for a week each, and we based our walking patterns around them. The main mode of capture and observation however was opportunistic searching – or walking, to those unfamiliar with the scientific nomenclature. This is by far the easiest way to gather an inventory of species it turns out. Every specimen we found and caught was recorded, including measurements, scale counts, and other fun things. And then they were marked with a nontoxic paint, and released. Fun times!

Snakes are restrained using clear plastic tubes, to prevent them biting whilst being recorded.

The ventral surface of this gecko is photographed for ID purposes

Tiny scale counts are amongst the most important identifiers for different species of lizards and snakes

Some of the lizards recorded are extremely small

The dorsal surface of a plated lizard is photographed for ID purposes

A fish scale gecko record photo - these geckos are able to shed all of their body scales and also their tails as a defense mechanism

A semi-fossorial (litter-dwelling) skink

A day gecko

Naturally you also have to sex the individuals, which in some cases is easier than in others.

A really easy way to sex a lizard. Yes, those are eggs.

One of the more awesome outcomes of my work was the discovery of what could potentially be a new species of blind snake, of the genus Typhlops (currently under investigation – it is either new, or the only living specimen ever documented of an old species resurrected in 2009). Here are the photos of that snake (and before you ask, yes, it is a snake. Yes, it does look like a worm. No, it doesn’t act like one):

Though it may look like a worm, this miniature behaves just like any other snake

The full body shot of this potentially new species of snake

A lateral view of the potentially new Typhlops sp. snake

A ventral view of the head of the potentially new Typhlops sp. snake

A lateral view of the head of the potentially new Typhlops sp. snake

So that is obviously super exciting.

Tortoises
Matthew’s research involved the finding and recording of radiated tortoises (Astrochelys radiata) in the forest. Every individual had 39 measurements taken, was photographed repeatedly, weighed, marked, and released. Then using fun statistics, we tried to match the tortoises to population subgroups according to previous studies. These tortoises are listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN red list, as they are under threat from illegal poaching for the pet, meat, and jewellery trade.

Documentary shots of the tortoise are taken to record its specific patterns

The plastron of the male tortoise is deeply domed, so that his shell fits neatly on top of the female's

Matthew, my tortoise man, makes gouges in the lateral scutes of a tortoise so it can be recognised if it is recaptured

A particularly small tortoise is weighed in my hat, in the absence of the usual pillow cases

Matthew and the tortoise in my hat

Fortunately, in this area of Madagascar, it is taboo to eat the tortoises. But there are no taboos against touching them; they are treated like pests by local farmers, and thrown out of fields, often inflicting crippling injuries on the individuals.

Charlie has a damaged carapace, most likely from being hurled out of someone's field - with no natural predators as adults, tortoises are killed mostly by old age and humans

Lemurs
None of my team was working with lemurs; we lacked the experience, knowledge, and time required to tack this onto our own studies. However, Matthew and I nipped across to another research station, some 18 kilometres to the east, and there met Wiebke Berg, a german woman studying mouse lemurs in the area around Mahavelo.

Lemurs are handled with extreme care by professionals

A label denotes the specific ID of the mouse lemur

A mouse lemur lies on a chest, awaiting fur clippings being taken, measurements and photos

They trap mouse lemurs on a variety of trees. The first time each individual is captured, they tranquilise it, take measurements, take fur clippings for genetic samples, photograph, and mark it using a system of ear paints. Every subsequent recapture, the lemurs are simply recorded, and released, without any ketamine.

Each mouse lemur receives unique ear markings for re-identification

A mouse lemur shows its true colours before being knocked out

Ketamine is used to temporarily immobilise the otherwise fiesty mouse lemurs

Yes, Matthew and I did get to hold them. And yes, they are the cutest things I have ever held in my life.
I actually held one that was not stoned some weeks later, when a man brought it into camp, but I was wearing gloves and I released it soon after.

That’s really all I have to say for this post. I apologise for its brevity, and the lack of cool pictures, but I was working hard, and not really concentrating on photography unfortunately.
Next time, eh?

Tune in again on Thursday, for more fun animal pictures!