An incredible adventure!

Since the internet was down at the our research site, I was unable to post information about our daily adventures. So, I will try to summarize my experience and learning on the amphibians and reptiles project, the otter project, and my overall reflections on the trip.

Amphibians and Reptiles:

We called this project the "herps" project, which is short for "herpetofauna." (Of course, "herps" is not to be confused with another similar 2 syllabus word!) Ellen Wang, pictured on the left looking for frogs, was our Principal Investigator. This means she is the head scientist in charge of the research. Dr. Mata Kiefer also joined us. Mostly, we were looking for new species of

frogs, lizards, and snakes that had not been identified before. We did this by walking very quietly through the forest trying to catch them, and by checking traps that the scientists had set up previously that looked like this:

One of my fellow teachers caught this snake that was unfamiliar to the researchers. Using a identification key, we helped identify the genus of this snake, which is Tantilla.

Here are some of the frogs my fellow teachers caught that were strange to the scientists.

Ms. Wang preserved them after we caught them, and our team of teachers helped her tag them. If they are new discoveries, scientists must have these specimens as proof. They recently emailed pictures of these frogs to fellow scientists to confirm

their hypotheses. One of them was really interesting, because when predators approach it, it shows its backside like the picture on the right. Can you figure out why?

The most exciting adventure during the herps project was the night trek. We headed into the pitch dark forest to look for frogs. Ms. Percival from Boston Day and Evening Academy and I felt quite ridiculous wearing our headlamps and mosquito headnets, but were quite glad we had them on in the end!

That particular evening, the researchers were trying to match the many frog calls and the frog species. Ms. Wang found one, whose scientific name is Leptodactylus podicipimus, while it was making its sound. Even though I was knee deep in piranha-infested waters in the pitch dark with mosquitoes swarming everywhere and even though I thought I had a snake on my leg for a moment, it was exciting to be there for the discovery! I was able to catch some great video footage of it, which is below. I was so excited when she told me that she might use it for her research! Hope you have enjoyed reading this information about herps. Coming soon is some information on the otter project!