Day 7: An Afternoon with Ken Hubbard of Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services

     The east coast is a beautiful place.  The ocean is quite different than the gulf side.  The never ending waves roll in pounding the sandy coastline.  Ghost crabs and the remnants of deep water molluscs are found scattered on the beach.  At night ghost crabs are found scurrying in the foam of the waves that roll across the beach.

 

     The wind howls with just enough droplets of rain the soak your clothes.  We wore rain ponchos to stay dry while we shined the beach with flashlights looking for shells and crabs.  After a night of rain the weather cleared up and we made our way to the site of Ken Hubbard's research.  This would be our last adventure before heading home.

      Ken works with invasive species and conducts research to find solutions to problems these species pose to agriculture and live stock.  He has been in this line of work for 30+ years.  He gave us a seminar covering the issues associated with non-native species and provided a host of research papers identifying invasive species and their potential impact to the agriculture industry and the natural environment.

  

He also breeds sterile insects and develops methods to breed other select species in the laboratory.  He had some interesting specimens stocked in his bug trailer.

 

After meeting with Ken we went back the the beach for one last swim in the Atlantic ocean.

(Day 6) Arnold's Wildlife Rhabilitation Center

(Day 7) Florida Oceanographic Society & Ghost Crab Catching

4/30/13

It was the second day at the Archbold Research Facility. We started off the day going to Lake Annie, hoping to see an alligator. Unfortunately we didn't find one, but we did find a lot of orb weaver spiders and a lot of spiders in the brush around the lake. Just as Pete got into the water and Emily was thinking about going in, we all got in the van to see the tortoise site. We got to see a lot of burrows and a tortoise. The researchers are continuing a study that was set up in 1967 to see how long the tortoises live. They showed us a scope that is designed to go into the burrows to find the tortoise and see how long the burrow is. After lunch we met with Mark the entomologist at Archbold who told us a lot about the bugs in Florida, and how intricate their ecology is. After dinner we got geared up to go hunt for wolf spiders. We collected a lot and gave Sky some for her neurological research.

An orb-weaver spider we found at Lake Annie.

Tortoise number 800 at the tortoise research site.

A brown widow spider that was found at Lake Annie.

Everyone is ready to go hunt wolf spiders.

 

Rachel conquers her fear of spiders.

Jessica is intrigued by the large wolf spider.

Emily shows off what she found hiding in the bushes.

Maria, unsure about the spiders at first, decides to give it a try. 

Brandon finds his true love.

 

Ayla and Pete have no problem handling the spiders.

 

Dana finds a tick to add to our list of invertebrates.

This morning we went to The Ding Darling Nature Reserve and took the dike nature trail in search of whatever animals we could find. In particular we were looking for fiddler crabs and alligators. Unfortunately we weren’t able to spot any alligators but found a good number of fiddler crabs crawling around on the beaches. In addition we found some ant lion holes and were able to dig up one ant lion.

                The most exciting find of the nature trail was the number of horseshoe crabs we spotted. We found approximately 50 horseshoe crabs gathered in a shallow area near the rocky shore. The smaller males were in search of the larger females in order to breed. It was amazing to see all of them together in one spot.  

                Later that day we arrived at Archbold Biological Station and spent some time walking around the property and studying its history before the thunderstorm sent us inside. In the evening, once the storm had passed and the sun had gone down, a few of us went in search of spiders. We found a lot of wolf spiders, including one large female with a bunch of babies on her back, which was a pretty exciting discovery.

Overall, it was a great day full of lots of neat discoveries and there was a ton to see and learn.   

 

Today we went to the Apollo Beach in search of cephalochordates.  We were hoping to find lancelets, but unfortunately we did not find any.  However, we did find a brittle star (opthurhioidea), jack knife clams, polychaeta sedentary and errantia, some gastropods, mussels, and some barnacles.  The water was a bit cloudy, so it was a bit hard to find some stuff.  The technique we used to find things that worked the best was sieving with a screen to filter out the muck and sand.  Peter used his snorkel to dig extra deep, which allowed us to find a lot of the worm-like things.  The most interesting things we found, one of which we could not identify was a worm about an inch and a half long with a black tip and orange body.  The organism's body was severed, yet it still seemed to be alive and moving.  We also found a dancing lady, and a slime ball which we thought was an egg sac of some sort.  Many of the organisms exhibited interesting structures for locomotion and feeding.  Overall, today was interesting and we found lots of things that some of us have never seen before.

Exploring the mangrove forests

Launching the kayaks

On our second day in sunny Florida, we had the pleasure of spending the morning in kayaks, exploring the J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge.  With our enthusiastic and knowledgeable tour guide, we paddled along the Commodore Creek water trail and got to see and learn many interesting things about this important mangrove ecosystem. The estuary and the mangrove forests are a nursery and are home to many birds, crustaceans, gastropods, fish, and mammals. While the egrets and pelicans were beautiful as they preened their feathers in treetops, it was hard to take my eyes off the bottom of the water trail. As we leisurely paddled along, we saw crown conchs, lightning whelks, sea stars, horseshoe crabs and various fish species. 

A crown conch in its natural setting

After a quick lunch break, everyone was eager to get back outside in the sunshine and collect more shells on Bowman’s Beach. We spent the evening identifying our shells and I’m excited about the diversity we’ve been finding. I’m really looking forward to shifting our focus to the cephalochordates we hope to find at Apollo’s beach tomorrow! 

Maria, Emily, and Pete anticipating today's adventure