Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I am embarrassed today, for I have a nice batch of photos by reader Tom Gula, but I have lost his email and thus can’t contact him for notes. Fortunately, he labeled the photos, so I can at least give some information. Perhaps Tom will see this and write me with further descriptions. As I recall, these are scans from slides.
Any readers who know the several unidentified species are welcome to comment below.
As I recall, Mike called attention to the bizarre distribution of this species; as Wikipedia notes, “Due to the limited extent of suitable habitats, Hyla andersonii is currently distributed in three disjunct areas in the southeastern United States: the New Jersey Pine Barrens; the Sandhills of North and South Carolina; and the Florida panhandle and southern Alabama. Although one specimen of H. andersonii is known from Georgia, a population is not known to currently exist there.” Here’s the range map:
We have a passel of photos, scanned from slides, from reader Tom Gula; his notes are indented:
I’ve attached some more wildlife shots of scanned slides. Most are again from Brazil, but I included some U.S. animals this time, mostly from my home state of New Jersey. Once again perhaps some of your knowledgeable readers will provide more information about species identification.
One of the photos posted on June 16 was a spiny caterpillar I found in a remnant of Atlantic coastal rain forest in Pernambuco, Brazil back in 1978. A reader identified it as the larva of an Io moth, genus Automeris. This is an adult Io moth seen in the same location. The spines of the caterpillars are known to cause painful stings, as documented in this video (not mine) taken in Costa Rica.
An unidentified species of praying mantis, a dead leaf mimic probably in the genusAcanthops. The photo was also taken in Pernambuco, Brazil (the Tapacurá Ecological Station), in 1977.
Another insect captured in the Pernambuco forest in 1978, the head of a Neotropical stick grasshopper (also known as a jumping stick) in the family Proscopiidae.
A caterpillar with a false eyespot I found at the Tapacurá Ecological Station in 1978, not sure of the species. The larva of a swallowtail butterfly?
An unidentified clear-winged moth, also from Pernambuco, photographed in 1979.
While walking down a dirt road near the Iguazu Falls (on the Argentina side) in 1980 I came upon the decaying corpse of an unlucky dead rabbit. There are at least a half dozen species of butterflies feeding on the nutrients, particularly salts, sugars, and proteins, in the decomposing body. At least three of the butterflies are the “88 butterfly” in the genus Diaethria, with a black and white striped wing pattern that resembles the number 88.
The last four photos were taken in the U.S. Here’s an unidentified species of cryptic caterpillar I noticed on the bark of a tree in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 1977.
While walking through New Jersey’s Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in 1977 I noticed some movement on a thistle plant, and saw this large Chinese Mantis (Tenoderasinensis) feeding on a captured bumblebee.
Also from the New Jersey Great Swamp in 1977, another predator, an unidentified crab spider, waiting for some unsuspecting flying insect to land on these Queen Anne’s lace flowers.
And finally, I photographed this near threatened Pine Barrens tree frog (Hyla andersonii) in 1987 in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Although locally common in some parts of the N.J. pinelands, its populations are threatened by continuing habitat loss. The species has an interesting disjunct distribution (see the map below, from Wikipedia), found only in southern New Jersey, parts of North and South Carolina, and parts of Alabama and the Florida panhandle.
Remember to send in your photos, or I’ll run out within a week! Reader Tim Garrett sent some of his local wildlife, but we should never neglect those plants and animals that live close to humans! Tim’s notes and IDs are indented:
My wildlife photos are mostly of the backyard variety but we have a good mix of native eastern Missouri types. We live just up the bluff from a good size tributary of the Mississippi River named the Meramac River. It actually defines the southern border of St. Louis county. Here are some of my favorite ones:
There was an eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus) who lived under some concrete steps. We called him “Chip,” of course.
He would stuff his face with seeds:
We hadn’t seen him since last summer. I think a red tail hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) got him. I don’t have a good picture of culprit yet. The hawk has killed and eaten one of my female cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis). Here’s one of the three male Northern Cardinals that hang out in my yard watching the feeder:
The closest thing to a dinosaur walking through my yard is this female wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo).
We have some eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis) that are occasionally here. They are the state bird of Missouri and are on our car’s license plate:
We have all manner of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) passing through. Here, a female with her two fawns who both decided to get a drink at the same time. The fawns are likely male and female and just losing their camouflage spots:
I think this is a gray tree frog (Hyla versicolor). He and his buddies get very loud in the spring:
We have hummingbirds in the summer. I’m still learning how to photograph them. I think this is a immature male ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris). It might be a female?
We have five-lined skinks (Plestiodon fasciatus) all around our property. The immature ones have bright blue tail. This guy was hiding in a basement window well:
Finally, an immature Carolina mantis (Stagmomantis carolina) on my front porch. I love how it’s looking over its shoulder at me. Wikipedia says the praying mantis is the only insect with this extra degree of freedom:
From a tw**t by J. Rowley (h/t: Matthew Cobb), we have a very cryptic frog; the caption is “From #Moss to #Frog in a single move. It’s no wonder this species is called the Vietnam Moss Frog (Theloderma corticale)!” Actually, it’s called the “mossy frog”, is semiaquatic, and lives in the primary evergreen forests of Southeast Asia.
To enhance the crypsis, they curl up in a ball, like the one on the left, to hide their froggyness:
A photo from Wikipedia (go to this page to see a lot more):
Jeffrey Lewis sent us some photos from Bonaire, and there will be more. The subjects are diverse! His notes are indented.
Perhaps hese aren’t up to the normal quality of your Reader’s Wildlife photos, but perhaps the subject matter will make them worthwhile since underwater photos seem to be rare in the series. These were all taken on a family vacation to Bonaire, an island in the Caribbean just off the coast of Venezuela. It’s a special municipality of the Netherlands – almost but not quite a normal municipality. It’s a rather small island, only 114 square miles, with a population of around 17,500. Its main claim to fame is in being one of the premier locations for shore diving, with many reefs close enough to shore that they’re easy enough to swim to without having to use a boat. In addition to all the open water scuba diving & snorkeling that we did, we also explored the island itself, including a tour in some of the island’s caves, and a kayaking trip through mangroves.
Unidentified species of Chiton in tide pool. Class: Polyplacophora. I found this little guy out in the tide pools behind the house we were renting. He was out of the water when I saw him. [JAC: These are very cute molluscs.]
Possibly a young Sally Lightfoot Crab (Grapsus grapsus) in a tide pool. It looks similar to photos I found online identified as young Sally Lightfoot Crabs, but the coloration’s not quite the same. I don’t know how much variation there is within the species.
Bonaire Whiptail Lizard (Cnemidophorus murinus). It’s called the Bonaire Whiptail Lizard, but it’s found on a few islands in the Netherlands Antilles, including Curaçao.
Donkey (Equus africanus asinus). Donkeys were brought to the island by the Spanish, and have been roaming wild for a few hundred years.
Dracula’s Cathedral. There’s actually no wildlife in this photo. It was just a very interesting room in the cave.
Cave scorpion: Unidentified species of tailless whip scorpion. Order: Amblypygi. We found this guy in one of the caves of Bonaire. We also saw a bat and a shrimp in one of the freshwater pools, but my pictures of those didn’t turn out.
There was a magnificent sight that occurred at night, but which I was unable to capture because my camera wasn’t good enough. There’s a type of crustacean known as an ostracod. Many species produce bioluminescent chemicals that they use for predation defense, but some species in the Caribbean use the chemicals for an amazing mating display. Here’s an interesting article on ostracods, explaining what they are and the mating display in more detail:
That article also contains a video of bioluminescent animals that contains a clip of an ostracod display. Unfortunately they’re not the species from Bonaire, but from a different spot in the Caribbean where they behave slightly differently and their display looks slightly different; but this still gives a pretty good sense of what it looked like. The ostracod part starts about 30 seconds in. Here’s a direct link to the video, which should jump directly to the segment with the ostracods:
This is the kind of post I originally intended to go on this site. When I started this website, I thought that every few weeks I’d publish a bit of new (or old) evidence for evolution, supporting Why Evolution Is True, which was a new book in 2009. Well, as you see, things kind of got out of hand. . .
But here is some information and links imparted by reader Charleen about the famous Texas blind salamander, Eurycea rathbuni. As you might suspect from its name, it lives in dark underground abysses, caves, and artisian wells, and has retained into adulthood its juvenile gills. It’s also lost pigmentation, as is the case for many cave-dwellers. Finally, it’s endangered, its distribution limited to the Balcones Escarpment near San Marcos, Hays County, Texas You can find this animal only in the green area below; it’s been listed as endangered since 1967. As the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) notes:
The Texas blind salamander has been listed as endangered since 1967. It remains vulnerable, says San Marcos ARC director, Dr. Ken Ostrand. “They are impossible for scientists to sample underground, so we collect them in nets when they pop out in wells and springs, young ones, too small to fight currents,” said Ostrand. The young go into captivity at San Marcos ARC where they are held in refugia as a guard against potential harm that could come in the wild. Ostrand says their habitats, which he describes as a ‘limestone honey-combed sponge,’ are quick to recharge with surface precipitation, which could be accidentally laden with unwanted chemicals or spills. Preserving Texas blind salamanders in captivity is a security measure.
Here’s what they looks like:
Behold it in its habitat; the first salamander shows up at 3:44. What weird creatures they are!
What’s relevant for our purposes is the salamander’s vestigial eyes, which appear to be small black dots of pigment below the skin, accompanied by a vestigial optic nerve that doesn’t appear to carry any impulses to the brain. As the USFWS notes:
Recent research on the salamander has yielded other useful information. San Marcos ARC scientists collaborated with Texas State University faculty on a study of eye development in the Texas blind salamander and two other salamander species that live in the Guadalupe watershed: the San Marcos salamander and Barton Springs salamander, both of which are sighted animals that live near sunlight. Both are held in refugium at the ARC as well.
The research revealed that the blind salamanders retained a vestigial optic nerve with no eyes while the other species had well-developed eyes with structures for focus and variable light adaptation. The findings will be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and have already yielded a master’s thesis.
It’s hard to imagine anything but evolution that would explain the presence of these vestigial eyes and nerves. Here are three photos I found of the pigment-spot “eyes,” which, like many vestigial traits, vary in their degree of development (e.g., human wisdom teeth and ear muscles).
The last one has no visible eyespots at all. Now I could write some more about eye loss and how it gives evidence for evolution, but I’ll ask you, the readers, to answer two questions:
If you were a creationist trying to show that the vestigial eyes were not evidence for evolution, what would you say? I can think of at least three responses.
Assuming, as is certainly the case, that the eyes have become vestigial via evolutionary processes, how do you think it happened? We don’t know for sure, of course, but I can think of at least three ways.
Put your answers below; there is no prize save the joy of thinking.
Today’s a day to display singleton photos and others that are sent in a few at a time. The indented bits are the readers’ commentaries:
Reader Cliff Moser sends a picture of a fearsome caterpillar. But it’s really quite a common one:
I’ve attached a single photo of one of 4 large tomato hornworms [Manduca quinquemaculata] found and dispatched from my Berkeley, California garden. I’m hoping to find one with parasitic braconid wasp cocoons and will send if and when I spot one.the photo has a little forced perspective, making it appear more mothra-like than it actually was.
These giants eventually undergo metamorphosis, turning into the beautiful five-spotted hawkmoth (picture from What’s That Bug?):
Reader Tim Anderson in Oz sends us a bird famous for its camouflage:
This is a mature tawny frogmouth (Podargus strigoides) resting in a backyard tree in suburban Brisbane, Queensland. This individual regularly spends the entire day more or less stationary until dusk, when it flies off to begin its night’s hunting. It is completely oblivious to the humans beetling about nearby, only occasionally swivelling its head to peer at us. It is about 40cm from beak to tail tip. Frogmouths are fairly common, even in urban areas, and are closely related to nightjars, but in this case was rather easy to spot.
From Stephen Barnard in Idaho:
Western Toad (Anaxyrus boreas). I think this is the only amphibian photo I’ve sent you.
Doris Fromage sent an email headed “Vulture sinuses this time!”
My dear husband just got a new camera! We live on a hill, and our avocado orchard spreads out down the hillside below us. Various large carnivorous birds/raptors tend to soar around our property, often virtually at eye level or even below. Here is a turkey vulture! Cathartes aura is its interesting name, which means “cleansing breeze” in Latin, which I find hilarious given that they are carrion scavengers. What I like best about this picture is that we can see straight through the nares to blue sky on the other side, thus clearing up any lingering questions about the structure of a turkey buzzard’s nostrils!
JAC: I’ve added a close-up of the head lest you have any doubts:
And a “spot the ___” from reader Michelle Pearce:
Too easy? Fork-tailed drongo, banana beak (hornbill), and mongoose in Kruger National Park.
And reader Randy Schenck in Iowa is nice to his animals. These photos were sent in May:
We are into the nesting time for birds so they need more feeding now. Many might think they only need to feed in winter but not so. To determine if you have Baltimore Orioles (Icterus galbula) around the area just cut an orange in half and hang it on a feeder. It is like magic to the Oriole. I will look for nests later as the female Oriole builds a very interesting nest.
We have many rose-breasted grosbeaks (Pheucticus ludovicianus) around and again, if you feed the birds you will soon find out how many are in your area.
