September 6, 2018
SHEEP FROG
The rancho's little cement-lined pond continues to be both a blessing and a curse to critters who jump or tumble into its water and can't get out because of its vertical walls. I've added rocks as best I can enabling most frogs and larger snakes to escape but turtles still have to be taken out by hand. I visit several times a week just for that purpose. This week something new turned up working along the pond's edge looking for an exit. At first I thought it was a small turtle, but up closer it proved to be what's shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180906td.jpg
It was warty and displayed bulging, toxin-producing parotoid glands immediately behind the eyes like a toad, but its snout was pointier than I'd ever seen on a toad, and its eyes smaller. Most remarkable, though, were the two bladder-like swellings on the back, serving as water-wings. I'd never seen or heard of anything like that in the frog/toad world. Each time I approached, hoping to catch it and get close-ups, the animal would dive and surface someplace else. The only other shot managed, better showing the parotoids, is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180906te.jpg
I'd heard of the Narrowmouthed Frog/Toad Family, the Microhylidae, but I'd never seen a member. The family occurs all over the world, with its species varying tremendously in body shape, size, colors and behavior. The family is different from the families to which regular toads and frogs belong to, so members of the family aren't really toads or frogs in the unusual sense, but rather narrowmouthed toads or frogs.
It turns out that in the Yucatan we have one member of the Microhylidae, and that's what's shown in our photos. It's the Sheep Frog, sometimes also called the Sheep Toad, HYPOPACHUS VARIOLOSUS. The species is distributed from south Texas south through Mexico to Costa Rica, and the only reason I got to see this one is that it entered the cement-lined pond and couldn't get out.
For, in Amphibians and Reptiles of Northern Guatemala, the Yucatán and Belize, Jonathan Campbell calls it a secretive frog associated with temporary bodies of water, normally seen only at night, and usually when it's raining. He says that a depression that only a week before was completely dry and lined with deeply cracked earth, after the rainy season's first heavy rains, may produce large numbers of Sheep Frogs. During dry weather they dig into the mud of drying ponds to estivate -- the hot-weather equivalent of hibernate -- until the next rain.
Sheep Frogs take their name from their call, which you might guess is a drawn-out, somewhat nasal baaaaaaaaaaa.... I've heard the call during night rains but wasn't sure they'd be Sheep Frogs, until now.
In our area, if a frog has warts, small eyes and a pointy snout, it's a Sheep Frog. That narrow, interrupted pale line running down the back is distinctive. Also, field guides speak of a "transverse fold" or groove in the skin across the top of the head immediately behind the eyes -- though this trait may not be obvious when the frog is at rest. Our toad doesn't show that line.
Amazingly, I can't find anyone referring to the water-wing-like "bladders" beneath the skin on the toad's back. Maybe these features only show up when the frog has been floating in deep water for some time, not mating or calling. After our frog decided that my frequent approaches were too bothersome, he dove and didn't appear again during the 15 minutes I waited. Earlier, from the way he'd quickly bobbed to the surface after each dive, back-bladders first, I thought maybe the bladders wouldn't allow him to stay below for long. Supposedly, the pond's cement floor offers nothing to hold onto. Maybe in the end he just vented air from his bladders and stayed down.
*****
GROOVE-BILLED ANIS IN DAWN SUNLIGHT
At dawn as the day's first sunlight slants in low over the Papaya planting below the hut, birds with feathers damp from the dew or the previous afternoon's rains cluster in dense vegetation around the hut, drying out in the sunlight. It's a pleasant, seemingly festive time for several species, and I enjoy watching everyone enjoying themselves. One of the most conspicuous sunlight-baskers is the Groove-billed Ani, who holds his wings out for maximum exposure, exactly as you can see at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180906an.jpg
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VALLADOLID'S GRASSHOPPER
For the "Grasshopper Meme" essay ending this Newsletter, I wanted a general picture of a grasshopper, so I went into the garden and photographed the first grasshopper I saw. It turned out to be a mating pair, as you can see at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180906gh.jpg
Of course I wondered which species it was, so on the Internet I looked for pictures matching ours. The only match found was identified as "LACTISTA PELLEPIDUS, possibly?"
That's not much of a solid identification, and no information was given about the species, so I looked further. But, there were no matches, despite our grasshopper displaying some good field marks, especially the white streak originating at the base of the hind leg and directing diagonally toward the grasshopper's front. It seems our grasshopper is one of the lesser-known ones. The genus Lactista resides in the big Band-winged Grasshopper Subfamily, the Oedipodinae.
The only extra information I could find about the species was that it was named in 1884 by someone called Saussure and -- here's the nice part -- the species' "lectotype" had been collected in or around Valladolid, the fair-sized town about 10 miles (18kms) south of the ranch.
A lectotype is the preserved specimen on which the species' formal scientific description is based. When there's a lectotype, the assumption is that the "type" of the first specimen collected and described is lost or maybe so ambiguously identified that later a qualified specialist "elects" a specimen to serve as a lectotype, and publishes information on that specimen. Some older types are so sketchily identified that it's unclear even from which continent or century they originated. The lectotype specimen for our Lactista pellepidus consisted of just one sex, so it's conceivable that with our photo we're publishing for the first time the appearance of the undescribed sex.
This all reminds us how tricky this naming business can be, even for specialists, plus, once again we see that here in the Yucatan even today a non-specialist like myself can find some pretty interesting things. You may remember how one of my snake pictures turned out to show a new species. Just this week a researcher at Florida International University publishing on the cactus genus Pilosecereus in the Caribbean region wrote saying that some consider our Yucatan <[>Pilosocereus gaumeri cacatus to be just a form of a more widely distributed species, but that my pictures convince him that it's really a distinct species. Those pictures are at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/sabucan.htm
Finally, in our picture of the mating grasshoppers, did you notice the little red invertebrate atop the top grasshopper apparently parasitizing him? The picture reminds me of a poem written in 1733 by Jonathan Swift, sent to me a while back by volunteer bug identifier Bea Ontario:
“So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.”
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HOODED WARBLER RETURNS FROM UP NORTH
This Tuesday morning, September 4th, during breakfast I heard a soft, metallic tink, tink, tink... that hasn't been around since last March or so, and sure enough there was my old friend the Hooded Warbler. At least, I like to think that it was the same bird who last year and the year before hung around the hut, always curious to see what I was doing but too nervous to stay still long enough for a good picture.
So, fall migrants from North America are arriving. I'm unsure whether our Hooded Warblers fly over the Gulf or take the land route over Mexico's eastern Gulf lowlands, but whichever way they come it's impressive that they do it. Also, seeing so much habitat destruction and continuing use of hard pesticides, it's encouraging to see that at least this bird returned home.
The understated tink, tink, tink... from the trees is so different from the more assertive, louder, sometimes even strident calls of our permanent residents. The call is a harbinger for a whole new season, now cooler, the sunlight and shadows in the forest more contrasting, the sunlight itself no longer pounding and often oppressive, but a pleasant tingling on the skin, inviting one to sit in it. And all the while, the growing possibility of hurricanes or their remnants, and more violent afternoon storms, and vegetation so green and rampant that it's stunning to see, almost disorienting to experience all at one time.
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DRAGON FRUITS RIPE
On our Hylocereus undatus cactus page we have a good bit of information and several nice pictures of the species, which is one of several tree-dwelling, or epiphytic, species known as Night-blooming Cereus cactus. However, on that page the cactus's ripe fruits aren't shown. This week our wild-growing, tree-top dwelling plants are producing pinkish-red, softball-size fruits, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180906di.jpg
The species is common in the woods here, but this is the first time we've harvested any fruit. Normally a stink-bug-like insect lays eggs in the developing ovaries, the bug's hatched larvae eat the ovaries' insides, and no fruit develops. Our Maya workers say it's because the plants we can get to are those low down where there's too much shade. In the treetops, the egg-laying bugs don't destroy the fruits. That's not to say that the fruits have it easy up there, for birds like to eat them, as the Golden-fronted Woodpecker is doing at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180906dg.jpg
So, Juan, our best tree-climbing Maya worker, this week presented me with the fruit he's shown holding at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180906df.jpg
Notice that that fruit is splitting at its top, revealing it's pulpy white interior in which many tiny, black seeds are embedded. This often happens with ripe fruits receiving too much watering. The day before, it'd rained 42mm (1-2/3inch). You can see the fruit's juicy, sweet, very tasty interior at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180906dh.jpg
During my early days in the US I never saw anything like this, but tourists tell me that now in supermarkets up there this fruit can be bought under the name of dragon fruit. European tourists tell me it's even sold over there. Here people also eat it, calling it pitaya, but throughout Mexico I've found people using that name for just about any edible cactus fruit, except for the famous, much eaten Nopal, whose fruits are called tunas.
I've seen dragon fruit plantations in the Yucatan where epiphytic, dragon-fruit-producing Hylocereus undatus cactus stems were grafted onto another cactus species firmly rooted in the ground, serving as rootstock. That way, the crop could be irrigated, and the fruits themselves could be collected like grapes dangling from an overhead trellis. I bet dragon fruits become even more popular because they taste good -- can be eaten with a spoon directly from the red-skin bowl resulting from cutting the fruit in half, plus their skin is so leathery and covered with stiff bracts that the fruits can endure a little jostling during shipping.
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SEEDS GERMINATING INSIDE A PAPAYA FRUIT
The other day I cut open one of our homegrown papayas and found many of its seeds germinating, some even with green cotyledons (the future leaves), as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180906pp.jpg
This occurs in many ripe fruits with high moisture content, such as apple, pear, peach, lemons and tomatoes. In over-ripe fruits, diminished levels of abscisic acid also encourage the breaking of seed dormancy. Notice that the fruits mentioned as sometimes producing germinating seeds are cultivars. You might say that undomesticated natural species "have more sense" than to do that.
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GRASSHOPPER MEME
In the garden, after a night of heavy rainfall, in the early morning when everything was soggy and clammy, on a branch of vigorously growing Roselle, two mating grasshoppers perched in sunlight drying out and doing their thing, as you can see at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180906gh.jpg
I've always had a special feeling for grasshoppers, and that's good because during these super-lush, mid-rainy-season days they're all over the place. On walks, they thump into my legs, and against the dogs' bellies. Negrita snaps at them, but seldom has any luck.
Somehow I identify with how grasshoppers perch in the sunlight quietly and unmoving, except maybe for their munching mandibles, but when they do move -- jump -- it's spectacular. Their jumps may deposit them somewhere similar to the last place, but also maybe in a puddle of water, or among marauding army ants, or a grassfire, or even something mind-bogglingly good.
Grasshoppers are closely related to katydids, but katydids have a different way of being. They're always examining things with their long, graceful antennae, slowly snooping around like cats, and you hear them at night. Grasshoppers are creatures of bright sunlight and their antennae are shorter, stiffer things, clearly serviceable, but not in the tentative, cautious manner of the katydids'. The grasshopper's protruding forehead is rounded and massive, appropriate for bumping into things. Fact is, compared to katydids, grasshoppers seem a bit cloddish, and maybe a little dumber.
In other words, that's how I feel like I've conducted my life, mostly as a drudge pecking away at this or that modest project, but with occasional leaps into whole new worlds that sometimes turned out OK, or even fantastic, but other times not, and always bumping into things that I should have noticed and avoided.
So, this week I've been thinking about the grasshopper manner of being. During the cogitations I remembered a word that's become more popular in recent years, and which I never heard in my earlier days, the "meme." The New Oxford American Dictionary installed on my Kindle defines a meme as:
"An element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, esp. imitation."
So, a meme is a feature of humanity, thus it has nothing to do with grasshoppers. Thing is, I'm getting fuzzy about the boundaries between humans and other of Nature's groupings, and also doubtful about the whole idea of one thing passing something to another one thing. For, more and more I'm convinced that everything -- everything -- is just One Thing. Therefore, if memes exist, when they "pass from one individual to another... ," they're really just interior workings of One Thing, like thoughts of the One Thing, and that's what makes sense to me, these memes being thoughts or feelings of the One Thing.
So, I've taken the liberty of deciding that there's a grasshopper meme with cloddish features like those described for it above, as well as a more elegant katydid meme, and dog and Papaya-tree memes, and cloud memes and mineral crystal memes, and Earth and Jupiter memes, and galaxy and molecular-configuration memes, and memes expressed in musical motifs, and mythological and historical and ecosystem themes, and memes expressed in thought-clusters such as general human obsessions and general manners of being...
And within the One Thing these memes pass from one sub-notion of the One Thing -- maybe a single person, maybe a single species, maybe a single mathematical formula -- to other sub-notions, by nongenetic means, just as the definition says. But, the memes I visualize are like ghosts roaming the Universe, and in my world at the moment this ghostly, stumbling, occasionally jumping meme has manifested in grasshoppers and me.
It's been a fine week here thinking about all this, experiencing spectacular afternoon storms, everything so fresh and vibrant, the world humming with contentment, with all its memes interrelating, ever evolving toward higher levels of diversity, integration, and intensity of feeling and meaning.
Oh, and one more thing about the grasshopper meme: At https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/locusts.htm we look at locust outbreaks I've experienced here in the Yucatan. Locusts are grasshoppers who experienced some kind of magical change enabling them on a certain day of their lives to flutter into this or that perfect updraft and be lifted higher than any grasshopper's mere jump could carry them, upward and upward spiraling, wings glistening frantic silvery flashes, and then high in the sky there's a communion with a great river of other exalted beings, all drawn toward that perfect meadow somewhere, a place where a grasshopper can live in perfection.
Relatively few grasshopper species ever manage such a transformation, but I think even the lowliest with the stubbiest wings and plumpest bodies must somewhere inside them aspire to merge with the sublime sky-river.
*****
Best wishes to all Newsletter readers,
Jim
All previous Newsletters are archived at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/.
