Sunday, November 16, 2008

11-08-08 Planet Pinwheel UPDATED!

The Future Scientists found a leaf that supported a little town of pinwheel mushrooms, which are appropriately named after their distinctive caps resembling... pinwheels. Other descriptive common names include the "collared parachute mushroom" or the "horsehair mushroom" based on the distinctive look. Notice how each mushroom is smaller than a fingernail - good find!

You can see much better pictures of this mushroom here, at mushroomexpert.com.

Click here to see the mushrooms the author first mistook them for.

Interestingly, one distinguishing feature of the mushrooms we found is the fact that they like to grow on oak leaves. CHECK. The other pinwheels prefer sticks and logs.

One cool beans fact about both types of pinwheel mushrooms is that they shrivel up when it is dry, but rain will revive the little guys, making thousands of them seem to sprout up overnight! Aren't we lucky that it's been raining?

Saturday, November 15, 2008

11-08-08 Loch Ness Salamander

The Future Scientists are all about identifying mysterious creatures of the deep. And mysterious creatures of the deep are all about grainy film quality.

This particular mystery monster was a redback salamander, which is a beast that the Future Scientists have succeeded in finding for three weeks in a row now. This is not too surprising considering the fact that the redback salamander might be the most common terrestrial (i.e. landlubber) salamander in the Great Lakes region.

What is interesting is the fact that the Future Scientists only seem to find these salamanders colored in the leadback phase. The two most common phases of this salamander are "redback" and "leadback", basically depending on whether a red stripe runs down the back or not. Other color morphs may also occur, including a fiery all-red morph. However, when it comes to finding amphibians, so far the Future Scientists have restricted their salamander-palette to dirty brown/grey doodads.

This salamander did not rest on human flesh for very long, as pictured above. The Future Scientists realized that the salamander is lungless and breathes entirely through its moist skin. After the photo-op, the lil' sally was doused with some leafy creek juice, and put back under the wet leaves. Back to a busy day of lurking in the shadows for you, salamander buddy!

Monday, November 10, 2008

11-08-08 Fishing Spider

The Future Scientists were keen enough to spot a fishing spider, despite its excellent camouflage.

Fishing spiders are often mistaken for wolf spiders, but the fishing spiders have longer, slenderer, lady-likerer legs. Some of the fishing spiders may be the largest spiders in Ohio.

True to their name, sometimes these spiders will catch small fish and other vertebrates such as tadpoles or small frogs. However, insects are the most common happy meal for these eight-legged monster-beasts. Some species of these spiders may zip underwater if disturbed, and may even stay under for thirty minutes! The Future Scientists are a civilized bunch, and did not disturb the spider.

The fishing spiders are in the "nursery web spider" family. After the big momma spider lays its eggs, it will carry the egg sac in her jaws wherever she goes. Then, when it is time for the spiderlings to be born, the big-momma will spin a "nursery web" with its silk and perhaps throw in some leaves. The egg sac is then gently placed into the nursery, and mommy spider will stay with the sac until almost all the spiderlings are born and dispersed. Nursery web spiders do not use their silk to catch prey, only to pad their babies.

11-08-08 Lodi Fossils


The Future Scientists went retro this weekend, as in 350 million years ago Mississippian Period retro, when the in-thing was having a shell or tube-feet if you were living large in Ohio. Here, the Future Scientists can be seen prying ancient sea-life loose from rocks in this creek bed at Lodi City Park in Medina County.

The Future Scientists were able to find many brachiopods, bryozoans and crinoid stems. Other non-fossilized, living wildlife were also found, and they will achieve their fifteen minutes of fame in a future blog.



Brachiopod city!

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

11-01-08 Mystery Caterpillar: Case mostly-closed


The Future Scientists found a cute little caterpillar along the forest trail.

It had a racing stripe, but it was very obviously not built for speed. What a faker.

The caterpillar was not identified in the field, so a picture was taken to document its existence. Human fingers are provided for scale.

The Discover Life team has created a cool, easy way to identify caterpillars on the web. Just plug in your main caterpillar features (i.e. body color, hairiness, astrological sign etc.) and find out who your scrunchy little bug friend is!


Plugging this little guy into the website, the best i.d. option turned out to be a type of tiger moth caterpillar Haploa clymene. The adult moth is quite strikingly beautiful (see images here). Young caterpillars of this species are found in the fall (hence the teeny size), and they will overwinter and mature in the early spring or early summer. The yellow racing stripe of the caterpillar is especially prominent in the fall, during the young stage. 

DISCLAIMER: The writer of this blog has is 90% confident about the i.d. of this caterpillar. If you have more enlightened information, please comment below!

11-01-08 HH Two more creek shots

In the above picture, you can see the Future Scientists in a tranquil state, milliseconds before that tree in mid-fall crashed to the ground and scared the bejeezies out of everyone.

That didn't really happen, but you can tell people that it did.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

11-01-08 HH Crayfish bonanza!


The Future Scientists discovered a section of creek with little water current, but rife with crayfish current! Alas, the calamitous crustaceans were no match for the Future Scientists, once it was discovered that the crawdaddies were all stuck in reverse gear.



We invaded a crayfish's privacy and determined that it was a female. For good pictures of crayfish anatomy, you can check this Cornell University biology class site.

Male crayfish anatomy.

Female crayfish anatomy.


The last pic shows a tiny crayfish - too small to determine gender. Sorry, lil' guy/gal!

11-01-08 The Hell's Hollow Letterbox





It must have been a sign.

Stumbling across a soaked diaper embedded into the leafy trail, several of the Future Scientist team stopped to discuss the demerits of littering. Given the impressive absorbent capacity of the diaper, one Future Scientist deemed it necessary to skewer the diaper with a stick in order to judge its weight, and perhaps carry it to a better disposal area. The hefty piece of baby toilet cloth garnered several "whoa!"s as it bent the heavily strained stick.


Now that this portion of the team's eyes were primed for spotting litter, another member eyed a partially concealed zip-lock bag with a gaudy pink object inside. Could someone perhaps have left their cell phone and forgotten about it? The plastic bag revealed...a treasure! Perhaps the team had found a geocache! Perhaps it was pirate booty! The possibilities were endless.





The entire team assembled to make sense of the mystery item. It turned out to be a letterbox - a clued treasure-hunting activity that has been around since the 1800's, and made its way to the U.S. in 1998 after an article in Smithsonian Magazine publicized the tradition. The Future Scientists were quite proud of their ability to sniff out this piece of buried treasure despite not having any clues. Inside the bag was a rubber stamp bearing the logo of this site's letterbox, along with a logbook. According to the log, the treasure had only been found once before, over a year ago!



The Future Scientists made their mark in the logbook, and triumphantly stamped their hands. One of the Future Scientists dyed her hands in pokeweed. Can you guess which one? Afterwards, the letterbox was hidden away as it was found.


The precise location of the letterbox was not described in this blog, so as not to ruin the fun for any potential letterboxers! To read more about letterboxing, you can find a nice summary with helpful links at wikipedia. Perhaps in the future, the Future Scientists will consider going legit and finding a letterbox using actual clues.

Oh, and given the frenzy of the find, we forgot to take the diaper back to a better disposal area. If you happen to find this letterbox, you can also keep your eye out for a 30-pound diaper in the vicinity.