<Daniel Bencardino's blog>

Alright! Week one of my internship is coming to a close, so it’s time to summarize how it’s been so far. The first week has essentially consisted of orientation material. The first day, we drove up from South Bend, Indiana to a town in Wisconsin named Minoqua (about a 9-hour drive). Once there everyone stocked up on food and other various necessities and we made our way up to the research center.

After settling in for the first night, we woke up around 10 in the morning to go on a guided tour of the entire property. The drive lasted until about 2 in the afternoon, but we got to see a whole bunch of wildlife and a brief introduction into the forest. In addition, one of the guides had us walk out onto a bog-edge to a lake and showed us some native carnivorous pitcher plants that grow in that particular environment.

The following day was a quick intro/review of basic statistical theory and techniques, after which we broke up into groups and collected some data for analysis on computer software. My group collected statistics about some local trees - identifying them as either spruce or fir, as near or far from a road - and we collected continuous data such as circumference of the trunk at breast height and the length of the needles.

Thursday was all about orienteering in the woods and basic techniques for hiking and exploration. After becoming well acquainted with the compass and map techniques, we took part in a type of scavenger hunt which involved being given a starting point and from there we found each successive point using a bearing that was written at each point.

With our new-found hiking skills, Friday was dedicated to a cross-country hike from one side of the property to the other. They broke us up into sets of two and staggered our times so we would, hopefully, not run into each other. Although it was long and arduous, my partner and I finished with a grand total of 5 and a half hours under our belts. Afterwards, one of the teachers had a dinner/get-together at his cabin which is located on campus. It was here where I tried my first traditional, Upper Peninsula “Pasty”. It’s a meat-pie, of sorts, containing potatoes and beef contained in pastry dough. Delicious.

This weekend (and every weekend following) is mainly devoted to clean-up and re-stock. After cleaning in the morning, we go and get more food and supplies at ‘Trig’s’ which is a 24-hour grocery in the nearest town (about 45 minutes away).

This week was the beginning of our first module/class period. The focus of the module was herpetology, the study of amphibians and reptiles.

Two frogs which were caught throughout this week. The frog in the foreground is a male bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana), and the frog in the background is a green frog (Rana clamitans).

Every day started bright and early; Monday morning featured the set-up of pitfall traps, minnow traps and cover-boards which would remain active throughout the entire week. Each day after checking our traps, we had a break for lunch and engaged in a lecture about a different aspect of ‘herps’. Monday consisted of the evolution and general biology of amphibians and reptile, Tuesday was the anatomic and physiological differences and similarities between amphibians and reptiles, Wednesday focused on their ecology, and Thursday was our final lecture on the conservation of ‘herp’ species.

These are our ‘precious babies’, a mass of salamander eggs our teacher found while checking the minnow traps this week. We salvaged it from a dip-net and brought it to the lab, initially for a closer look under a dissecting microscope, but the little ones penetrated our hearts and now sit at a window sill preparing to hatch. We counted about 30 individual eggs within the mass. When they hatch we will likely return most of them to the wild, but perhaps keep some as lab specimens. We speculate that they are the eggs of the spotted salamander (Ambistoma maculatum).

This is one of the sites which traps were set up. Although my group didn’t set them up, a solar turtle trap can be seen in the water – these traps take advantage of the Painted Turtle’s (Chrysemys picta) predisposition to basking in sunlight.

Each night at 8pm, our groups set out to perform frog-call surveys. This entailed getting in our vans and driving to 5 different sites, being as quiet as possible and recording the different species of frogs that we heard using their mating calls. The range of frog calls is astounding. The major sound we heard was the call of the Spring Peeper (Psudacris crucifer) which is a very high-pitched squeaking sound. Some of the more surprising calls were those of the Wood frog (Rana sylvatica) which sounded like the typical duck quack, and the Mink frog (Rana septentrionalis) which was eerily similar to that of a hammer striking wood.

This next week will be the first official research week dedicated to our research projects! I’ll be sure to keep everyone updated on my research project and its progression throughout the next subsequent weeks!