[NatureNS] under cover life

Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 23:04:53 -0300
From: "Frederick W. Schueler" <bckcdb@istar.ca>
Organization: Bishops Mills Natural History Centre
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Scotia. Proceedings and Transactions of the N
On 9/11/2010 4:56 PM, Frederick W. Schueler wrote:

> It's just come to my attention that this primal activity, like so many
> others, has had a day named after it, that flip-a-rock day is tomorrow,
> 12 September, and that a weblog is being created from the findings of
> rock flippers around the globe.
>
> Bev Wigney has put up a short blog post about this at -
> http://magickcanoe.com/blog11/2010/09/11/flip-a-rock-on-september-12/ -
> and we'll be doing her place at Round Hill, Nova Scotia, to see what
> she's got in the way of Succineid snails, Sowbugs, and slugs.

* and here are the results:

13 September 2010 - Canada: Nova Scotia: Annapolis County: 1821 Highway 
201, Round Hill, 8.5 km ENE Annapolis Royal. 21A/14, 44.77300N 65.40511W 
TIME: 1821-1917. AIR TEMP: 16C, cloudy, Beaufort light air. HABITAT: 
brushy/treed homesite with rough lawn above rocky brook. OBSERVER: 
Frederick W. Schueler, Aleta Karstad Schueler, Bev Wigney. 2010/286/g, 
visit. natural history. Rock-flipping Day survey of Bev's place.

Looking around the yard and surrounding brushy areas, I confirm my 
previous impression that this site has a serious deficiency of real 
rocks: the primordial stoniness of Nova Scotia seems to have been 
gathered up and incorporated into the foundations of the buildings by 
the earlier occupants of the site. I'll, accordingly, mostly be turning 
bits of artifactual cover rather than real stones.

Under a brick by the front steps, there's only one Sowbug, and nothing 
under a stack of dinner plates left embedded in the grass by the 
previous owner. Earlier in the day, I'd found one dying cf Succinea 
putris "Amber Snail" here, a species which Bev had found to be so 
abundant earlier in the summer that she assured us that we'd find them 
"everywhere," but which have evidently matured, laid their eggs and died.

There's many adult Sowbugs, with one juvenile and several adult 
Deroceras reticulatum "Grey Field Slugs" under bricks and old cabinet 
doors behind the house, and a collapsed cardboard box under a Lilac 
sheltered 3 Cochlicopa "Pillar" snails, 7 flat wide-coil Oxychilus 
snails, a few small Deroceras reticulatum, 3 baby Arion slugs (Aleta 
says "maybe Arion sylvaticus" - we'll have to raise them to maturity to 
be sure), and a multitude of Sowbugs, including little fast-running 
ones, and a Millipede that escaped capture.

Seeing a metre-high pile of real, if small, rocks (and small chunks of 
concrete) among Rubus idaea (Red Raspberry) and Solidago (Goldenrod) 
beside a ruined shed, I push through the bushes and young Ash trees 
towards it; Bev reminds me to proceed carefully, because the slope below 
here is rich in broken glass and other old rubbish. There's a couple of 
minute snails and a few more little Arion under some rotten boards, but 
when I burrow into the pile of stones there's nothing but a few Sowbugs, 
one Millipede, and a couple of small Earthworms. So far, the only 
creature I've recognized that might be a native species is the 
Cochlicopa snails, but it's suspected that the "synanthropic" linages of 
these, which live human-disturbed habitats, in fact may be introduced 
from Europe, rather than natives.

That pretty well exhausts the available cover. There's plenty of bits of 
cover under the bushes and thickets, where undercover species may live, 
but they're not accessible to me. Aleta saw one "Wooly Bear" Pyrrharctia 
isabella (Isabella Moth) caterpillar out and active, looking for some 
cover to winter under. In the front yard there's a pile of new "treated" 
boards embedded in a tangle of Aegopodium podagraria (Goutweed), but 
these sheltered only a couple of Sowbugs and a juvenile Deroceras 
reticulatum, while a couple of Deroceras reticulatum was all that could 
be found under pottery bowls in the grassy flower garden in the front yard.

Sowbugs, Succinea putris, Deroceras reticulatum, Oxychilus, Arion, and 
Earthworms are all believed to be introductions from Europe, and their 
dominance here illustrates how little we can comprehend what we'd have 
found if we'd been able to flip rocks before European colonization of 
North America.

Those who are interested learning more about the introduced and native 
species of snails and slugs can order. . .

Grimm, F. Wayne, Robert G. Forsyth, Frederick W. Schueler, & Aleta 
Karstad. 2009 [2010]. Identifying Land Snails and Slugs in Canada: 
Introduced Species and Native Genera. Canadian Food Inspection Agency, 
Ottawa. iv+168 pp.
http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/plaveg/pestrava/escarge.shtml

. . . or

Grimm, F. Wayne, Robert G. Forsyth, Frederick W. Schueler, & Aleta 
Karstad. 2009 [2010]. Identification des escargots et des limaces 
terrestres au Canada: Espèces introduites et genres indigènes. Agence 
canadienne d'inspection des alimentes. Ottawa. iv+168 pp. (translation 
of Identifying Land Snails and Slugs in Canada, edited by Isabelle Picard).
http://www.inspection.gc.ca/francais/plaveg/pestrava/escargf.shtml

. . . from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, at no cost, by calling 
1-800-442-2342, and requesting a copy during business hours, eastern 
time. This is the first work to treat the entire Canadian fauna of 
terrestrial Gastropods, and we hope that its free availability will lead 
to an increase of interest in the life history, ecological roles, and 
systematics of Canadian land snails and slugs.


fred schueler
------------------------------------------------------------
          Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
Bishops Mills Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
now in the field on the Thirty Years Later Expedition -
http://fragileinheritance.org/projects/thirty/thirtyintro.htm
Daily Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
     RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
   on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
    (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
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