I am now in my last month of my internship (where on Earth did the time go?!) and I am working on wrapping up the last projects I have been working on. My workload as of late includes finishing up some field work including animal activity surveys and collecting of pro v2 loggers that record temperature and humidity, massive amounts of data entry, data processing, and statistics as well as processing camera pictures and some more data entry!

It has been really awesome working on these projects from their inception to now the very end and to see how they have evolved over time and now finally seeing the results! I have learned a lot about experimental/project design, planning, implementation, trouble shooting and now data processing which will be invaluable skills for me to have in graduate school this September.

Hello!

Finally after weeks of running GUD feeding trials for kangaroo rats I got to get up close and personal with these little guys! Another group of researchers is conducting genetic studies on kangaroo rats and the endangered giant kangaroo rat and they invited us out to lend a hand trapping and of course to hold any that they catch!

They look a lot like a hamster, have the tail of a rat, and hop like a kangaroo (hence the name!) After catching the kangaroo rat they were weighed, tagged and hair samples were taken for DNA analysis.

We didn’t have much luck trapping. We only caught one kangaroo rat (the one being held in the pictures) but that was still quite exciting!

Hey all!

I have been continuing my work looking at animal activity in the Panoche Hills but I am now expanding that work to look at the ability for shrubs to act as a restoration tool to help mitigate the effects of climate change on the endangered blunt nosed leopard lizard. I have set up motion activated cameras in paired shrub-open areas to record animal activity at both sites. Some shrubs will later be removed, and shrub mimics will be built in order to compare animal activity with and without shrubs. Mimics will help separate any potential biotic effects of shrubs on leopard lizard activity.

Most of the time the cameras catch vegetation, flags or clouds moving in the wind and you see something like this…

…or this

but then we get exciting animal pictures like this

and most exciting of all…the blunt nosed leopard lizard!

Over the last month a lot of my energy has been focused on studying two animal species found in the Panoche Hills Recreation Area: kangaroo rats and the federally listed blunt nosed leopard lizard. We have been conducting kangaroo rat granivory trials to examine how kangaroo rats interact with the shrub Ephedra californica and understory annual species which are mainly invasive grasses. We also have been using animal activity cameras with night vision to monitor their activity under shrubs and in open areas. Very recently we have also begun an exciting collaboration with working dogs to survey lizard scat under E. californica shrubs and in open areas. This technique for surveying animals has proven to be very useful and is able to quickly and accurately survey animal populations in an area and is a very exciting collaborative project.

Over the next month we will be finishing up our leopard lizard survey and I will begin the preparation for manipulative experiments with E. california to further test the interactions of the shrub with animals and annual vegetation. This will also have important restoration and conservation implications for both species, especially with future predicted climate change.

Here are some pictures of me and another researcher (Alex) with a leopard lizard!

Hello Everyone!

I am now entering week three working with the BLM Hollister office in California and it has been an exciting and interesting time so far! Everyone is so welcoming and helpful out here and there is a lot of interesting research coming out of this office. It definitely helps working with such friendly people when transitioning to a new job and to a new home!

I am conducting all of my research at the beautiful Panoche Hills Recreation Area which is a semi-arid scrubland. This area is dominated by the shrub Ephedra californica and I have been working closely with a Ph.D. student testing plant-plant interactions between Ephedra and annuals as well as plant-animal interactions between Ephedra and kangaroo rats. Together we have set up a number of experiments including seed trapping experiments, herbivore exclosures to remove biotic stress, and kangaroo rat granivory trials. This year was an extremely dry year for California, so it is very interesting testing interactions in an abnormal year.

One thing that I would like to investigate further after the above mentioned experiments are complete is how the highly invasive grass species red brome has impacted the area. Specifically, there are two endangered species present at Panoche Hills, the giant kangaroo rat and the blunt nosed leopard lizard and I would like to know if/how the invasion by red brome has impacted their populations and potential ways to mitigate this impact.

I am looking forward to continuing this amazing experience!

Here are some photos of my adventures so far!

-Amanda

BLM Holister Field Office, California