End of Year Recap Part 1

Hello there!

     It has been quite some time since I last posted. My first semester of college wasn't particularly challenging, and I definitely had enough time to post, but I was lazy and didn't. I'll try to run through the highlights of as much of the past few months as I can. I'll have to divide the material into two posts, but hopefully I can make it entertaining.

Ross Barnett Reservoir 

     A friend from church, Bro. Williams, took me out on the Rez in his bass boat early one August morning. Knowing my interest in bugs, plants, and wildlife in general, he figured it would make a good going away gift for the last weekend before I started college at Mississippi State University. He was correct. As the sunrise illuminated the intricacies of the clouds against the pale sky, we slid out of the harbor through patches of plate-sized lotus flowers and meandered to the mouth of the Pearl River. 

Nelumbo lutea, the American Water Lotus, visited by a skipper.

Nymphaea odorata, the American Water Lily

 "Meandered" is incorrect. Almost immediately, I lost my broad-rimmed hat to the wind and we had to make a u-turn to retrieve it. As we picked back up to speed, I stuck it and my phone into a safe compartment. We whizzed past the slowly-flapping egrets and smacked into unsuspecting dragonflies, as Bro. Williams told me over the wind that he was going to try to show me some alligators. It was difficult to make out what he was saying because he talked straight into the wind, only tilting his head slightly to the right, if at all. I soon realized he did that to avoid loosing his baseball cap, which he did only once, toward the end of the adventure, when he had the misfortune of chuckling at a joke.
     Within the first few minutes, we spotted our first alligator. Bro. Williams stopped the engines and dropped the electric motor over the side, and we got within twenty feet of it before it frothed the water with a flick of its tail and disappeared under the placid surface.
Unfortunately, the glare on the water was such that I couldn't get any high-quality pictures, but we did see at least ten alligators, some upwards of twelve feet long, and got within touching distance of several smaller ones.

Pectinatella magnifica, magnificent bryozoan

     After pausing for a few minutes to fish (unfruitfully) at the mouth of the Pearl, we decided to explore a small, flooded cypress cove. I found several cool insects and spiders, including a juvenile Dolomedes triton (six spotted fishing spider) and a still-unidentified beetle. I also found some colonies of the invasive Eichhornia crassipes (Water Hyacinth) and some interesting aquatic natives, which I took home and pressed. Then, Bro. Williams noticed a weird blob bobbing just under the surface. I grabbed a net and scooped it into the boat, where I took a picture of it. At first I thought the gelatinous mass consisted of salamander eggs, but iNaturalist suggested Pectinatella magnifica. I had no earthly idea what that was, nor did I have good enough internet connection to google it, so I set it back in the water where, to my dismay, it broke into several smaller chunklets.

     Later research revealed iNaturalist was correct: I had found a tiny magnificent bryozoan (they can reach over two feet in diameter). Bryozoans are colonies of filter-feeding organisms that basically just float around and clear the water of algae and mud--God knows the Rez needs it.

     Aside from learning about bryozoans and how to navigate through cypress swamps, I discovered an excellent strategy for getting close to deer. As we snaked our way up the Pearl, we noticed a deer moving across the river. 

Oh deer!

      Mr. Gator didn't seem to mind us, and we got within ten feet of him before he ducked under the surface to take his dinner elsewhere. I've never gone deer hunting, so that's probably the closest to a white tailed deer I've ever gotten, unless you count deer sausage.
     On the way back to the dock, we saw a couple more gators, as well as some herons, egrets, and even some ospreys. With bugs in my pockets and plants in my hand, I thanked Bro. Williams for the wonderful trip and went home to press the plants in my high-tech plant press. It was my first time pressing aquatic plants, and I ended up ruining my biology textbook. But it still works as a plant press!

University

     From an ecological perspective, most of Mississippi State's campus is pretty bleak. Even though we have 10,000+ trees on our 1,500 acres, many of them are Chinese Parasol Trees, Bradford Pears, and Crepe Myrtles. That's tantamount to a food company tossing in a handful of deathcaps with their portabella mushrooms. On the main academic campus, concrete and lawn dominate the view, with a peppering of majestic live oaks, some of which are cloaked by invasive English Ivy. All of them, however, are successfully creating a shaded desert of bare earth where even plastic grass would die. On the plus side, a few raised beds are brightened with invasive, poisonous Lantana during the summer and early fall. But then they're stripped and allowed to lie fallow for a couple of weeks before a few pansies are patched in like band-aids on leprosy sores. 

     On the way to the dinning hall, Nandina shows its cheerful berry bunches through the suckering stems of non-native magnolias, beckoning in the Christmas season with certain death (via internal hemorrhaging) for any hungry migrating birds. The landscapers are trying to get rid of it, I'll give them that--I saw an excavator leveling several patches over a week-long period. But because it's Nandina, it came back within three weeks. 

      There is, however, a beacon of hope. The immediate vicinity of the Agriculture buildings is actually well thought out and stunning for most of the year, even if it isn't all native. A massive colony of Passiflora incarnata "incense" creates habitat for hundreds of Gulf Fritillary butterflies, which ineffectively defend their territory against passers-by by whirling around their heads. It's quite a majestic experience, especially when coupled with Passiflora flowers, which are about as large as an adult male's fist.

Gulf Fritillary feeding on invasive Lantana.

Flower of Passiflora incarnata "incense."

     I would be remiss if I did not also mention the effective, mostly native landscaping around the Landscape Architecture buildings--I just don't happen to have any pictures of the aesthetically designed water retention basin that replicates natural habitat to improve both human life and environmental conditions.

Insects: Pests and Pets

     Quite possibly, the highlight of my first semester at college was my Insects: Pests and Pets class taught by Dr. John Guyton. In addition to being able to handle cool arthropods such as "The Ambassador" (a golden-knee tarantula) and even an Amblypygid, we got a weekly PowerPoint presentation full of beautiful pictures and weird insects facts. (For instance, did you know that Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence in gall-wasp ink? I didn't) 

Tailless whip scorpion, or Amblypygid.
Incredibly fast and difficult to catch when it escapes. Not if.

      Besides having an awesome teacher who gave us "entomophagist treats" (e.i. peanut brittle with crickets) and recounted his experiences with insects around the world, the class was fun because of the location. It was in the same building as the Mississippi Entomological Museum, which is probably the coolest thing to do in Starkville, even though literally no one knows it exists. (I do not mean "literally" figuratively. On my campus tour of Mississippi State, our adviser sent me to the wrong building, and then the people there sent me to another wrong building, etc.) It also has a well-thought out, if overgrown, native plant garden where I got to practice my macro photography skills. Bees and butterflies are hard to photograph with a lens that comes into focus at 1 inch away from its subject, so I ended up taking mainly flower pictures (although I did get some good pictures of a Green Lynx spider, Peucetia viridans). For more macro pictures, check out my Instagram (I'm "p._almoni"). I update that much more than my blog.

Clockwise from top left: Solidago sp., Conoclinium coelestinum, 

Peucetia viridans, and Veronia sp. (?)

   I also got an extraordinary opportunity through the class to hear Dr. Jeff Harris talk about beekeeping. He's one of the leading experts on bee breeding (of particular note, he works with making lines of honey bees that are resistant to Varroa mites, which cause Colony Collapse Disorder). It was exiting (and delicious) to be able to eat honey straight out of a beehive!

      Time would fail me to tell of my endeavors at insect art, my visit to Noxubee Wildlife Refuge, and my new website I made to help friends and family members plant low-maintenance native gardens. But I just used a praeteritio, tricolon crescendo, and lampshading in the same two-sentence paragraph, so I'll quit while I'm ahead.

Until next year,
Nate Venarske