September Portal update

In September, I returned to Portal bringing with me the newest Ernest lab member, Erica Christensen. It was a bit cooler than usual for mid-September, but overall, a great time of year to be in the desert. We captured 263 rodents, most of which are still represented by the desert pocket mouse (Chaetodipus penicillatus) and Merriam’s kangaroo rat (Dipodomys merriami). It’s much less buggy than other years, and it was a really pleasant weekend. No complaints about desert fieldwork in the fall!

Merriam’s kangaroo rat.

A small kangaroo rat warms up in my pocket before being released. Sometimes after a cool night, rodents need a little help in the morning.

Erica helps process a cactus mouse (Peromyscus eremicus).

We found this guy, jumping spider Phidippus octopunctatus, on a shrub while exploring the area surrounding the site.

We didn’t conduct a formal plant survey this fall due to logistical constraints, but many flowers were blooming in September. Here is a small perennial, Zinnia grandiflora.

Coatis and programmers in the desert

An update from the May Portal trip (which occurred immediately after my Giant Kangaroo Rat foray):

Recent USU graduate, Ben Morris, who had been working with the Weecology lab for the past few years, finally made it out to our field site, just before starting his Ph.D. with the Hurlbert lab at UNC! Ben spends most of his time on the computer being a ninja at utilizing ecoinformatics and big data, but he proved quite worthy in the field. We also saw a coati in the middle of the desert. Not sure what it was doing out there, but it didn’t look too happy… (sorry, no coati pictures to prove it!)

Ben weighs a grasshopper mouse.

Ben measures the hind foot length of a kangaroo rat.

Portal Squee: Nesting Cactus Mice

This post is way overdue, but the photos are so cute that I couldn’t help myself. Back in March 2012, when Glenda Yenni, Xiao Xiao and I travelled to Portal to count the winter plants, we discovered cactus mice (Peromyscus eremicus) nesting in a box that we were using to hold firewood. When we took the wood out of the box, there was a flurry of activity and a big fluffy nest inside!

A scared cactus mouse runs around the box.

What was even more interesting was that the nest had a two (eartagged!) adults  pair with 2 different ages of offspring! There were 3-4 subadult mice along with 2-4 teeny tiny juveniles (it was hard to count in the dark with all the running around). The juveniles were small enough (although they did have hair) that they remained attached to the nesting female when she ran out of the nest.

I mentioned this to Karen Mabry, who sometimes helps out at Portal, and she suggested that although not much seems to be known about Peromyscus eremicus, they may be “more monagamous” than some other species mice. Some other Peromyscus species are known to be socially and genetically monogamous, and have sometimes been confirmed as nesting with sisters (rather than a male-female pair), which could potentially explain why there were 2 different ages of juveniles in the nest box.

Female cactus mouse peers out of nest.

(Photo credits: Glenda Yenni)