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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
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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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