A visit to Bulgaria (May/June 2012)

[Mario Schweiger]

For Jeroen

goldmedal.png (142.65 KiB) Viewed 4343 times

[Ilian Velikov]

By the way, can anyone tell which Anguis these two are supposed to be? They are from the north-western part of the country.

[Mario Schweiger]

By the way, can anyone tell which Anguis these two are supposed to be? They are from the north-western part of the country.

From distribution it should be Anguis colchica - PDF-1963 in DB.
But colchica should have - although small and sometimes hard to see - an ear opening. Cant see this on your pics.

Mario

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

@ frog talk: "out of season" calls have been interpreted as guidance for migration towards suitable foraging and wintering habitats (at least I read something like that for Hyla arborea, which can call from high up in trees in autumn at times)

@ Anguis sp.: as long as there's no additional sampling, we can only guess what the true borders or contact zones are. I personally prefer to treat al Bulgarian animals as "sp." for now, given the fact that fragilis s.s. has been found in NE Greece. That ear opening feature is interesting (although not substantiated to be in line with the new species division). Maybe here? =>

Other features are mentioned in the paper, but the same holds for those - no clue whether these coincide with the molecular units.

More importantly, needless to say I am very proud of my medal !!!

[Sandra Panienka]

I only know three or four German publications about Pelophylax spec. and I remember that at least two of them deal with their calls:

1. Günther, R. (1995): Die Wasserfrösche Europas (this is a really great book that covers the different calls)
2. Schneider, H. (2005): Bioakustik der Froschlurche - Einheimische und verwandte Arten (this book comes with a CD and some really nice examples of different calls)
3. Plötner, J. (2005): Die westpaläarktischen Wasserfrösche
4. Günther, R. (1999): Die Amphibien und Reptilien Deutschlands

Sorry, that I don't know any publications in English.

[Ilian Velikov]

> Anguis - Jeroen, looking closely at the photo, what you've encircled might be a scar - this male was pretty beat up, with scars on both sides of the head (by the way I found him in a stack of boards, one board above the large Natrix from the photos)
Anyway, last year I took some DNA sample from animals from about 10-12 km to the north-west from where I found these two. I provided the samples to Daniel Jablonski (one of the article's authors) but still haven't heard from him, what species they were. He said that there is a posibbility that one of the contact zones goes right through that place.

"out of season" calls have been interpreted as guidance for migration towards suitable foraging and wintering habitats

for water frogs: suitable foraging - around the reservoir they live in; wintering habitat - in the water, or close by? I don't think they make any migration (at least from the more sustainable reservoirs (that excludes puddles, small streams, etc.) )

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

You may be right - breeding, foraging and hibernation is likely to happen all more in the same place in water frogs...

[Sandra Panienka]

We have a pond with many water frogs right in front of our department and I often have the feeling, especially later during the year, that they are stimulated by the noise of helicopters, airplanes or something similar. I think this phenomenon is also reported in the literature somewhere. Sometimes just one frog starts and the others join in for a while and then they go quiet again.

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

they are stimulated by the noise of helicopters, airplanes or something similar.

Yes...! Also lawn mowers. Even by humans pretending to be a frog

[Ilian Velikov]

Sometimes just one frog starts and the others join in for a while and then they go quiet again.

Yes, I've heard that too. They almost seem to be a "herd" rather than rivals, although probabbly the others are just opposing the one that started it.