Amazonia (Peru) July 2013 – (2) amphibians & reptiles!

For your reports/images, made outside Europe and the "Mediterranean" countries. Not to be too narrow minded and limited to our European/Mediterranean herps.

Re: Amazonia (Peru) July 2013 – (2) amphibians & reptiles!

Postby Niklas Ban » Sat Aug 24, 2013 11:33 am

Atelopus spumarius is awesome!! :shock: Even without Eunectes a very cool trip and good to see that everthing went well!
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Re: Amazonia (Peru) July 2013 – (2) amphibians & reptiles!

Postby Jeroen Speybroeck » Sat Aug 24, 2013 6:02 pm

Guillaume Gomard wrote:I guess it represents a significant work and time but it's highly appreciated (FYI, I spent 1 hour on this page looking at the pictures and thinking about the different curves you are showing here).

Much appreciated :D ; thanks a lot.

Guillaume Gomard wrote:I guess that it's hard to miss Fer-de-lance in this part of the world

Well, it should be, but don't expect anything like European viper densities (or detectabilities!).

Guillaume Gomard wrote:did you suffer from other envenomation by other colubrids?

Not during this trip. I guess you read the little tale in my Malta report?

Guillaume Gomard wrote:Another question: Do you know how hard it is to spot Boa constrictor in this place?

They usually turn one up, but it's not very abundant. Too bad, because I was really hoping for one with such a nice red tail, but you can of course not have it all - as you said, we had some really special snakes and also some of the frogs are rare observations (which makes me about equally happy, actually).

Guillaume Gomard wrote:the quite low probability to find a significant number of snake specimens during a trip like yours

Well, you need some luck. Snakes tend to be found in strokes of luck. Activity patterns of prey species also play some part. The 2 American herpetophiles that we met who were there for the 4th time considered this a bad year (coming up with all sorts of not too likely explanations...). In any case, I'm more into species diversity than into seeing huge numbers, so I was rather pleased ;) . Of course, I would have liked some more, but as you can see from the US crew with which I compared, you cannot really expect e.g. 50 species of snakes in less than a month, I guess.
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Re: Amazonia (Peru) July 2013 – (2) amphibians & reptiles!

Postby Bobby Bok » Sun Aug 25, 2013 1:11 am

Best report ever! And like I said before, the graphs are not nerdy at all!
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Re: Amazonia (Peru) July 2013 – (2) amphibians & reptiles!

Postby Pierre-Yves Vaucher » Sun Aug 25, 2013 8:27 am

CONGRATS !! nothing else to say... just speechless with amphibians variety !
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Re: Amazonia (Peru) July 2013 – (2) amphibians & reptiles!

Postby Thomas Reich » Sun Aug 25, 2013 12:47 pm

WOW! Thanks for your extensive report. Great pictures. You really found A LOT of species! Some of them remind me of our recent adventure in Guyana. http://fieldherping.eu/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=1452

Glad to see that you found three species of vipers as we didn't encounter a single individual. This will certainly make up for missing the Anaconda. Have you also been able to observe some interesting mammals (even cats)? I'm already looking forward to see some of that.

I'm curious to hear about how much rain you did have. The Iquitos area doesn't seem to have a real dry season which is favourable to observe amphibians and reptiles. On our trip we had heavy rainfall only once, apart from very few short rain showers.

Guillaume Gomard wrote:I guess that it's hard to miss Fer-de-lance in this part of the world

We spent four weeks in the Guianan rainforest (albeit during dry season) without having seen a single individual! As far as I can judge you certainly need rain to increase your chance to find it.

Guillaume Gomard wrote:...about the quite low probability to find a significant number of snake specimens during a trip like yours.

You obviously have to be very lucky to see a significant number of snakes in the amazon rainforest. Microclimate (especially humidity) seems to be even more important than in temperate climate zones, where snakes regularly need to bask in the sun.
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Re: Amazonia (Peru) July 2013 – (2) amphibians & reptiles!

Postby Jeroen Speybroeck » Sun Aug 25, 2013 1:24 pm

Thomas, 40% of the rain falls in the 'dry' season near Iquitos, so we got rain quite often - maybe Bobby can help, but I would guess about 50% of the days at least some, and a few times really heavy. The major difference is the level of the rivers and other waterbodies.

In terms of (larger) mammals and birds, this was maybe a little bit disappointing, which has been related to hunting practice of local people - eventhough we herped mainly in primary rainforest, small villages are present along all the waterways we traveled.
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Re: Amazonia (Peru) July 2013 – (2) amphibians & reptiles!

Postby Thomas Bader » Sun Aug 25, 2013 4:24 pm

I can only agree to the previous comments - just fantastic and as Mario said: this should really be published in a scientific paper!
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Re: Amazonia (Peru) July 2013 – (2) amphibians & reptiles!

Postby Paul Lambourne » Mon Aug 26, 2013 1:29 pm

Jeroen,

It goes without saying, but I will say it anyway, a monumental post, great pictures, amazing colours and diversity.. and whilst some of the snakes were very very pretty..Rhinella margaritifera wins hands down.

Thanks for posting. Inspirational as ever.

Kind regards

Paul
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Re: Amazonia (Peru) July 2013 – (2) amphibians & reptiles!

Postby Daniel Kane » Mon Aug 26, 2013 7:17 pm

I can only echo what has bee said by others - what a great report from what must have been a very eye-opening trip. Thanks for sharing.

Personal favourites included many of the frogs, lizards and snakes. Too many to choose from!
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Re: Amazonia (Peru) July 2013 – (2) amphibians & reptiles!

Postby Bert Vandebosch » Tue Aug 27, 2013 10:02 pm

A late reaction, mate. I'm just a slow reader ;-)

In one word: EPIC

That is the stuff my dreams are made from.

A trip like this clearly doesn't need a nearly-fatal-snake-bite to be remembered.
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