The short video shows different moments of a typical frogging (and herping) day at Wayqecha. We leave Wayqecha by car and climb above the station and the cloud forest, in the high-Andean grassland (puna) at elevations from 3300 to 3450 m. The day started with a partially clouded sky and some sun, but that did not last very long, as you will see in the video. Most frogs in the puna live within the bunchgrass and under a layer of permanently wet mosses; however for a quick search we are just lifting rocks that had recently been exposed during installation of electric posts. Marsupial frogs particularly love to hide in rock crevices and other rocky substrates exposed by landslides and other disturbance. We are also deploying some temperature loggers in small copper pipes that simulate the thermal behavior of lizards. The local lizards (small gymnophthalmids) are intriguing in their general aversion to basking -- even under ideal circumstances they keep their body temperature around 20C, which is quite low for a lizard.
RSS Feed