Latest Posts by sawgrassnaturecenter - Page 5

Check out our resident Yellow-Footed Tortoise, Carlos! Yellow-Footed Tortoises are native to the rainforests of South America.

In honor of World Animal Day, the SNC is spotlighting our Eurasian Collared Dove, named Ginger. Ginger was rescued from a pet store that wanted to put him down because of his inability to stand up straight. When he came to the SNC, we found that he could stand perfectly when he was given a proper perching space. 

Because Ginger is an exotic animal to Florida, we are not allowed to release him. Instead, he will live at the SNC with loving care takers as an Educational Ambassador. 

The head stabilization of an American Kestrel   

Source                     

Hi! My name is Abby De la Rocha and I am the Volunteer Coordinator at the Sawgrass Nature Center and Wildlife Hospital in Coral Springs, Florida. I was born in Puerto Rico and lived there until my family moved to Botswana when I was 8 years old. I returned to Puerto Rico when I was 16 and finished high school in Ponce. I then moved to New Orleans where I studied at Loyola University. I have been in Florida since 2006.

In this post, I’m going to tell you about Hispanic Heritage month as well as some interesting facts about Puerto Rico’s agriculture and its most precious ecosystem El Yunque.

What is Hispanic Heritage Month?

Each year, we observe National Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15 to October 15 by celebrating the histories, cultures, and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.

This year’s Hispanic Heritage Month theme- Hispanics: Be Proud of Your Past, Embrace the Future – invites us to embrace our backgrounds, to be proud of who we are and where we came from.

Embracing the Future

The future of agriculture in Puerto Rico

Currently, Puerto Rico imports 85% of its food. This is a huge vulnerability for an island with a population of 3.1 million. For several years, my family has been involved in the agroecological movement which seeks to increase the self-sufficiency of Puerto Rico through their agricultural project Finca El Reverdecer. This movement has been largely spearheaded by young people who are eager to make a difference. I believe that by looking at our past we can create a better future.

The present agricultural reality of Puerto Rico can be traced back to Puerto Rico’s history as a Spanish colony and later as a Commonwealth of the United States. The establishment of the monoculture of sugarcane meant that many Puerto Ricans worked on sugarcane plantations. My grandfather worked cutting cane during his youth. Later, he would go on to own land that he cultivated for his own consumption. At the age of 93 he continues to enjoy getting his hands dirty on my parents’ farm.

Eventually, the sugarcane industry on the island collapsed. Its demise was due to various factors including hurricanes that decimated the island as well as policies imposed by the Federal Government. In particular, a land tax imposed in 1901 known as the Hollander Bill. As a result of this bill, many local farmers were forced to sell their land. This eventually led to mass migration from the island to the mainland. It also led to a decrease in farming in general as people did not have land to farm. Subsequently, attitudes towards farming became unfavorable, especially among young people. This is changing. Today, many small farms produce high-quality products that are sought out by individuals and restaurants alike. While still a work in progress, the path to agricultural self-sufficiency is being forged.

Celebrating the only U.S. National Forest located on an island

The El Yunque National Forest is the only tropical rainforest in the national forest system.  At nearly 29,000 acres, it is one of the smallest in size, yet one of the most biologically diverse.

The United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service. (2020) describes El Yunque, “Caressed by gentle easterly winds the forest has an average temperature of 73° F, and seasonal changes are almost imperceptible. It is the ideal climate for exuberant tropical vegetation. The rain forest is noted for its biodiversity; it is “home” to thousands of native plants including 150 fern species, 240 tree species (88 of these are endemic or rare and 23 are exclusively found in this forest). The El Yunque National Forest has no large wildlife species, but hundreds of smaller animals abound in this gentle forest, many of which exist nowhere else on the planet.”

To embrace the future, we must plan and prepare for it. Looking forwards requires us to look back at our history so that we can make sense of our present. Puerto Rico’s future is being planned by those who work the land in order to provide food for its people as well as those who work to preserve the natural wonder that is El Yunque National Forest.

If you’d like to learn more about some of the agricultural projects on the island check out the links below:

Proyecto Agroecologico el Josco Bravo

Organización Boricuá de Agricultura Ecológica de Puerto Rico

El Departamento de la Comida

Finca El Reverdecer

References:

Charles, D. (2017, May 13) How Puerto Rico Lost Its Home-Grown Food, But Might Find It Again. NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/05/13/527934047/how-puerto-rico-lost-its-home-grown-food-but-might-find-it-again

U.S. Census Bureau (2019). Quick Facts Puerto Rico. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/PR.

The United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service. (2020) About the Forest. Retrieved from https://www.fs.usda.gov/main/elyunque/about-forest

Dick, D. L. (2015) U.S. Tax Imperialism in Puerto Rico. American University Law Review. Retrieved from http://www.aulawreview.org/us-tax-imperialism-in-puerto-rico/#_ftn220

https://sawgrassnaturecenter.org/2020/09/29/hispanic-heritage-month/

The Sawgrass Nature Center is home to an aviary of recovering and permanent winged residents. This blue jay is one of the many that are to be soon as you walk through the surrounding enclosure. 

This Wildlife Wednesday we are featuring our resident Red Rat Snake. This guy in particular has a permanent stay at the Nature Center due to a degenerative nerve disease that causes him to twitch. 

Rat Snakes are non-venomous, constrictor snakes. They also happen to be very skilled climbers, to the point where they have been known to scale brick walls! This helps them catch prey like lizards, small mammals, and hatchlings. 

Rat Snakes are popular in the pet trade and have been bred in many different colors and patterns.

Yknow the thing where red pandas just lay down on a branch and let their legs hang and they’re just like vibing

It is Turtle Tuesday at the SNC with our Loggerhead Musk Turtle, Molly. Molly is a resident freshwater turtle that is used for many of our educational programs. 

Loggerhead Musk Turtles (Sternotherus minor) are mostly carnivorous, but have also been known to munch on plants. Their jaws are strong enough to crack the shells of small snails, crayfish, insects, and mollusks. 

They are found throughout the Southeast United States in a variety of clear, freshwater wetland areas. 

Fun Fact: When threatened, musk turtles will release a foul smelling musk and bite with their powerful jaws. 

This ultra-black fish has evolved to be practically invisible in the darkest depths of the ocean, and the way it sucks in light could be useful for engineers.

Beautiful pictures 

butterfly

This African Spur Thigh Tortoise is named Bubba and he is a permanent resident at the Sawgrass Nature Center. He was previously kept as a pet, but his owners did not realize that he would get this large. And since he is an exotic species to Florida, he is non-releasable. 

The African Spur-Thigh is a native species of tortoise to Northern Africa, specifically along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. They dig burrows in the ground to spend the hottest parts of the day in. This is known as aestivation. 

Fun fact: The African Spur Thigh Tortoise is the third largest tortoise in the world. Surpassed only by the Galapagos Tortoise and the Aldabra Giant Tortoise. 

Today was a rainy day in South Florida. Some of our resident animals were particularly enjoying this weather, including our gator Wally. Wally is a female American Alligator. Most people think of Alligators as green in color, but most have a darker coloring that enables them to camouflage better in dark, swampy water. 

This is one of our resident parrots, Fred. Fred and his partner in crime, Alice, were surrendered upon the death of their owner to the Sawgrass Nature Center. In captivity, this particular species of parrot can live up to 80 years. 

Mysterious beaked whale smashes mammal diving record

A Cuvier’s beaked whale stays under water for almost four hours, leaving scientists puzzled. from BBC News - Science & Environment https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54268040

Paws what you’re doing: It’s the Sea Otter Cam!

Mesozoic Monthly: Champsosaurus

Good news everyone: it’s September! We’ve made it to month nine of 12! Sometimes it feels like this year will never end. I take comfort in the idea that if life can survive the traumatic Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction that killed the non-avian dinosaurs, I can make it through 2020. One of the survival champs of the K-Pg extinction was Champsosaurus, a superficially crocodile-like reptile belonging to the extinct group Choristodera.

The skeleton of Champsosaurus laramiensis looks superficially like that of a crocodilian, but this is the result of convergent evolution. Choristoderes (like Champsosaurus) and crocodilians lived contemporaneously for at least 150 million years, until the choristoderes said “after a while, crocodile!” and went extinct. Photo by Triebold Paleontology, Inc., used with permission.

The class Reptilia encompasses an incredible variety of animals: lizards, snakes, turtles, crocodilians, pterosaurs, dinosaurs, and even birds are just a few of its members. In addition to the familiar reptiles that live today, many other reptile groups thrived for millions of years before eventually going extinct. It’s easy to think of dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus or Triceratops when we talk about extinct reptile groups, but in reality, many extinct groups of animals with no living relatives escape the public eye. Choristodera, an order within the class Reptilia, is one of these groups. Choristoderes were semi-aquatic or aquatic carnivorous reptiles that evolved during the Mesozoic Era (the Age of Dinosaurs) and died out in the Cenozoic Era (the Age of Mammals). Just because they went extinct does not mean they were unsuccessful; the group survived for at least 150 million years! Like many animals, a rapidly shifting environment was probably the source of their demise. Until that point, choristodere evolution was able to ‘keep up’ with the changing times, including the monumental global changes that came with the K-Pg extinction. The combination of a massive asteroid impact in what’s now Mexico, extensive volcanic activity in India, and worldwide climatic shifts resulted in the extinction of over 75% of all species. Research on choristodere teeth suggests that they beat the odds by adapting to new prey.

When you think of an aquatic carnivorous reptile, you probably think of a crocodilian – and that’d be right! The crocodilian body plan is a very successful build for hunting prey in the water. As another aquatic carnivorous reptile, Champsosaurus evolved similar traits. This is an example of convergent evolution, in which unrelated species develop similar characteristics to deal with comparable circumstances. (You can read about more examples of convergent evolution in the January edition of Mesozoic Monthly about the sauropodomorph dinosaur Ledumahadi.) Some of the shared features between Champsosaurus and crocodilians include long, muscular jaws for catching fish, eyes at the top of the head for peering out of the water, and a flattened tail that was paddled side-to-side for propulsion. Of course, Champsosaurus and the rest of the choristoderes had many features that set them apart as well. Unlike crocodilians, which have bony armor called osteoderms embedded in their skin, choristoderes just had skin covered with tiny scales. In addition, crocodilians have nostrils on top of their snouts so that they can breathe while lurking beneath the surface of the water; choristodere nostrils were at the end of their snouts, so that they could stick the tip of their nose out of the water like a snorkel and breathe from down below.

A right dentary (tooth-bearing lower jaw bone) of Champsosaurus sp. from the Upper Cretaceous of Wyoming in Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Vertebrate Paleontology collection (specimen number CM 96509). The bone is facing upwards, so you’re looking down on the teeth. Check out the dark ‘stripes’ on the enamel of each tooth. These unusual enamel striations are a hallmark of neochoristoderes, the particular choristodere subgroup to which Champsosaurus belongs. Photo by Joe Sawchak.

The traits we see in the skeleton of Champsosaurus help paleontologists paint a picture of its behavior. Instead of lurking at the surface of the water, Champsosaurus would wait on the bottom of a shallow lake or stream for prey to come close, lifting the tip of its snout out of the water to breathe. When a tasty fish approached, it would spring off the bottom with its powerful legs and snatch it with its toothy jaws. Despite having strong legs, Champsosaurus was not adapted to a terrestrial lifestyle. In fact, adult males may not have been able to leave the water at all! Fossils attributed to females have more robust hips and hind limbs, allowing them to crawl onto land to lay eggs. According to this hypothesis, the less-robust males would have been restricted to an aquatic-only lifestyle.

Some of the freshwater environments that Champsosaurus inhabited were relatively cold, but that wasn’t a big deal; choristoderes may have been able to regulate their body temperature (a talent known as endothermy or ‘warm-bloodedness’). Crocodilians, by contrast, live in warm, tropical habitats because they are not capable of regulating their body temperature and rely on the sun to warm their bodies (aka ectothermy or ‘cold-bloodedness’). This would explain why choristoderes were able to live further north than crocodilians. However, it seems that crocodilians had the right idea; temperatures around the tropics change less during cooling and warming periods than those at higher latitudes. So, when the current Antarctic ice sheets began to form and the planet started cooling, the temperate choristoderes had to deal with more environmental change than the tropical crocodilians, and finally went extinct. I think the moral of the story is, we would all be handling 2020 better if we lived in the tropics!

Lindsay Kastroll is a volunteer and paleontology student working in the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

Rocky Mountain Golds: © gifs by riverwindphotography, September 2020

Interested in supporting a mighty cause? The Sawgrass Nature Center is working hard to bring free environmental education and career building resources to Title I students in South Florida. As our community begins to recover from a wicked pandemic, we believe that it is important to lend a hand to the families most impacted by it.

The Sawgrass Nature Center is participating in A Community Thrives, a program that supports community improvement ideas with grants up to $100K. To qualify for a grant, we need to meet a fundraising goal from our own network. Help us raise awareness and funds for our project by making a donation online from September 21st through October 16th.

The goal of our project is to bring environmental education to students through a virtual adaptation of our educational programs such as Meet Your Wildlife Friends. Programs like this are typically offered to students at an average minimum price of $180. We want to be able to bring these resources to Title I schools that do not have the funds to pay for the programs themselves in the form of a four-step program or two-step program.

The four-step program will be geared towards older students with the first two steps being a volunteer and professional skill building workshop. The third step will be a professional education program that provides them with an opportunity to get an immersive experience in environmental science. The fourth step is a volunteer opportunity at the Sawgrass Nature Center’s own community garden. This will grant students experience in agriculture, hands-on work, and time in a professional environment.

The two-step program will be developed for a younger crowd. The first step will be an optional craft seminar that is adapted to the teacher’s curriculum and our animal friends. The second step will be the Meet Your Wildlife Friends program, where we bring out our Educational Animals for students to interact with and learn about.

Our community needs resources for dynamic virtual learning opportunities that will complement their regular instruction. We believe it only fair that the resources we offer be made to as many students as possible regardless of socio-economic distinction.

When it comes to community building, the Sawgrass Nature Center believes in a bottom-up effect. Students in our community are the next to step into the work force, the next to inherit the world we leave behind for them. The future is in their hands. Our program shares with them education on nature around them and how to best be responsible for our environment and the wildlife that inhabit it. Our goal is to also provide older students with the skill and professionalism necessary to put that education to best use in the workforce and higher academics. We believe we are watering the seeds of future growth.

https://acommunitythrives.mightycause.com/story/Elzntf

The Sawgrass Nature Center has the chance to win up to $20k in grants if we can raise just $3,000 in donations. The goal for this grant is to provide under served communities with career-building mentorship programs and educational resources for free. Please help us reach our goal by sharing or donating. Learn more about the mission here: https://acommunitythrives.mightycause.com/story/Elzntf

This injured Burrowing Owl was brought to the nature center by a concerned Broward County resident to be rehabilitated. We were able to successfully able to release it back into the wild as good as new! 

This Burrowing Owl had an interesting feature that made it a unique visitor at our hospital. Most Burrowing Owls have bright yellow eyes. This one in particular possessed a recessive gene that gave it brown eyes instead. 

Learn about Florida Box Turtles and rehabilitation of wildlife at the Sawgrass Nature Center!

Learn more about exotic and non-native animals from the Sawgrass Nature Center! 

Great Horned Owls are native to the Americas, with a preference for deciduous, coniferous, forest, and desert habitats. They are carnivores with a diet that includes small mammals, reptiles, and even other owls! 

Fun fact: When clenched, a Great Horned Owl’s strong talons require a force of 28 pounds to open. 

Our resident owl is with us due to a permanent wing injury that prohibits them from ever flying properly again. 

Our volunteers loved adding this to their background study noise! 

The Landscape of Capitol Reef National Park. Gently dipping sedimentary rocks of the Waterpocket fold.

Here’s Wally, our resident American Alligator. Alligators are reptiles, which means they are cold blooded. Cold blooded animals, or ectotherms, rely on the environment to control their internal body temperatures. Unlike humans, alligators don’t have bodily functions to warm themselves up when they are cold.

In order to get warm, reptiles like to sunbathe, just like Wally is doing in this photo. Any Floridian who has seen a gator outside of the water, has probably been witness to the gator trying to warm themselves up too. 

1 hour of sharks and cold-water fishes lazily swimming about + jazzy lofi hip hop to relax/study/work to!

Our resident turkey vulture is a little cheeky. Notice how he poops whenever he sees our caretakers. It’s almost like he knows we’re coming to clean up the place! 

Our resident adult gator, Wally, shows off her top row of teeth with a curvy smile. American Alligators are a common sight for Floridians. Whether they’re borrowing our pools, sharing our golf courses, or sunbathing at our favorite parks, alligators are just a normal part of Florida living. Remember the best thing to do when encountering a gator in the wild is to leave it alone and put a wide amount of space between you and it. If you encounter a large, threatening alligator, contact FWC’s gator hotline (866-392-4286).

Fun Fact: The famous Florida citrus trees are NOT native to Florida. Citrus trees were planted by mid-century Spanish explorers before they became the state's featured fruit. https://www.visitflorida.com/en-us/eat-drink/facts-about-florida-citrus-oranges.html

How to Read an Academic/Research Paper

The main sections are: 

Abstract: a general overview of the paper’s content. It’s good to start here first, to sort of “seed” the ideas and concepts of the paper into your head.

Introduction: the general overview and setting of the paper. Sometimes you’ll find brief descriptions of key concepts or phrases

Methods: Read at the end, the technical jargon might be too heavy to for your to read this first.

Results:

Conclusion/Interpretation/Discussion: the hypothesis is either accepted or rejected. Reading the conclusion can help you decide if you want to spend your time reading the paper or not if you are looking for a specific method of doing something.

References: Read to familiarize yourself with the common titles, sources, and theories. 

Tip: Read the  Intro, and conclusion before you read the rest of the paper, its the fastest way of knowing what’s in the paper. 

Look out for the keywords key contribution and significant. 

Step by Step instructions: 

 Read Intro and Conclusion

 Identify the big question - what is this paper about?

Summarize the background in five sentences - why is this research important?

Identify specific questions - What exactly are the authors trying to answer with their research. 

Read methods

Read results and write down a sentence to summarize the result of each experiment. 

How do the results answer the specific question?

Read the conclusion section - Do the authors think that the results answered the big question?

Now read the abstract - did it match what happened?

Sources: 

https://medium.com/ai-saturdays/how-to-read-academic-papers-without-freaking-out-3f7ef43a070f

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-raff/how-to-read-and-understand-a-scientific-paper_b_5501628.html