Birthday Collecting

[Shane]

Whiskered Tadpoles, Swamp Cichlids and Cows in Pickup Trucks

or How I spent my Birthday

Headed out collecting yesterday fro my birthday. My plan was to sample various seasonal puddles close to the road between Kampala and Jinja. Two beautiful Nothobranchius killies have been reported from this area and I wanted to try my hand at collecting them. It also seemed like an easy collecting trip as I would be going solo.

I drove from Kampala to east to the Mabira forest (just about an hour's drive) as I first wanted to sample a small stream there I had driven past and taken note of before. Looking down on the tiny, one meter wide, stream I could see from the shoulder of the road that it was packed with fish. Imagine my disappointment on taking a closer look and realizing that the stream was full of nothing but guppies. Deciding I had gone far enough east, I got back in the truck and headed back towards Kampala, and all the potential collecting places I had noted while driving to Mabira.

At several locations along the road between Kampala and Jinja the highway passes through papyrus swamps that are mined for clay which is used to make bricks. I stopped at one of these locations (luckily it was Sunday so no one was working making bricks) on the way back. On the south side of the street was a beautiful flooded low area. It was full of emersed tropical plants and the water was stained to the color of weak coffee. I thought it would be a great killie collecting location. Alas, after several pulls all I had caught were hundreds of whiskered tadpoles. When I first saw these I was excited that I had encountered a new type of glass cat. These tadpoles have a very different shape with a clear body, much flattened head, and whiskers that extend about one inch and look just like nasal barbels. I actually brought a few home just to see what kind of frog they turn in to.

About this time the 11 year old boy that had stopped to watch me (there is always one everywhere you go) pointed in my net at the tadpole and said, "frog." Yes, I said and then pointed to my net and said hopefully, "fish?" He pointed to the north side of the road where the brick making operation was and said, "fish." "Ngege," (cichlid) I asked. "Yes." "Nkolongo?" (catfish) I said with hope. "No." Ok, so no catfishes, but you never know when you will get lucky.

The brick making place was a collecting disaster. It consisted of about a dozen grave sized holes about 5-6 feet deep where clay had been extracted. They were spaced about a foot apart and all connected as the water was about six to 10 inches deep in the entire swamp. It did not look promising. Then right over one of the shallow areas I watched about a dozen adult Halpochromis cross between two holes. The boy and I took turns taking stabs at the holes with the net but only managed to catch a few small cichlid fry. About this time I noticed the result of my poor planning. Our efforts had stirred up the clay and the entire area was opaque with mud. There was no way to see where the holes were. Like soldiers crossing a mine field we found our way back to the shore using the net to probe the muddy water for solid ground.

I was now soaked, but it was mostly from sweating in the strong equatorial sun. Then an idea occurred to me. I placed the rectangular net (about 2X3 feet made of PVC pipe) in the middle of a hole and drew it back towards me until it was flush with the hole's vertical wall. Think of using a small hand net to trap a fish against the wall of an aquarium. Then I brought the net straight up. The first pull came up with several Haplochromis! My little friend cheered and I made several more pulls in the same manner. The catch of the day was a single silvery barb with dusky fins about one inch long. I sorted the cichlids to keep four that included a clear young male. There were also several very small fry in the bag (less than one inch TL) that I could not separate. Unpacking them at home turned up more Haplochromis and two tiny Tilapia fry.

About this time I heard honking from across the street and saw that a large dump truck was unable to pass where I had parked my truck on a small dirt road. With many apologies to the driver and his crew I quickly packed up my catch, paid off my assistant, and got back on the highway. I thought to try to tell the boy (remember his only English words appeared to be "frog" and "fish") to give the money to his mother for food. Then I thought that the 5,000 schillings was a windfall the likes of which he would probably never see again, and if he spent it all on soda and candy, it would probably be the only chance he ever had to do such a thing in his childhood.

I stopped at several more potential collecting points but did not try them for various reasons (too many people, obvious pollution, etc). So singing Happy Birthday to Me I headed back to Kampala.

Oh and the cow. He was in front of me in traffic on the way home.

-Shane

[lfinley58]

Hi Shane,

Sounds like a very nice birthday event. Thanks for sharing it here. Aline and I wish you a happy birthday...and, of course, many more to come.

Lee

[Timberwolf]

Happy Birthday, Shane!

[bronzefry]

Happy birthday, Shane!
Amanda

[MatsP]

As Lee says: Happy birthday, and many to follow.

I wish I had any chance of my birthday is at least nearly as interesting. But maybe I can go to a LFS or some such...

--
Mats

[Silurus]

whiskered tadpoles

You will end up with adult clawed frogs (Xenopus).

Happy Birthday.

[Martin S]

You will end up with adult clawed frogs (Xenopus).

There goes the surprise
Happy birthday Shane, and as Mats says, oh to have a chance like that for any birthday would be a dream come true!
Regards
Martin

[Shane]

You will end up with adult clawed frogs (Xenopus).

Thanks HH. That was the only logical ID I could guess at given the very flattened heads of the tadpoles, but I was not sure. I have a couple of fair amphibian books, but of course they always show the adult frogs and not the tadpole form. A very useful field guide, since I encounter one or more different tadpoles at every collecting location, would be a guide that included that tadpole forms.

You can see from this photo why for a split second I thought I had found a glass cat.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 130718.htm

Appreciate all the birthday wishes.

-Shane

[worton[pl]]

Hey Shane,

happy birthday . You may try older books from 1980-1990. I have few books about amphibians from back then. They have no photos but very, very detailed informations (to cover signle species they use about 20-30 pages) about every thing you may imagine . Also a lot of very good drawnings. Sadly they are about polish species but I guess there are versions for other areas as well. I love to photograph amphibians in my country. We have few species that are very interesting animals. Since we haven't got any catfishes you may collect ;) I spend time on my journeys watching amphibians and birds .

Regards.

[Jools]

A good read, thanks Shane. I am worried however, that given a hole that you find, the term you use to describe its size is a grave! But then, that worldly element is why I like reading your stuff.

Jools

[L number Banana]

Thanks Shane and Happy Birthday! Nice that you can always find a wonderful assistant.

It's like you gave us a present. Also it reminded me to photograph the little tadpole in my native tank.

[Shane]

I am worried however, that given a hole that you find, the term you use to describe its size is a grave!

The thought has occurred to me more than once that I am bound to eventually come across a corpse, or worse yet, have one turn up in my net. I collected several rivers in Venezuela (2000-2002) that were in areas where 100s of people had died during the mud slides of 2000. I was quite sure I would eventually pull up a skull or something equally grim, but it never happened. There is of course a chance that I may encounter something similar here.
My only "gross out" experience came in San Casimiro (where you and I collected Chaetostoma). I was further down the river form where we were in about waist deep water. Imagine my surprise when I noticed that what I had at first dismissed as a piece of floating driftwood a few feet to my right was in in fact a bloated dog carcass.

A week later all the fishes collected are doing well and eating dry foods. The Haplochormis are even starting to color up. I had hoped they would as I surmised that their washed out colors were due to their muddy (think whitewater) environment. I have also been doing quite a bit of reading in the last week as I was hit hard with a cold. I finished Tijs Goldschmidt's Darwin's Dreampond; Drama in Lake Victoria and George Barlow's The Cichlid Fishes; Nature's Grand Experiment in Evolution. Both are good reads, but Barlow's makes my top ten list of books every aquarist/naturalist should read. The subject matter is cichlids, but the book goes so far beyond being just cichlid book. If you have not read this book yet immediately put it on your Christmas list. You will not be disappointed.

Warning: Digression into cichlids!
The only point I disagree with the cichlid experts on is the family's evolutionary history. Current theories try to figure out Cichlidae's radiation from Pangea. I think this is the wrong starting point and more attention must be given to the fact that Cichlids are Perciformes. More specifically, they are the only freshwater dwelling family of the suborder Labroidei, which places cichlids closest relatives as wrasses, damselfishes, and parrot fishes. Pangea broke up 160 million years ago, but the oldest cichlid fossils are 30 million years old. Barlow believes older fossils will be found. I believe the reason is more likely because more than 30 million years ago the great ancestor of today's cichlids was still swimming in the oceans. There are many data points that lend credence to this idea. 1) The most basal members of Cichlidae, Etroplus (aka the chromids to hobbyists) in India, are still brackish water fishes, 2) Most cichlids still maintain an ability to cope with high salinity levels, 3) the distribution pattern of cichlids does not match the Ostariophysi (barbs, catfishes, tetras, et al) 4) cichlids have only had massive evolutionary success where they have colonized ocean-like bodies of water that are stable and offer hard, alkaline water (i.e. the big lakes of east Africa and Central America).

Barlow also offers some great reading with regard to the "what is a species" question that pops up around here a lot. He cites one recent study of Haplochromis. They tested the DNA of 14 species from 9 different genera (different genera!) and found that there were less differences in their DNA structure than among a typical population of humans. When you read about things like this it really makes you question the entire species concept we are currently using.

-Shane

[Bas Pels]

@ Cichlid evolution, you do offer good arguments, but as far as I know, the Labroids are all from the Indian ocean - they never made it into the Atlantic, and therefore it's a bit hard to see how they managed to reach America.

I don't think the ur-cichlids crossed africa and went back into the ocean to swim to America.

Further, I think the situation in the rift lakes and in the central American rivers is quite unsimilar. Cichlids do cope very well in very stable areas (by protecting their fry they manage to keep them alife, even though large predators are around) but central America is totally different.

The rivers are mostly fast flowing, the few large lakes we see such as lake Nicaragua are not that important (it has some 12 species of cichlids) so most of them have to cope with very un-ocean like circumstances.

Personally I think we have so many cichlids in central America, because there are so few other families around

[Shane]

@ c*****d evolution, you do offer good arguments, but as far as I know, the Labroids are all from the Indian ocean - they never made it into the Atlantic, and therefore it's a bit hard to see how they managed to reach America.

Ahh, you went the wrong way my friend . If India (and Madagascar to a lesser extent) are the homes of the basal cichlids, they would have followed the other labroids that stretch across the Pacific. The fourth member of the subfamily, the Odacids, are only found off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. Regardless, labroids are found in the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic.

Central America, as you pointed out, may not offer a good example. I was trying to find an example outside of Africa, but in the big context, the New World cichlids are hardly worth mentioning. Consider there are about 1,000 cichlids just from Lake Malawi and about 3,000 described FISHES (that is all plecos, tetras, pims, corys, etc, etc) from all of South America. In this sense the New World cichlids would get lost as a "rounding off" in any statistical study.

I just think that the importance of the family Cichlidae's closest relatives all being marine fish probably says a lot about where they came from.
-Shane

[Bas Pels]

Thank you for explaining about Labroids

I think we should look a bit more carefully into the species flacks of the great riftlakes. All these flocks are of Haplochromine fish, none of the other subfamilies / tribes (depending on who you read, the groupes have different standings) havee others have formed such flocks

To me, I'm absolutely not interested in anything coming from these lakes, these flocks, consisting of some 2000 species, are just variations of a theme, and the family of Cichlidae has a lot of other, more beautiful themes to play.

So I don't agree to 'the New World c*****ds are hardly worth mentioning' but now I'm getting not off topic, but off forum

[Shane]

Frogs in the fishroom....

I am in the process of building a second (much larger) pond and decided to season it with water from my older pond. Since I was taking out water anyway, I decided to dredge the old pond with a hand net and see what was in there. The whiskered tadpoles above had indeed turned into beautiful clawed frogs. I captured three and moved them to a tank in the fishroom so I could photo them this weekend. Well, just went to feed tonight and there was only one frog in the tank. I looked high and low for the other two but could not find them to save my life.
Looks like there is now a pair of new residents in the fishroom.
Also, in what I consider a very positive sign I caught a single tadpole of an unrelated frog sp in the small pond. That means that frogs on the grounds (none of which I have ever heard nor seen) are now spawning in the little pond. That is like getting free pets!
-Shane

[Richard B]

Frogs in the fishroom....

I am in the process of building a second (much larger) pond and decided to season it with water from my older pond. Since I was taking out water anyway, I decided to dredge the old pond with a hand net and see what was in there. The whiskered tadpoles above had indeed turned into beautiful clawed frogs. I captured three and moved them to a tank in the fishroom so I could photo them this weekend. Well, just went to feed tonight and there was only one frog in the tank. I looked high and low for the other two but could not find them to save my life.
Looks like there is now a pair of new residents in the fishroom.
Also, in what I consider a very positive sign I caught a single tadpole of an unrelated frog sp in the small pond. That means that frogs on the grounds (none of which I have ever heard nor seen) are now spawning in the little pond. That is like getting free pets!
-Shane

Cool - i look forward to the amphibious pics -

[Shane]

A horrible pic to be sure, but I could not be happier with how my B Day ditch sicklids turned out.
-Shane

[MatsP]

Is that a pair then, or is the yellow one a different species.

--
Mats

[Shane]

Yellow one is another genus, P. c. victoriae. One of his mates is below. There is a female with a mouth full of his fry as well but she was hiding in the back and refused to come out for a photo. You could see the eyes of the fry through her lower mouth. Would have been a brilliant pic but the photo gods were not smiling on me.
-Shane

[L number Banana]

Hi Shane, pretty pretty fish! What ever happened with the frogs?

My errant tadpole is now an inch long in body with a tail around another inch. No sign of legs yet. Seems right on track *IF* tadpoles normally overwinter here and get froggy in the spring. For some reason, this seems like a really long time? It seems like your clawed frogs were tadpoles for only a short while?

[Shane]

I had a small frog disaster. Two escaped the small holding tank I had them in. I searched high and low for them without luck. I felt so bad that I immediately returned the remaining frog to my small pond. Several days later I followed the ant trails to the two lost frogs. They had crawled into the track of the sliding security gate and perished.
I guess it is about time to dredge the small pond again and see if the remaining frog turns up.
All of the various tadpoles I have collected here have turned into frogs in 2-3 weeks. Maybe tropical vs temperate?
Our sliding security gates are murder on the local fauna as they hide in the recessed tracks. Wife smashed a huge, beautiful gecko in one the other week and felt horrible. Luckily we have many to spare. I walked around the outside of the house with my daughter after sunset a while ago and we counted over 50 without trying very hard. There are at leastr another dozen that have become inside residents... house geckos
-Shane