Post Sixteen

          There's lots of drought going on right now. Look at the map. Douglas county is lucky to be missing out on that, but I still think this spring is a little dry compared to last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. It'll probably get worse as the summer progresses, hopefully not. It seems like the great plains will turn into a big desert in the next few hundred years, at least that's my prediction. I'm not happy about it.

    Still, May and June are the rainiest months, and it rains, and it rained. There's a special magic in the air right after it rains, while everything is rejuvenating. It was in this magical environment I departed for the Israel Chemicals LTD facility. 

    Yep, I went to a chemical plant, because there's a super cool prairie restoration on it's campus. I only discovered the place this winter, but it's become one of my favorites. Upon approaching I realized it had been burned since the last time I came, but was coming back with vigor. I've known since before I lived around them that fires are important to prairies, but I think this was my first time really seeing that in action.

    Everything was fresh. Last year's grasses had given their carbon rich bodies to nurture new ones. The fecund husks shone through in places. Mounds made from dead saplings, and edges next to the trail. They laid over, laid into, then became, the dark soil.

Those lighter green, large leaved plants in the foreground are baby milkweeds

    Up from the new grass rose some sturdy brown stalks, islands for birds to perch. There were swallows out that day, of both tree and barn varieties. (And I didn't get a picture of any of them :( because of course I didn't) Swallows are true athletes. Their careening and racing through the air would be enough of an event, but they top it off with brilliant colors. The barn swallow, perhaps the most iconic swallow, is the color of a waning crescent night, with a clay-red breast. The back of the tree swallow iridesces like labradorite, and it's white underparts shine like W.B. Mason's printer paper. Both share the sleek, aerodynamic swallow shape.

    There were two birds I did not recognize, and honestly couldn't even muster a good guess as to what they were. They were shy and didn't let me get very close. One might maybe have been a meadowlark, but it could be something else just as well. I would have figured it out if I'd had a closer look. I'll just have to buy a new pair of binoculars soon, because I've given up on finding my old ones. 
    The easternmost part of the prairie hadn't been burnt, possibly because they wanted to keep those trees there. I'm not sure why they would want to keep the trees though, maybe there's some plan for that area.

    This place gave me some hope, which I've needed lately. A lovely, rich ecosystem made by volunteers. And it's existing in harmony with a chemical plant. This is proof we can change the world. That's corny, but the whole blog is corny. This type of work; habitat restoration, creation, and preservation is what we need the most. 

   I've given up on global warming. I think most people have. Anything to help will be too little, too late. The ecological problems we as a society should be focusing on are how to deal with are preserving habitats, reducing harmful waste, & stuff like that. 

    When I went back  home I took the levee route instead of the road. I found a unique plant on my way there. The elusive ditch weed. My guess is that it escaped from an adjacent house. I didn't take any home.
   This blog took a while to write, hence the now-outdated drought report. Ever since I started working again I've felt like I have less creativity, or that my explosions of it are less frequent. I'm not even working very much at all, just 19 hours per week. I'm hoping this is just something about getting used to working again. It's only been about one month. 

   

Post 15: Herpetological Speculation

     Yesterday, on the way back from a ride to Baker Wetlands I saw what I think was the biggest snake I have ever seen in the wild. It was probably just under 5 feet long, and over 2 inches in diameter. My best guess is that it was a North American Racer. I saw some rattlesnakes back when I lived in California, but I can't remember how big they were. I was so young.

    I start Introduction to Linguistics at KU on June 6th. If that class goes well I might try to get a linguistics degree. Lord knows what I'll do if it doesn't.

    This blog has now existed for over one year. Pretty incredible, I guess. Maybe not. 

    This post isn't a normal story about bike riding or some other adventure. I wrote a draft of that but just didn't like it very much. This isn't much better, I'm just talking about lizards.

O mio bambino caro!

    2 days ago I was looking at the Wikipedia page for Santo Stefano island, a tiny island in Italy that had a prison from 1797 to 1965, and basically nothing else. From there I got to the Santo Stefano lizard, a now extinct subspecies of Italian wall lizard that lived on the island. 

    What this led me to learn is that the Italian wall lizard adapts quite rapidly, and there are at least 50 subspecies. In 1971, an incredible experiment begun where some Italian wall lizards from one Croatian island (Pod Kopište) were moved to another (Pod Mrčaru). Scientists checked up on them over the decades to see how they changed. 

    The results were pretty cool, in just 36 years the lizards had diverged from each other significantly. Mostly due to how Pod Mrčaru didn't have as much meat to eat, the lizards had to be vegetarian. They got bigger and had higher bite forces. They also developed cecal valves, which are found in less than 1% of squamates. Cecal valves "slow down food passage and provide for fermenting chambers, allowing commensal microorganisms to convert cellulose to volatile fatty acids". (1)

    One other place the Italian wall lizard have recently been introduced is here in Kansas. They are present in Topeka, Hays, and Lawrence. Kansas was a boon for these little guys, as their niche was completely unoccupied. Being a species adapted for rocky areas, they did great in urban environments. (Just like pigeons or "rock doves" as they are also called) The lizards got to Topeka first, possibly an introduction from Quivira Specialties, a store. How they got to Lawrence is unknown, but they have been here since at least 1999 in north Lawrence, and 2001 around KU.

    So if the Italian wall lizard can change drastically from Pod Kopište to Pod Mrčaru in just a few decades, will that happen here too? Well, I'm not sure, but one big difference between Italy and Kansas is the winters. 

    The lizards already brumate through the winter, which they don't do in Italy. Another way lizards adapt to the cold is by having eggs that develop faster, or waiting until the embryos are further along in development before laying eggs. Many cold adapted lizards are viviparous and just do away with eggs altogether. That won't happen to our Italian wall lizards, seeing as the similar & native Six Lined Racerunner lays eggs like a normal lizard. There can also be some small under-the-hood changes to improve oxygen economy.

    I don't think that Kansas will change the Italian Wall lizard all that much, to be honest. Even though this animal has the potential to evolve incredibly quickly to a new environment, it needs to have a reason. I don't think it will have much of a reason. Kansas and Italy are quite similar as far as the lizard is concerned. 

   As already mentioned, Kansas does have harsher winters than Italy, but that's probably the biggest difference between the two. Summers are similar in both places. Types of food available is probably quite similar, and so are habitats. There could be something I'm missing. 

    And I'm not saying that there will never be a Kansas subspecies of Italian wall lizard, there probably will be, but I don't think it will happen all that fast. I'd love to be proven wrong though, so it might be worth it for someone to round up some lizards in 13 years and see if they're different from those in Tuscany. They could also see if there’s any difference between lizards north and south of the river.

Home invader

   

Sources:

(1) Rapid large-scale evolutionary divergence in morphology and performance associated with exploitation of a different dietary resource: Irschick et al.

(2)  https://webapps.fhsu.edu/ksherp/account.aspx?o=32&t=46

(3)  Plasticity and local adaptation explain lizard cold tolerance: Card et al https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mec.14575

(4)  https://bioone.org/journals/northeastern-naturalist/volume-12/issue-3/1092-6194(2005)012%5b0349%3aSADAPO%5d2.0.CO%3b2/Seasonal-and-Diel-Activity-Patterns-of-Italian-Wall-Lizards-Podarcis/10.1656/1092-6194(2005)012%5B0349:SADAPO%5D2.0.CO;2.short