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Showing posts from 2016

Two-Lined Salamander, a survey protocol

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A provincial strategy for finding  Eurycea Frederick W Schueler Abstract: Eurycea bislineata (Two-lined Salamander), is one of the cases where Ontario has one species from what is a whole guild of species farther south, and the map of the species occurrence in Ontario is mostly made up of holes between central southern Ontario and isolated records on the Moose River, Manitoulin, Moose Creek, and north of Sudbury. I've contributed a few of the isolated records, but I've also been guilty of not turning Eurycea -ish rocks along a lot of streams, partly because there's no planned protocol for such a search, comparable to the 100-stones protocol for Acroloxus . I'll present a strategy for filling those holes or confirming the isolation of the outlying populations, based on my experience and contributions from colleagues in and outside Ontario. 

Giant Grass may come under control

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                                                                by Fred Schueler and Aleta Karstad "Autumn Phragmites" oil painting by Aleta Karstad Highway 416 east of Kemptville Ontario is totally lined with tall, plume-headed reed grass, and if you don't remember having seen it before the highway was twinned, you're not mistaken! This is Phragmites australis subspecies australis , the Common Reed of Europe, and it wasn't documented by museum specimens in eastern Ontario before 1976. At the University of Toronto, Fred's Ph.D. outside minor was systematic botany, and his project was hybridization between the native Broad-leaved Cattail, Typha latifolia , and the now-thought-to-be-invasive Narrow-leaved Cattail, Typha angustifolia .

Rusty Crayfish, Super Hybrids!

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by Fred Schueler Giant Orconectes rusticus/propinquus hybrid, captured at Oxford Mills, Ontario Crayfish, on 1 January, 2016