Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History
After it opened twelve years ago, the
Sam Noble Oklahoma
Museum of Natural History (SNOMNH) asked Jeremy Jacobs (Division of Amphibians
and Reptiles) to provide an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) assessment of the
new building. This year, administrators
at Sam Noble decided it was time to follow up on that assessment and asked
Jeremy once again to assess their IPM program and determine what, if anything,
needed tweaking.
Figure 1: Shore of , Lexington Wildlife Management areaArea. Note waterline is ca. 10 feet lower than full level due to drought in 2011 (photo Steve W. Gotte).
Jeremy spent three days
walking, climbing, and crawling through the museum with flashlight in hand to
assess the present pest situation. The
Sam Noble staff has done a great job.
The protocols put in place when the museum opened and the suggestions on
how to safely house the collections were taken seriously. As a result, insect and rodent pest levels in
the building were near zero. Jeremy gave
a lecture on the basics of IPM and wrote an in-depth report. He recommends anyone who travels near Norman
OK to stop by and visit the SNOMNH.
Besides maintaining fine research collections, they are a wonderful
public museum with exhibits centered on southern plains culture and natural
history.
Figure 2: Cricket frog, Arcis crepitans. Note the ever-present red clay and the soon to be dinner fly on the left (photo Steve W. Gotte).
After Jeremy finished his work at SNOMNH,
Steve Gotte (USGS/Amphibians and Reptiles) flew in and the two collected in
central and southwestern OK for several days. The purpose of the trip was to gather tissue
samples from a number of Midwestern and Southwestern species not currently
represented in the USNM collections.
Logistics for the trip were arranged in part by SNOMNH’s Herpetology
Collection Manager Jessa Watters. Jessa
saved Jeremy and Steve from the problems involved with procuring ethanol and
formalin in the field, as well as made available SNOMNH as a depot to receive
collecting equipment and sending back equipment and specimens.
Figure 3: Jeremy Jacobs (SI/Herps) hunting a roadside near Sandy Sanders WMA (photo Steve W. Gotte). Figure 4: Steve Gotte (USGS/Herps) at Sandy Sanders WMA (photo Jeremy F. Jacobs).
Jeremy and Steve started their search at the
wooded Lexington Wildlife Management Area (WMA) about an hour’s drive south of
Norman (figure 1). They found water in
several places, but relatively few frogs because of the 2011 drought and a
fairly high incidence of the chitrid fungal disease in the region; however,
they did find cricket frogs (figure 2). Besides finding a couple species of
snakes and turtles, Jeremy and Steve were treated to a male painted bunting
energetically courting a female in the middle of a dirt road.
Figure 5: Tarantula from under rock at Sandy Sanders WMA (photo Steve W. Gotte).
After leaving Lexington WMA, Steve
and Jeremy headed west and set up a base of operations at Clinton, OK. Besides exploring locally, they made a trip
to Sandy Sanders Wildlife Management Area (WMA) near the Texas border. Sandy Sanders WMA is notably different
from Lexington WMA in that it is much more rugged and drier (though through
fortuitous timing Jeremy and Steve [figures 3 and 4] got there at the height of
the Spring bloom when it was much greener than usual). Sandy Sanders WMA proved to be particularly
productive for snakes (13 specimens of 4 species), but herps were not the only
things found under rocks (see figure 5).
Jeremy and Steve returned to Norman via Great Plains State Park
and Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge where they observed some of the
local residents (see figures 6 – 8). In
all, they collected 50 specimens and tissues from 19 species.
Figure 6: Screech owl east of Sandy Sanders WMA (photo Steve W. Gotte).
Figure 7: Baby prairie dogs playing at Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge (photo Steve W. Gotte).
Figure 8: Mountain boomer (OK state lizard) Great Plains State Park (photo Steve W. Gotte).
