loarie's Favourites

As is typical for Gynacantha, this individual was trapped in a building. With a very slow approach, I was able to grab this guy by hand in the La Selva cafeteria.

I hoped it would be a Gynacantha I haven't seen before, but I believe the dark bar on the thorax and narrow S3 make this a Bar-sided Darner (Gynacantha mexicana) - a widespread tropical species.

La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica

Exciting stuff! Two adults and a subadult tightly rolled up in duff under a stone, all three of whom refused to uncoil for me. A nearby board yielded a third adult who was kind enough to move around a bit.

To this date, the second largest Burmese python caught in the Florida Keys. The animal was located in a novel way, it had eaten a Virginia opossum outfitted with a satellite telemetry collar. After a set period of inactivity, the collar would send off signal indicating that the animal was dead. Well this happened, and then the collar would move a few hundred feet, then go back on mortality signal, then move again and so on. After a week of this, we decided to go see what was up with the animal, so we tracked it to the hardwood-mangrove edge underground, odd for a opossum. We set up a grid of camera traps and baited them with cat food and no opossum showed up. A few days later, we tried digging at the point where the signal was strongest, thinking that maybe the collar slipped and after an hour we saw scales! We were able to extract the python that day after quite a fight pulling her from her burrow.
(1) Myself and other CLNWR employees holding the python
(2) First image of the python in the underground cavity
(3) Python being measured
(4) Python's enormous head
(5) Location of the collar (RIP Prairie Dog) in the python's GIT
(6) X-Ray of the collar within the python
Point submitted to EDDMapS and under review.
TL: 383.54cm
SVL: not taken
Mass: 28122.7kg
Sex: Female

Mide aprox. 3.5 cm, cuenta con un par de celipedos, tres pares de patas el último par de patas hacia arriba, cefalotorax, abdomen conformado por cuatro segmentos, torax fraccionado en ocho esternitos toracicos, telson encorvado hacia la parte interna abdominal acompañado por un par de urópodos.

Banded Coral Shrimp

Stenopus hispidus

Phylum / Filo: Arthropoda (Artrópode, arthropodes, arthropods)
Class / Clase: Malacostraca (Latreille, 1802)
Order / Orden: Decapoda (Latreille, 1802) crabs, crayfishes, lobsters, prawns, shrimp, crabes, crevettes, écrevisses, homards
Family / Familia: Stenopodidae (Claus, 1872) coral shrimps
Genus / Género: Stenopus (Latreille, 1819)
Species / Especie: Stenopus hispidus (Olivier, 1811) – banded coral shrimp, redbanded coral shrimp, 'opae-huna

Jan 11, 2003, Manzanillo, Limon. (Atlantic Coast)