romunov’s blog et al

And we went to the Karst one more time this year. This year, we were one week earlier compared to the last year, when we were there in the first-ish week of September. The weather was pretty similar, at least temperature wise. When we got to the hillside above Osp (Kastelec), we were met by Burja - a wind blowing from the hills to the sea side. This prevented a lot of butterflies to have a nice stroll in the park and our job a bit harder, because you had to almost step on the butterfly to see it. You can see by Marko’s net that the wind was blowing, and to convince you that this happens on a regular basis here, you can see that the pine tree is growing sideways (kinda like fuki-nagashi (?) bonsai tree). After a lovely stroll just south of village Kastelec, where the pristine Karstic region is being destroyed by piling rocks or succession, we split up into different groups and checked out specific locations. I was sent to near the border with Croatia (hill Kuk), but just as last year, found almost no species. At about four o’clock, we regrouped in the local restaurant and counted, all in all, 51 species of butterflies.

Here are two pictures of butterflies. The first one is Pseudophilotes vicrama (Eastern Baton Blue; šetrajev sleparček), and the catterpillar is from Iphiclides podalirius (Scarce Swallowtail; jadralec).

I am currently working on a project, where we search for a butterfly and a plant withing a given range on Ljubljansko Barje near Ljubljana. My task is to check every meadow, hedge and ditch and locate butterfly Maculinea telejus (also M. teleius, in Slovene "strašničin mravljiščar" and Scarce Large Blue for English) and the feeding plant Sanguisorba officinalis (strašnica). I mark everything down on a map (like the ones here) with color markers and fill out a form. All this will be analyzed at a later date and consolidated in an opinion on "health" of population of this perticular buttefly in this particular region. Why? (more…)

Found this body yesterday. I’m fairly certain this is the result of modern farm equipment. UPDATE: I’ve talked to the authorities on mammal and they say the cause of death could be a number of things (car, hunting, parasites). Also, the damages are not consistent with mowers that usually cut off legs.

Part of my training for a biologist consists of field work. The last comprehensive camp was last week at lake Bohinj. Bohinj is located at the north-western part of Slovenia in a valley in Julian Alps (east part of the Alps you keep hearing about). I didn’t have time to take a lot of photos (or I didn’t take the time, because the camera wasn’t as handy as I would want it to be), but I did take a few. Here is one of Savica brook just before it spills into the lake. The brook is very cold (around 5˚C) and it creates a thermocline in its delta - a sharp transition from its temperature to that of the surface temperature of the lake, which is about 20˚C in this time of year. The cold water runs at the bottom of the lake and doesn’t mix with the upper layers of the lake as one might imagine. The lake is meromictic, meaning it gets mixed by winds two times a year (spring and autumn). The east part is the deepest, about 45 meters. River flowing out of the lake is called Jezernica.

I was sampling with Ekman’s corer (also dubbed Bodengriefer, švaba) at about 40 meters. As luck would have it, I hit a spot with a lot of subterranean amphipod crustaceans, which indicates there is an underwater spring thereabout. Hopefully this will be of any value to the scientists at http://niphargus.info/. Sampling was done on one day, sorting the samples the other and identifying on the third. Identifying was interesting. Most animals were Diptera larvae, but oligochaetes were common as well. As already mentioned, one sample contained a lot of amphipods. Deep parts of lakes are usually poor in animal diversity (and zero in plant diversity, because there is usually no light below a certain compensation point defined by many factors) because of extreme environmental conditions. Animals have to be adapted to low temperatures and often low oxygen levels. Some animals (like the amphipods I already mentioned twice) avoid low oxygen levels by moving through the ground into subterranean streams.

What I love about field work is that you get to encounter a bunch of animals. After running into a cow calf that has escaped from the pasture, this was just behind the curve. Can you imagine what he/she’s thinking? "I smell something funny…".

As soon as the weather cleans up, I’m off hunting for Euphydryas maturna, a species protected by Natura 2000. I’ll be trying to enumerate how many individuals is occuring in a certain area (transect method).

This is preparation in progress - know thy terrain.

Biology students’ society has organized a "field weekend" in Budanje in Vipavska dolina valley. I was attending the buttefly group. We visited Goriško (famous for its fine assortment of wines) and Mlake. Goriško was, from butterflies point of view, totally devestated. Only two habitat types that we noticed were vinyards and fragmented forest. The only viable habitats were along the roads, but they had only grasses, not suitable for adult butterflies. We found only a few species of butterflies - and not even the most common ones one would expect. We took a trip to Mlake, a marsh area recently turned into highway and military shooting range. According to older biologists, they destroyed the most valuable part of the marshy grassland that sheltered innumerable vulnerable species of plants and animals. All three pictures are from this location.

Mellicta britomartis (I hope that’s the species - I’m waiting confirmation from a senior lepidopterologist). It’s Mellicta athalia, one of the most common ones. My bad.

Euphydryas aurinia

A cerambicid beetle. My guess would be Aromia moschata. Have to check with the experts though, as I’m very short on coleopterid literature.

I took the oportunity and went for a photographing spree around the local meadows and woods. A bunch of pictures under the fold. It’s 11 p.m. and I still have some work to do, so I’ll be attaching names at a later date. I know most of them, but I need to identify a few of them.

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I’ve been absent for a few days last week (ok, for ten days). I was attending a camp in Vransko (between Celje and Ljubljana). It’s a student camp (more here, comprised mostly of biology students, but you will find other pimps in there as well. Work there involved a lot of field work, and for some groups, even field lab work (with dissection microscopes and such, especially for spider and botany groups, but also dragonflies). I was in a group that studied butterflies. We searched for suitable habitats for butterflies, but due to late season the flowers weren’t in bloom and the grass has been cut on a lot of pastures, the catch wasn’t what we hoped for. None the less, our repertoire represented 72 different species on 32 different localities. Our highest locality was on mountain and ski resort Golte (1500 something meters). Here is only a small part of pictures I took.

A butt load of pictures under the fold.
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Had a little field trip to Goricko national park. Some places are really neat, although some habitats are in danger of being taken over by invasive species like Solidago and Impatiens grandulifera. We found three species of Maculinea (Large Blues), which was our primary goal. We found 50 species in total. We visited about 5 locations. More pictures under the fold.

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Ha, finally solved the mystery that surrounded this dragonfly for the past few days. I’ve netted it a few days ago but didn’t have my book nor my camera with me to identify it. So I tried to remember as many characters as possible so I could later look it up, and failed miserably. I could only pinpoint the genus by memory.

I’ve finally managed to net it and photograph it, so here it is. Somatochlora meridionalis from the family of Cordulegastridae.

And how do you know the species from the rest? All other characters aside, the yellow spot on the thorax is pretty characteristic of this one.

Some of you might be familiar with bioblitz - an event where you go out and try to identify and write down as many plant and animal species as possible. At <a href="http://rigorvitae.blogspot.com/2007/07/blogger-necroblitz.html">Rigor Vitae</a>, this was taken a step forward, where roadkills are identified and recorded. Somewhat easier, as you don’t have to search around, just watch where you drive your bike.

Perhaps I can someday publish some of the roadkill photos I have from my daily trips to school. 

Been a bit busy with the camera. I’ve tucked pictures under the fold to haste page load.

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We visited some nice karst meadows a few days ago. My camera isn’t currently available, so I’m posting pics from an anonymous photographer. With her consent, of course. Sorry, no butterfly pictures.

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This is what I found today “around” my home:
Ochlodes venatus
Limenitis reducta
Limenitis camilla
Pieris rapae
Pieris napi
Leptidea sinapis/reali
Melanargia galathea
Maniola jurtina
Argynnis adippe
Argynnis paphia
Clossiana dia
Lycaena phlaeas (mating pair)
Kanetisa circe (first personal sighting around here)
Iphiclides podalirius (first personal sighting around here)
Pieris brassicae
Brenthis daphne
Satyrium pruni Didn’t catch it, so the ID may be dubious. Damn! By phenology (time of occurance) it COULD be S. pruni, as it’s a bit late for a similar species, S. spini.
Polygonum c-album
Neptis rivularis
Aphantopus hyperantus
Gonepteryx rhamni
Mellicta athalia (aurelia?!) I have to recheck these two.
Araschnia levana
Brenthis ino
Pergarge aegeria
Coenonympha arcania Interesting enough, no C. pamphilus this time.
Melitaea diamina
Polyommatus icarus

We spent four days in Piran at the Marine biology station counting plankton and benthos.

We used a plankton (250 micron) net to haul on-board five loads of plankton, collected some rocks and identified whatever we could, and finally, we dredged shell bottom and soft bottom. Former was way richer in macrozoofauna. I don’t feel like going through the species we encountered, but I estimate, all in all, to about 200.

We spent a lot of time counting plankton. A lot. Based on our findings I estimated that in northern Adriatic sea, about 20x50 km and 20 m deep, lives about 10¹⁴ phyllopod crustaceans (sea water flees) (Penilia avirostris). Other common animals were Acartia clausii (a copepod), Doliolum muelleri (thaliacean tunicate - a salp), Oikopleura dioica (apendicularid tunicate) and some others.
We found that our samples differed to some degree, indicating that you can’t sample the same fauna in two hauls with the net we used, probably due to water currents.

I occasionally took the opportunity to go snorkeling, but that was limited to late hours of the day. We worked from 9 am to 10 pm on day one, 11 pm on day two and midnight (fun and joy of statistics) on the third day. You can imagine there was little time and sometimes energy, to do all the things one has set out to do. Unfortunately no one wanted to go diving with me, even though we could get all the equipment.
Also, my snorkle was having fun with me, letting in water, which made the experience… less pleasant, and let’s leave it at that.

On day 4 we visited the mariculture I’ve been familar with to some degree. I was there in previous years with the station when they studied the effect of mariculture “ponds” on sediment underneath it. It’s amazing to see the way fish (Dicentrarchus labrax) feed - swimming in circle and creating a number of eddies on the water surface. The power of 20k fish!

I’ve been a naughty boy… again. I should have studied, but I really had to take advantage of the beautiful sunny weather. Went butterfly and dragonfly hunting, and then some more. 9 pics inside.

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We had a field trip with our butterfly society to Mlake near Ajdovscina. Some pics inside. I excluded butterfly pics and am posting the most “interesting” ones.

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I did my butterfly route, and along the way, made a few photos. More under the fold.

And here is the list of species I saw/heard today. LBB (little brown birds) and other common things, excluded.
Coenonympha pamphilus
Pieris napi
Pieris rapae
Leptidea sinapis/reali
Gonepteryx rhamni
Callophrys rubi
Glaucopsyche alexis
Papilio machaon
Coenagrion hastulatum (dragonfly - need to recheck since I’m still a novice)
Orthetrum cancellatum (dragofly - need to recheck since I’m still a novice)
Araschnia levana
Everes argiades
Issoria lathonia
Cuculus canorus
Pyrgus malvae/malvoides
Lycaena tityrus
Anthocharis cardamines
Erynnis tages
Listera ovata

and more. ^_^

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I got a dichotomous orchids of Slovenia key from my docent for botany. I managed to ID one of the orchids growing on the hill next door.
I think I’m correct when I say that this is pictured specimen of Dactylorhizon (prstasta kukavica). I can’t decide on the species, though.

I’m thinking either D. maculata agg. or D. comosa.

According to the key, characters favouring D. maculata agg.:
- upper stem leaves don’t reach lower flowers (socvetje?)
- stem under the flowers thick 1,5-3 mm
- outter side flower leaves in blunt angle

Characters favouring D. comosa:
- stem hollow (I think it’s hollow, it sure feels like it, but I didn’t open it to be sure)
- flowers from May to June

I will leave the possibility that this is a hybrid, but if I had to decide the species, I would say D. comosa.