The Banded Rock Rattlesnake

Our field methods involve a combination of biological surveying and monitoring, habitat quantification, mark-recapture, and tissue collection. The surveying and monitoring techniques tell us the community composition and diversity, along with population sizes and trends. We accomplish this primarily through visual-encounter surveys, whereby we walk transects and record every animal found. We supplement these visually-based methods with "pitfall traps" which are essentially buckets buried up to the rim arranged in a line along a fence, which funnels animals into the buckets. This method can help document shy or cryptic species that visual methods might miss.

To have a better estimate of population sizes, we also employ mark-recapture methodology. In this method, we capture as many animals of interest as we can, usually focusing on a few species; we will be focusing on the Ridge-nosed Rattlesnake for this procedure. For these snakes, we capture them and bring them back to our impromptu laboratory at hacienda Pan Duro for "processing". Processing snakes consists of anesthesia, examination, measurement, and implanting with a Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tag for future identification. Although you will not be able to handle venomous snakes directly, you will be able to assist with finding, capturing, and lab procedures.

Last, we will be taking DNA samples from some animals. This is usually done through a blood sample or mouth swab, although sometimes more invasive procedures need to be done. We also test amphibians for a disease spread by a fungal pathogen. We accomplish this by swabbing the animals' skin to collect DNA and then examining them with PCR and DNA sequencing to see if the genetic material of the fungus is present.

Safety is of utmost concern for participants. You will be full briefed on safety considerations before starting work. Some rules that we will discuss are: how to avoid dehydration, what to do when a venomous snake is encountered, avoiding accidents. All participants are expected to give respect to the rules, the leaders, and coworkers, and any serious infraction may lead to removal from the program and forfeiture of fees.