Dragons by Habitat

Ctenophorus is far and away Australia's largest genus of dragons; the current count being 28 species. It keeps getting bigger, with the addition just last month of a new species, Ctenophorus mirrityana. These dragons were long thought to be Ctenophorus decresii, and admittedly they do look pretty similar. However, there are differences if you look close enough, as McLean et al. did. Also, as McLean et al. found once they did the genetics, it turns out that Ctenophorus mirrityana isn't even particularly closely related to Ctenophorus decresii. C. decresii is much more closely related to a very different looking lizard, Ctenophorus fionni.

A tawny dragon,  Ctenophorus decresii, which looks like but is not particularly closely related to Ctenophorus mirrityana. near Burra, South Australia, 2011. Photo by Tobias Hayashi.

The genus just keeps expanding. Before Ctenophorus mirrityana, the last time species got added to Ctenophorus  was in 2008, when Melville et al. found four species of small, heath-dwelling lizards to be phylogenetically inside the Ctenophorus radiation. These four look nothing like what a Ctenophorus should look like, and don't really behave like a self-respecting Ctenophorus either. They are small, inconspicuous, pebble-mimicking lizards that aren't very fast and would rather crouch down and hope you don't see them than take off running. Any self-respecting Ctenophorus sits up proudly and doesn't care if you see it, because it knows it is faster than you. Well, it thinks it's faster than you.

The Ctenophorus is not faster than me. I'm also pretty sneaky. Cameron's Corner, South Australia, 2011. Photo by Angus Kennedy.

Just one year before that, in 2007, a lizard species completely unknown to science was described from remote central Western Australia. It was found living on the surface of a salt lake, something Ctenophorus are famous for. This lizard turned out also to be a Ctenophorus  and was named Ctenophorus nguyarna. So in the past seven years, six species have been added to the Ctenophorus genus in three different instances. Not only that, but each instance was a different method of discovering a new species: species splitting, polyphyly, and discovery of completely new animals previously unknown to science.

Before all this, a long time ago (the 80's) Dr. Allen Greer noticed and wrote about the fact that Ctenophorus  dragons fall broadly into three categories: those that shelter in burrows, those that shelter under rocks, and those that shelter in vegetation. Thirty years later, Dr. Greer's designations still stand as a very useful way to divide up Australia's largest dragon genus. According to the most recent Ctenophorus phylogeny, there are two groups of everything. Two groups of burrowers, two groups of rock-dwellers, and two groups of vegetation-dwellers. 

The first group of vegetation-dwellers are the small, heath-dwelling lizards formerly of the genus Rankinia that were transferred into Ctenophorus in 2008 based on phylogenetics and some subtle morphological features. Phylogenetics be damned, I consider them interlopers and will have nothing more to do with them! Also, I've never seen one and I don't have any pictures of them. The other groups, however, I have plenty of pictures of, so I think I'll go through each group and put up some pictures of them and their very different habitats.

Mammal Update

Angus and I just got back from another field trip, and I had to put up this picture in relation to the previous pictures of mammals. It was shearing season and I think this is a rebel gang of sheep that avoided the round-up. The are certainly going to regret that come summer!

Some heavily-burdened sheep. Lake Hurlestone Conservation Reserve, Western Australia. October 2013. Photo by Angus Kennedy.

More Mammals

I thought I'd put up some more pictures of non-native mammals instead of finally getting to the dragons themselves. I think about dragons all day. Why not spend a little time with something much bigger, smellier, dirtier, and more generally offputting?  Not to mention more dangerous.

My first day in the field last year, we arrived at Henbury Station and, as part of our orientation, we got a lecture on safety. As we always do. I was expecting the usual: heat, water, snakes, getting lost, heat. Instead, the first thing I was told: "watch out for camels."  What? Camels? They're big, ugly and have a reputation for spitting on you (that guy totally deserved it), but aren't they also supposed to be man's friend, carrying our water through the desert? 

A herd of feral Australian camels. Mulga Park Station, Northern Territory, 2012. Photo by Angus Kennedy.

Apparently not. Camels can be pretty dangerous (here's one trying, with adorable results) and have quite the reputation in central Australia. In the spring, the time of year when we were in the field, male camels gather together a group of female camels. They guard their harem not only from other camels, but also from other large, intrusive creatures like humans. A male camel is a huge, powerful animal and getting stomped on by one would not be a pleasant experience.

The male camel is the really big one to the left. Mulga Park Station, Northern Territory, 2012. Photo by Angus Kennedy.

I only encountered a herd of camels once while I was on foot. They were quite impressive. Perspective can be misleading. Looking at those animals while standing on the ground I realized they were a lot bigger, and I a lot smaller, than I thought when watching them from the safety (and elevation) of the Landcruiser. Also, they must only use smaller females for camels rides, because that male was HUGE. Or maybe feral camels in Australia are like feral cats. Fortunately these camels weren't too interested in me. Not that I gave them much of a chance. I headed away from the flat ground and vegetation into the rocky hills. I don't think camels like hills.

IT'S LOOKING RIGHT AT YOU. Tempe Downs Aboriginal Land, Northern Territory, 2012. 

Camels are also a massive nuisance to cattle ranchers. They compete with the cattle for scarce resources and harass the cattle during the breeding season. Though they're worth money, they're apparently very difficult to muster. One eight-year-old daughter of a station owner matter-of-factly explained "it's the dumbest thing my dad ever decided to do." So most ranchers choose to have camels on their lands end up like this: 

One of my field sites turned out to be a creepy camel graveyard. We counted seven skeletons. Note the bullet hole at the back of the skull. Mulga Park Station, Northern Territory, 2012. Photo by Angus Kennedy.

Both brumbies and feral camels are pretty rare on our field trips. We didn't encounter any in 2011 and only a handful in 2012. Ironically, I have only one single lonesome picture of the most commonly seen mammal on our trips. Probably because we don't think to take pictures of commonplace things, even when they are photogenic. Here is that poor, lonely picture:

Cattle, the most abundant outback mammal. Mulga Park Station, Northern Territory, 2012. Photo by Angus Kennedy.

I do have a few pretty good pictures from Angus of our second most commonly sighted mammal, courtesy of a sunrise drive through a large herd:

Sheep! Yardea Station, South Australia, 2012. Photo by Angus Kennedy

Sunrise through the sheep. Yardea Station, South Australia, 2012. Photo by Angus Kennedy.

Horsies!

I don't have much of a soft spot in my heart for introduced species. Particularly in Australia, they're destructive and have been a factor in more than a few extinctions. Nonetheless, I have to admit that sometimes they are damn pretty. We've only come across Brumbies, as Australians call their introduced horses, twice during fieldwork. That's not nearly as often as we come across other introduced species such as foxes, cats and dingoes. When we do see some, I just have to stop and stare. Boy are they beautiful!

Photos from the day I applied to ANU

After I finished undergrad, I went backpacking with a friend in South America. Before I left I had spoken with Prof Scott Keogh at the ANU about doing a PhD, and the difficulty in getting international scholarships. I was planning on starting the application process after our trip.

While we were backpacking, I got news from Prof. Keogh that the ANU was offering a special, unexpected round of international scholarships. The application deadline was one week after the announcement, so I had to get a PhD application together and submitted quickly. When we arrived in Santa Fe, Venezuela, my time was running out. International scholarships are hard to get, and having such a short window to submit an application meant that the competition would be greatly reduced, so obviously I had to try my best to get mine in. 

Mochima National Park, Venezuela.

My friend and I were supposed to go dolphin-watching and island-beach-bumming in Santa Fe. She ended up going by herself, and took my camera. These pictures are all hers, taken while watching the dolphins frolic and relaxing on the beach. Meanwhile, I was trying desperately to get some kind of respectable application together.

I was frantic. Santa Fe is a small place, with only one Internet cafe. The computers I was on were running Windows 98. They didn't have any version of Microsoft Office on them, instead they had some open source, Spanish word processing program I'd never heard of. I don't even think there was the option to save anything as .doc. I just saved everything as whatever and hoped for the best.

Mochima National Park, Venezuela

I was e-mailing my parents, getting them to send me transcripts and CVs. Meanwhile, I was trolling through my Sent Mail box to see what bits and pieces I could scrape together from attachments I had previously sent. I was running (and paying for) three computers at once: one for downloading documents from my e-mail to a USB key, one for typing, and one for uploading. The kids who usually used those computers for gaming were not impressed.

Mochima National Park, Venezuela.

Life on the Caribbean is not set-up for the frantic. The Internet cafe closed for a three hour siesta from 11-2, and the tired old lady who ran the place wasn't about to give that up.

I did end up getting an application together on time, with a lot of assistance, support and sympathy from Prof. Keogh and my parents. But I also learned that sometimes you just can't live in the moment, no matter what TV and that hippy from Iowa who makes figurines out of wire to sell to tourists on the beach in Colombia try to teach you.

Mochima National Park, Venezuela.