ENHS Nature Trails May 2003 Article 1

This month's speaker: Jay Bowerman

MOM WELCOMES THE SPOTTED SKUNK
We moved to the Coburg Hills outside Eugene when I was in the second grade and I quickly discovered the world was well populated with lizards, snakes, frogs and salamanders. I grew up roaming the forested hills and banks of the McKenzie River, mostly alone. Family trips to the Oregon Coast to visit an aunt who taught school in the tiny coastal town of Toledo brought discoveries of salamanders in new sizes and colors.

Mother encouraged curiosity and delight in the myriad things we discovered on regular forays through woods around home. She helped us find trilliums and lambs' tongues. She showed us clusters of pure white Indian pipes emerging from the moss that lay heavy in moist deep shade where the forest canopy was thickest, admonishing us not to touch them lest their delicate stems bruise and turn black. Despite her own upbringing in a mostly urban environment, Mother accepted the endless parade of small creatures that arrived on their own or were brought home by three growing boys determined to make pets of mice, lizards, snakes, mink, and even a fox. She was grateful for and fond of the little spotted skunk who came to rid us of white rats that proliferated under our house after my brother brought them home from seventh-grade science class.

Father too, was pretty cool about unexpected encounters with local creatures. When we found a rattlesnake living beneath lumber while building our house, he gathered it up in a 5-gallon bucket and took it to Dr. Lockley in the U of O Biology Department. Oh my amazement when Dr. Lockley reached barehanded into the bucket and picked up the snake, holding it carefully behind the head.

THE SPELL OF JIM KEZER
I took my first formal biology class as a high school sophomore at a school whose lack of materials was only exceeded by the teacher’s lack of preparation. I swore I’d never take another biology class. Later, I enrolled at the U of O to become a science teacher, and majored in general science. I managed to avoid biology until my first senior year. Fortunately, the wisdom of a great liberal arts college required that I complete at least one year of lower division biology. So, as a senior, I enrolled in freshman biology and came under the spell of the late Jim Kezer. I was so excited by the subject that I enrolled for a summer session of upper division invertebrate biology at the marine station at Charleston, and never looked back. Three years after graduating, I returned for a master’s degree. Dr. Kezer was without graduate students at the time, and I had little difficulty convincing him to let me join his team as, in the words of the athletic department, a “walk on.” What a heady time that was, making slides of salamander chromosomes, learning about opera, and having the opportunity to study with the likes of Jim Kezer and Herbert MacGregor. Oskewowow!

My work, my hobbies and my life mix convectively. My first job after graduate school was as the “resident naturalist” for Sunriver Resort and the community. In that role I lead residents and visitors on a variety of nature experiences, conducted and coordinated raptor rehabilitation, and advised the developer and community on matters of environmental management. With the job came countless wild creatures in need of a home, some needing repairs. Often the homeless were exotic pets that someone lost or no longer wanted. One of these, Hooter the great horned owl, accompanied us to Eugene more than 20 years ago for a presentation to the Natural History Society. Although our family has never purchased a pet, we’ve never been without some creature(s) sharing our home. Our only permanent pets are several desert tortoises that have gradually accumulated since receiving two captive raised individuals as a wedding present from my grandmother. After thirty years as tortoise keepers, we were suddenly blessed with 12 babies last October.

For more than 25 years I was mostly an administrator and fundraiser for the Nature Center. The work was rewarding but the Kezerian influence was deep and I longed for the chance to do science. I eventually convinced our board of directors to put administration into another’s hands. I now devote as much time as possible to serious investigations involving amphibians. And, it is still memorable to visit Northwest coastal rain forests and look for salamanders, like we used to with Kezer. In 1987 my family and I traveled to Costa Rica to see one of Jim’s favorite collecting areas and to visit with Pedro Leon, another of Jim’s protégés who was in Eugene during my graduate years. Five years ago my wife Teresa and I made the obligatory biologist’s pilgrimage to the Galapagos Islands. In less than a week I’ll be returning to the Islands on a tour with Barry Boyce, premier guide in the Galapagos.

WHAT WILL WE HEAR ABOUT FRIDAY NIGHT?
I will share some thoughts, slides, and perhaps even a song or two about the frogs and toads of Central Oregon. Although there are not many species in our area, I have a unique opportunity to seek answers to some important questions about two amphibian species whose numbers have declined throughout much of their respective ranges-western toads and Oregon spotted frogs. Both species inhabit Sunriver and breed in Lake Aspen, a 6-acre man-made lake just outside the Nature Center. While other researchers must travel tens or hundreds of miles to study these species, I have the opportunity to observe them daily. I’ll summarize a study my daughter and I completed some years ago demonstrating that high levels of hind limb malformations seen in our baby toads result from predatory attack by a small introduced species of fish. I will describe an ongoing study and conservation effort that began with the relocation of an entire population of spotted frogs, removed from a site scheduled for burial and released into a newly-created series of ponds. The frogs stayed, survived to breed the following year, and now breeding by the next generation has just taken place. The research opportunities presented by this project are immense, especially since we have the opportunity to follow an expanding population that just squeezed through a “genetic bottleneck” of probably fewer than ten breeding individuals and for which we have DNA finger prints for every member of the founding population. Finally, I’ll report on work suggesting that Oregon spotted frogs have evolved an impressive, perhaps unique ability to tolerate cold low oxygen conditions in shallow ice-covered ponds where oxygen levels routinely fall to one part per million or lower.

[ Back ]

Page last modified: 03 June 2003
Location: http://biology.uoregon.edu/enhs/archive/may03/may031.html
E-mail the WebSpinner: cpapke@gmail.com