- Joined
- Aug 16, 2005
- Messages
- 1,333
with the help of christian, i recently emailed a taxonomic entomologist that studied the population of brachypelma vagans in central florida. i received very detail directions to their location, which happened to be about an hour and a half away from my house. i made a trip up there this last weekend, with nothing to show for it. the main bank of the canal bordering this old grove was at once a highly populated area, but is now very overgrown with plant life and very hard to search through. i wasn't able to locate any webbed burrows. i found a few suspicious looking holes and carefully poured some water down to hopefully flush out a tarantula, but nothing. i did manage to find a few small species of spiders, and a some random other bugs. i also found an adult corn or rat snake...unfortunately it was during the few minutes i had set my camera down in the car. i tried to come back with the camera, but the snake was gone. the one with the hole, is of a bunch of ants trying to take what looked like a beetle out of a burrow. i plan on emailing the entomologist with the results of the first trip, and to eventually return and look further. i was only there for a few hours..no findings, and it was on the verge or raining the whole time i was there....possibly even clear some of the vegetation that has since covered the canal banks. the initial reports of the vagans were about ten years ago, and the grounds were no longer used as citrus groves..and so everything has just been growing as is. anyway, here are a few pictures i took while there.