Golden Niche Documenting The Invertebrates Of New York City

For the past couple of weeks, Saul and I have been working hard at researching some of the invertebrates that we’ve found. Both he and I took out some books from the Brooklyn College Library. (It turns out they have a LOT of stuff on invertebrates!)

The two textbooks I got were Animals Without Backbones 3ed., by Ralph Buchsbaum et al., and Biology of the Invertebrates, by Jan A. Pechenik. Stay tuned while we get our notes organized and our research paper finalized!

On Saturday, Artur and I met up in the morning to explore Prospect Park. Artur brought along his very nice HD video camera, and we entered the park from Bartel-Pritchard Square (right next to the Pavilion movie theatre). It was very cold out there! I made the mistake of coming out with just shorts and a light jacket and it was absolutely freezing! (not as much as now but you get the idea). We crossed the Long Meadow and entered the narrow walk-ways that make up a mini-labyrinth inside of the Park. Unfortunately for us, these walk-ways were paved with asphalt, which meant that few insects would be found there. What we needed was a path we could walk on that had not been interfered with by people. Our first find was a very peculiar looking fly. It was no ordinary house fly. Neither was it a fruit fly (the kind you biologists often experiment with). No – is was rather large, and blended very well with the fallen leaves (it is Fall, you know). Artur spotted it as we made our way to the discovery of a lifetime.

At one point we ended up at a spot overlooking a waterfall. While Artur was video-taping this, I looked in and around the surrounding rocks in search for wildlife. Unfortunately, it was very hard to do so. The best we could find were a few spider webs, a tiny little worm, and that was it. It seemed as though the invertebrates were not as abundant as we thought. We couldn’t have been more wrong!

Having swept the area, we moved uphill. This place was completely new to me, even though I (thought I) knew Prospect Park like my own backyard. There were some other groups of people up here, but not many.

As we rounded a corner, we found something interesting. It might have been innocuous to the layperson, but for the invertebrate hunter, it was a treasure trove. We found…….a dead log!

On a first inspection, there is nothing of interest on or around the log (except for some very exotic fungi). It is quiet literally lifeless. But not so fast, for invertebrates like to dig a little while and hide away from the sun while they have their feast. As we uncovered the outer skin of the tree, we discovered some amazing things! For one, there were these miniature sea-shell exoskeletons hugging the tree, some 6 or 7 of them. We knew not from whence they came. There were various species of insects that moved about as we removed the outer bark. The greatest discovery, however, was the earthworm.

Only its head peered out when we exposed the tree. I stuck out my paper coffee cup directly in its path, hoping to catch it. Artur stayed alert with his video camera set to ‘Record’. As the worm inched forward, I ushered it into the cup. Slowly but surely, more and more of the earthworm came out. At one point, I moved the cup in a way to trap it. An amazing thing happened! The earthworm, seemingly knowing that it was captured, begin to jump out of the cup, trying to escape! I mean this quiet literally. It flailed around for a good 5-10 seconds before it finally calmed down. Luckily, Artur got it all on tape, so we have something good to look forward to!

In addition to the worm, we also discovered a mass of organic material inside the tree (we assumed it was a snail of some sort), including a nest of eggs. These were clear-looking balls, clearly foreign to the tree. They actually reminded me and my russian-speaking friend of Ikra, or caviar. We were not about to taste it (we swear)!

All in all, it was a productive day, with lots of new material to work with for our upcoming research paper and mini-documentary.

This week I had the opportunity to visit both Central Park on Friday and Prospect Park on Saturday; the things I learned are pretty amazing!

Central Park
Prior to heading out of the Macaulay Building, I grabbed a couple of plastic cups for anything I might find and would like to keep. Today was a very rainy day and I was hopeful that I would find lots of interesting insects. I entered the Park near the finish line of the upcoming NYC marathon, and learned that a lot of the paths leading to the north of the Park were closed. I felt as though my greatest chances of finding invertebrates would be in the Ramble (which was to the north), so I had to go the long way to reach it, but I found a cool thing along the way.

On a tree there was what looked to be a spider web, but the spider wasn’t in sight. Of course, the spider was gone as the weather grew colder. Or so I thought. Removing a piece of the bark revealed a large group of very small baby spiders.

I don’t know how spiders reproduce, but it seems that the mother spider lays her eggs and surrounds them with webs for protection, and then abandons them. It is interesting to note both the number of spiders produced and the four large ‘sacs’, which I didn’t open up, but it’s conceivable that there were more little spiders inside of them.

I got to the Ramble finally, stopping by the famous boulevard on the way and taking a snapshot of a duck.

Because of the rain, the Ramble was very wet, and there were leaves all over. At first there weren’t any signs of insects, but we had only just started. Digging a little, we came up with our second find:

After uploading to the iNaturalist site, we found out that this is actually known as a ‘wood louse’ or a ‘pill bug’. Pretty gross stuff. Under the surface there were many more of these, perhaps 4 or 5, that scurried away when we uncovered them to the light. It seems that these invertebrates prefer moist environments, and they also prefer to stay away from sunlight in some dark, damp enclave. Upon my visit to Prospect Park, I found that wood lice are a human hazard, and should be avoided.

A bit more digging in the same spot yielded our first centipede. Upon later research we found that it resembles most closely the species Geophilus Flavus. According to Wikipedia, it is found across Europe, and has been introduced into North America and Australia. It is most commonly found on seashores. At a different location within the Ramble, we found a couple more of these centipedes, all of the same species.

Along the way, we found two different types of ants: a very small one and a group of bigger ones. Because ants are found just about anywhere, we didn’t treat this as a significant discovery, but the fact that there are different types of ants may yield closer inquiry.

A very interesting thing that we found was a white ladybug. It was a small ladybug, and it was resting on a leaf. We took a nice shot of it.

It’s too bad the thing flew away before I had a chance to see it under the microscope!

A surprising thing we found flying around was what looked (to me) to be a miniature white grasshopper, because of its hind legs. It was so small and so frail that we couldn’t be sure. Take a look for yourself!

By the end of our visit we captured a second, larger pill bug.
big-pillbug
And again the centipede:
centipede

After this visit I am now confident that there is much more life to the Park than at first meets the eye. All the invertebrates that inhabit Central Park live beneath the surface, in dark corners, away from human eyes. The goal is to disturb the ground just enough so that you can spot them as they scurry away. Catching them is a challenge, but watching them scurrying about is its own reward.

This week on Sunday I visited the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. The Flatbush Avenue entrance was closed due to construction so this time we went to the entrance adjacent to the Brooklyn Museum. It looked very modern and very clean. Right next to the entrance were the Gift-shop and the new Visitor Center. The space is reserved for education, with many panels for teaching visitors how to interpret the various labels and botany on exhibit. It even includes a guessing game where one player tries to guess what plant the other player is thinking of!

Going to the Botanical Garden made me think about how we were going to do the educational part of our project. We plan on going to Central Park next week so hopefully I’ll have the opportunity to learn something about New York City’s invertebrates. We also plan to do research on what we find for the co-authored paper. That will allow us to learn more about our findings and also pass on to other people the knowledge of NYC’s invertebrate wildlife.

There isn’t much to update at this point, as I’m focusing quiet a bit on midterms. I was thinking about how we were going to get these invertebrates that we plan to study. It’s possible that as it gets colder we’ll have fewer opportunities to find them. Nevertheless there may be something interesting to find.