Advanced Naturalist Workshop Series 16

The preserve is very excited to announce the 2020 Advanced Naturalist Workshops Series 16. The topics cover a wide range of interesting organisms with the usual amazing list of instructors. The topics and dates can be found on this page. Check them out!

BBC film UPDATE: Change of date!

An update to the post below.  The order of the new BBC film "Seven Worlds, One Planet" has been re-arranged due to the wild fires in Australia.  Australia's episode will air first on Jan. 18th and North America with firefly footage is now scheduled to air on Jan. 25th.  Same time, same channels.
See post below for details!

The Edge's Fireflies Shine in new BBC Film!

UPDATE as of JAN 14, 2020: Due to the fires in Australia, the BBC decided to air their episode first on Jan 18th.  The North America episode described below is scheduled to air on Jan. 25th, 9PM eastern. 

In the summer of 2019, a film crew shooting for the BBC spent 3 weeks on the preserve.  They were capturing footage for a new nature series, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, titled "Seven Worlds, One Planet".  This major film project, following their Blue Planet series, features interesting animal stories from every continent and airs on January 25th at 9PM Eastern.  The film worked in 41 countries with the help of 1500 people.  Our film crew came all the way from England to film the magical world of fireflies at the Edge of Appalachia Preserve in the rural hills of Adams County, Ohio to represent North America!

BBC filming at the Edge Photo by: Lynn Faust

The crew filming firefly interactions with spiders and their webs.

How did they end up here?  Our friend and firefly expert Lynn Faust sent them our way.  Lynn is the person people contact when needing firefly info and she told them about the wonderful firefly displays at the Edge.  So two incredible nature videographers, Alastair MacEwen and Olly Jelley, along with producer Sarah Whalley showed up with an SUV full of special cameras that film fireflies twinkling in the night.  The goal was to capture footage of carnivorous fireflies (Photuris sp.) feeding on prey fireflies that have been caught in spider webs...and all behaviors in between.  After 3 weeks of shooting day and night, only breaking to eat and sleep, they got all the shots they needed.

Once a spider web is found with a prey firefly in it, the crew filmed it hoping for a predator firefly to pounce.

A lot of luck was needed to find fireflies caught in spider webs. But the harder part was predicting whether a carnivorous firefly would fly in to eat it, scaring away the spider that also wants the food. The spider did all the work creating the sticky web trap, but the predator firefly opportunistically steals it away!  Luckily, The persistence of the crew paid off.
When the film crew left Ohio there was no guarantee that any of the thousands of hours of footage they filmed would even make it into the movie.  We were delighted this year to hear some of their work had made the cut, even if only seconds of footage.

The 2 firefly experts, Lynn Faust on left and Laura Hughes on right take a break from scouting for the crew in background.

The entire series will display wonderful stories from each continent airing on separate nights. North America is the first of the series showing on Jan. 25th on channels BBC America, Sundance, IFC and AMC at 9PM Eastern.  The other continents will follow the next 6 Saturday nights.  Not all footage of fireflies you might see in the film are from Ohio.  They also shot wide landscape footage in Mississippi.  But any close-ups of fireflies and spiders should be Edge actors (fireflies).

Lynn Faust helping find and capture other unique fireflies while the crew awaits dark.

Thanks go out to Lynn Faust for this golden opportunity for the preserve to work with the BBC, and witness the hard work it takes to make these unbelievable films.  And thanks to the film crew mentioned above.  Their incredible work ethic and skill was unimaginable.  Even if only 10 seconds of footage makes it into the film, the fireflies of Cincinnati Museum Center's Edge of Appalachia Preserve will be the shining stars we know them to be.

For more information about the "Seven Worlds, One Planet" visit link below:
http://www.bbcamerica.com/shows/seven-worlds-one-planet/video-extras/official-trailer-seven-worlds-one-planet-premieres-january-18-98c

Posted by: Mark Zloba

Box Turtle Update: A Goodbye

We have to say goodbye to one of the first Eastern Box turtles we decided to research on the Edge.

EOA2 (Hoffa) 2019  Photo by Sam James

EOA 2 (see previous blog post from January 22, 2016) was found expired at the end of November.  This was a few weeks after our first freeze accompanied by the first snow of the season on Nov. 11 2019.  Possibly, this Eastern box turtle, froze to death before getting to its over wintering spot for the season.  But it did turn up the past summer missing a leg, which may have led to complications with movement or infection.  No other visual evidence of attack, disease or fungus appears to be the cause, but freezing is an assumption.  EOA2 was the second turtle we glued a transmitter on in 2014 and have been following its activity for 5 years.

EOA2 out and about flaunting the transmitter on its back.

See EOA2 buried in the soil to the right of a the GPS unit.  This is all the deeper it needs to be to survive winter.

This turtle was visited via telemetry by at least 100 students helping to track its movements. From 2014 until 2019, EOA 2 was followed to better understand the habits of Eastern box turtles on the preserve.  The map below shows the recorded range of the area this turtle moved in 5 years.  It was never found outside the yellow circle on the map which is over 30 acres and a perimeter of almost a mile.  Robyn Wright-Strauss, who has been researching the turtles here commented that this is a much larger range than estimated in publications.  EOA2 liked to move!

On this Northwestern slope of the preserve, the turtle used 2 overwintering spots over the five years, marked as orange dots in the map above.  We learned that it would bury itself shallowly under the leaves in these two depressions in the ground and remain there from November until April.

Multiple locations were documented over the 5 year period

This box turtle was first picked up in the parking lot of the Eulett Center.  It was never found accidentally over the 5 years, but only when we searched for it via radio telemetry.  We have transmitters on other box turtles in the same area, but we have learned the most from this original capture.  We will learn more in the future from the other turtles, but as our first, EOA2 will always be the example of turtle behavior.  For us, this turtle was the leader.

Posted by:  Mark Zloba