Kira McEntire PhD
Lab Happenings
Current Students
Along with looking at parental care of marbled salamanders, we are trying to get a population estimate. The unique markings of marbled salamanders allows for individual ID. But this can be time consuming by hand. One of my students is working on testing the possibility of using Wild ID (an open resource software) for individual ID of the salamanders. It seems to be working really well!
Last year, we started a long term project exploring the impact of temperature on embryonic development of marbled salamanders. Students are involved monitoring embryonic development and behavior in larval and juvenile stages.
Main projects
Marbled Salamanders:
Little is known about how salamanders are impacted by extreme weather events over long periods of time. We are getting some baseline data about the impact of temperature on embryonic development rates. No studies have recorded the impact of temperature during development on later life stages of salamanders. Marbled salamanders have very different habitats during different life stages and encounter different environmental variables. Future studies will include temperature variation and extreme temperatures, especially freezing.
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Although parental care is common among many plethodontid salamanders it is rare in the genus Ambystoma. Marbled Salamanders (Ambystoma opacum) is the only known species in the genus to display parental care. However, they have a high rate of nest abandonment (up to about 25%). I am starting a new project to attempt to quantify the amount of disturbance the attendants are willing to tolerate before abandoning their nests. Since we have had poor weather the past couple of years, there have been very few nests. So research is slow going on this project.
I am also attempting to get some population estimates with on-going monitoring using photo-ID and cover boards.
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Red-backed salamander demography:
I am currently in the process of setting up a project to study the demography of the southern most populations of the northern red-backed salamander. These studies will become part of a network called SPARCnet.
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Former Students
Theo Tuggle - Theo worked on a project about the the movement of juvenile toads, particialy bounding behavior.
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Chloe Linton - Chloe worked with me as a rising senior over the summer of 2021 where she researched the influence of floating macrophytes (aquatic plants) on pond water (primarily temperature).
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Daxx McGee - Daxx worked with me as summer student as a rising senior and will be working on the exploring the potential relationship between snake color patterns and toxicity in California using iNaturalist data.
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Caro worked on the modeling side of the horned lizard project, exploring mechanisms driving the horned lizards to match their habitat and learning about agent-based models more broadly. She also helped discover a potential relationship between red coloration in garter snakes and the local toxicity of the newts.
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Morgan researched geographic patterns of color morphs of ribbon snakes for 2 years. For this project, we are interested in updating the current distribution of the color morphs and exploring potential mechanisms driving the maintenance of these morphs.
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Sydney did a project in her senior year researching basking behavior in turtles across urban and suburban habitats.
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Charlie helped out as a first year collecting published data about horned lizards to get the lab wide project going. He has since switched to geology research!
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Madi briefly explored the possibility that juvenile horned lizards assume their own colors from the natal habitat, but decided to move into public health.
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Other collaborations
I am collaborating with a few different projects right now, mostly involving bringing agent based modeling into a project.
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If you are interested in collaborating, please send me a message!
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Past projects
While working at Trinity University, I was collaborating with the San Antonio Zoo on a project about juvenile horned lizards. The zoo is head starting the lizards and we were interested in their anti-predator behaviors compared to wild caught adults. Specifically, we wanted to know if they were using background matching as a form of predator avoidance. While we gained some preliminary data, the most interesting was that the juveniles did not seem to run away from a simulated bird attach, while the adults did (unpublished).
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Gray Treefrogs:
My herpetology class (fall 2021) explored the impact of diet on size at metamorphosis for gray treefrogs. This project developed out of Chloe's summer project (see below) when her lily pad mesocosms became flooded with frog eggs! The general discussion around tadpoles is they are herbivorous, however some evidence suggests they are more omnivorous than people give them credit for. So we tested this idea by feeding them a variety of diets, some including added protein and some not. This paper is in prep! Way to go class!
Secondly, gray treefrogs are known to be highly variable in color. I want to quantify this variation as metamorphs and look at how quickly they can change colors and if they are using environmental cues to do so. Preliminary studies were conducted on animals from the feeding trials, but additional studies continued this past summer and fall (2022). For the moment, other than age, any influence of environmental factors on color remain a mystery. Additional studies will begin this summer (2023).
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Western Ribbon Snakes:
Color is a visual signal used by many animals for crypsis, warning of toxins, or courtship. Color variation within a species may allow a species to adapt to their local environment and can act as a driver of speciation. The four recognized subspecies of the western ribbon snake (Thamnophis proximus) in Texas are distinguished by their color patterns and geographic distribution. Reports of interbreeding between subspecies suggests no reproductive isolation based on color. To understand which mechanisms might be driving the geographic pattern of color morphs in Texas, we first need to have a solid understanding of the current geographic distribution of the various morphs and what color patterns exist. Using citizen science data from iNaturalist.com, we remapped the current range of color morphs, quantified their geographic overlap, and the color variation. Once we have a better understanding of the frequency of each color morph geographically, we can start to evaluate the evolutionary mechanisms. Based on the subspecies descriptions, their distribution has shifted and a novel color morph has been documented in the last 35 years (bright blue side stripes). Although iNaturalist records are biased with human density, they still provide insight to current distributions and photos provide a wide range of information. Our photo analysis suggests the subspecies descriptions are not sufficient to include the variability present in current populations. Additional studies are needed to evaluate the function of the red stripe, specifically, and the evolutionary mechanisms driving the persistence of variable color patterns.