BRN 9-2 (uncompressed) - Flipbook - Page 70
Dust Bowl years of 1935 and 1936, El
Paso had 13 and 11 dust storms,
respectively. . . .Õ Unusual drought
and windy conditions are fueling the
surge in dust. ÔWeÕre in the worst
drought weÕve seen in at least a
decade, and this March was the
windiest weÕve seen in more than 50
years,Õ Gill added.
The Aqua - MODIS array captured the
image of one of these dust storms on
27 April 2025, shown at the right.
Charles Wright and
a Cuban Anole
ÒIn 1851-1852, Wright was associated
with the United States and Mexican
Boundary Survey. He joined Col. J. D.
Graham in San Antonio, Texas, in May
1851 and traveled with that expedition to El Paso along the southern
wagon road. In July he and Graham
left El Paso to join Boundary Survey
Commissioner Bartlett at the Santa
Rita Copper Mines. On July 28, he
was in the Rio Grande Valley at Do–a
Ana . . . .Ó Pages 62 - 66 of the Early
Naturalists of the Black Range are
dedicated to Charles Wright. He was,
after all, one of ÒourÓ naturalists.
their research on what effect
temperature and diet had on the
Neotoma lepidaÕs ability to inhibit the
effectiveness of rattlesnake venom.
(ÒAmbient temperature and toxic
diets constrain snake venom
resistance in a desert rodentÓ,
Matthew L. Holding, Alexandra
Coconis, Patrice K. Connors, Marjorie
D. Matocq and M. Denise Dearing,
https://doi.org/10.1098/
rsbl.2025.0068). This species is not
found in our area; it is restricted to the
west coast from Oregon/Idaho south
to Baja/Sonora.
Apparently Wright had a life outside
of the Black Range. In ÒHow a 162year-old Specimen Helped Prove the
Existence of an ÔIncredulousÕ Lizard
SpeciesÓ, Benjamin Hack describes
recent work at the Smithsonian with
ties to our naturalist (Smithsonian
Magazine, 09 April 2025).
Hack notes that ÒWhen American
botanist Charles Wright collected
what was to become USNM 5095, it
was just another lizard. It was 1861
and Wright had already traveled
everywhere from South Africa to the
Bering Sea, documenting thousands
of plants Ñ and anything else he came
across Ñ along the way. So, when he
noticed a three-inch-long green anole
in the remote forests of southeastern
Cuba, he merely scooped up the lizard
for another expert to identify
sometime later.Ó
It took 162 years for the specimen to
be identiÞed as Anolis incredulus.
And to be precise, only the second
specimen of this species (and the Þrst
collected).
The graphic above center, by Nicole
Kit, is from the referenced article.
The only conclusion to be reached
from all of this is that after your work
and research in the Black Range you
can go off to Cuba and have your
efforts recognized 16 decades later.
SpeciÞcally they noted that ÒWoodrats raised at cooler temperatures, as
well as those consuming diets with
creosote resin, were signiÞcantly less
able to inhibit snake venom, suggesting that they would be more susceptible to snakebite. These results
suggest that temperature and dietary
variation across the distribution over
which these rattlesnakes and woodrats interact could structure the
outcomes of these predatorÐprey
interactions. Additionally, these
results may help explain why ambient
temperatures, rather than dietary
differences, predict the presence of
neurotoxic versus proteolytic venom
phenotypes in some rattlesnake
species.Ó
Woodrats and Venom
Packrat is much the better name, but
here we will conÞne ourselves to the
term woodrat. In a study published in
Biology Letters (The Royal Society
publishing) on 16 April 2025,
Matthew Holding et al. reported on
69
The last sentence in this quotation is
particularly signiÞcant. How rising
temperatures affect the production of
mammalian venom resistance
proteins and how rattlesnakes
respond may turn out to be very
important.
