Favoritos de tiwane

This series shows Watshamiella alata watching Sycoscapter cornutus oviposit into a Ficus burkei syconium (fruiting body) for over seven minutes; after the Sycoscapter female departs, the Watshamiella female proceeds to oviposit into the same hole. Compton et al. (2009) described this behaviour for different species of Watshamiella in Uganda and Kenya on Ficus sycomorus and Ficus artocarpoides.
Compton, S.G., Van Noort, S., McLeish, M., Deeble, M. and Stone, V., 2009. Sneaky African fig wasps that oviposit through holes drilled by other species. African Natural History, 5, pp.9-15. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230580629

This animal had been killed by dogs and brought back to the police at this border station. It had been dead for 2-3 days, and unfortunately, was very fly-blown.
When I returned to the area the next year, a policeman said that the dogs had killed a second animal, during July of 2012.
They are completely subterranean, living inside of a small cavity. They move forward by digging away the dirt in front with their enormous claws (pictures 8-19), and passing it under their belly to behind them, where, with their blunted rump and armored tail (pictures 6-7), they compact this fresh dirt into a new "plug" of compacted dirt.
The soil of the Larrea desert immediately surrounding the station is too hard a substrate for this species to live in. I think that the animals live in the damp sand that fills in the meanders in the adjacent Río Colorado. This soil would be the kind that they could burrow in and probably has many more arthropods for them to feed on.
An expert in this species told me that this animal represents the most southwestern locality for the "pichi ciego".

In all of my time outdoors, I had never seen a venomous snake in the wild in North America, until today! I would have been excited to see any snake today, but was thrilled to see a copperhead. We were walking back towards the car on the bike path when my husband and I spotted it at the same time. Made my day as I was hoping to see a reptile for the global snapshot of biodiversity!