Wild Green Minute
About
The Wild Green Minute is a short fact file segment exploring Florida's wildlife and wild places.
Produced in collaboration with WKGC-FM Panama City, each episode features one of Florida's wild places, organisms, or other natural phenomena. From river otters to Spanish moss, listen in for a quick bite of natural history.
Scroll down to hear past episodes and learn more!
Episode 25: Ichetucknee River
The Ichetucknee river is a dazzling gem of the Floridan aquifer.
Emerging from a first magnitude spring cluster, the Ichetucknee flows six miles before meeting the Santa Fe river. During the summer, thousands of visitors tube down its refreshing, crystal clear waters, floating over fields of waving eelgrass, sparkling mullet, brooding gar, otters, and many, many turtles.
Because the Ichetucknee is primarily springfed, it maintains a constant temperature of 72 degrees year round. This makes it an excellent winter home for manatees, which use the river to shelter from cold winter temperatures.
Each spring along its path has a unique shape and size. Ichetucknee Springs, where the river emerges from the ground, is a large, welcoming spring, with room for many visitors to cool off on a hot day.
Blue Hole Springs, another nearby, shoots like a firehose from a round gap in the waving green submerged vegetation. Beneath that hole is a large cavern, in which clear blue water is centered by a shimmering beam of light.
The moss and eelgrass of Coffee Springs, a small spring which rises further down the river, is the only home to an entire species, the Ichetucknee siltsnail. Its entire range varies from about 4000 square feet to just 200, depending on water levels. The Ichetucknee river is filled with such small wonders. It’s an incredible place in our own backyard.
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively in Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
Episode 24: Florida Bark Mantis
The Florida Bark Mantis, also called the Grizzled Mantis, is small, at about two inches long, and makes use of extreme camouflage to blend in with its tree bark habitats. It has a flattened body and gray coloration with lichen-like dapples grading from earthy green into black. When frightened, the Florida Bark Mantis will tuck its legs in and flatten its body to the tree’s surface, blending in almost seamlessly to avoid predation.
Two large compound eyes sit at the front of its head, giving it great depth perception for grabbing prey and navigating its 3 dimensional home. Three tiny, simple eyes sit between them, helping to detect changes in light levels.
To hunt, they stand on the treeside facing downwards. When an insect or other small invertebrate climbing the tree enters their range, they STRIKE, using their strong front legs to catch the unsuspecting bug.
Why do they face downwards, rather than upwards or sideways? A study in the Canadian Journal of Zoology suggests that, first of all, they just aren’t as good at catching prey walking at their same level, but when an insect is present above them, the Florida Bark Mantis is just as effective at catching it as when approached from below. The difference instead lies in the fact that insects are more likely to be found climbing up the tree than down, so the mantises face downwards to maximize their chances of seeing a rising morsel.
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
Episode 23: Spanish Moss
Spanish moss, said to be named for the long beards of Spanish conquistadors, is a strange gray-green plant that can be found draped over oak and cypress branches across the Southeast. Its name is a bit misleading - Spanish moss is native to this region, not Spain, and it isn’t a moss! Instead, it is a bromeliad, in the same family as pineapples.
Spanish moss exclusively lives in trees and is often mistaken for a parasite, but unlike other tree-dwellers like mistletoe it has no roots and does not take any nutrients from its host tree. Instead, they gather their water from rain and nutrients from waste minerals leaked from the trees’ bark.
Wind-pollinated, they make small, unobtrusive flowers, and their light seeds float on the breeze from tree to tree.
Spanish moss provides important cover for many other animals, including ratsnakes and three species of bats. Birds use the moss stems in their nests, and it even provides habitat for a species of jumping spider that lives nowhere else. Despite common belief, chiggers are one animal that rarely inhabits Spanish moss. The small red bugs that are frequently mistaken for chiggers in this plant are actually members of a different species of mite which is harmless to humans.
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
Episode 22: Gulf Sturgeon
The Gulf sturgeon is a large, prehistoric-looking fish. Growing up to 9 feet in length and weighing in at a maximum of 300 pounds, the Gulf sturgeons’ armored bulk is a sight to behold.
Like salmon, Gulf sturgeon are anadromous, meaning that they lay their eggs in freshwater, but spend most of the active parts of their lives in salt. Unlike salmon, gulf sturgeon do this multiple times, migrating yearly to spawning grounds up a few rivers along the Gulf coast, most of which lay in the Florida panhandle.
During their winters in the coastal waters of the Gulf they use their whisker-like barbels to forage on the seafloor for crustaceans, worms, and mollusks.
Adult Gulf sturgeon do not eat at all for the duration of the summer months they spend migrating in freshwater rivers, and their small, specialized mouthparts are unable to injure humans.
One particularly exciting habit of Gulf sturgeon is their tendency to jump - for reasons that aren’t fully understood, the fish can be seen flinging itself fully above the water’s surface, something that can be quite the sight on the otherwise placid blackwater rivers they inhabit. This can be fun to watch from shore or a stationary vessel, but boaters on rivers with Gulf sturgeon should be careful during the summer months because high-speed collisions with a fish this big are dangerous and could lead to injury or death.
I’ll never forget the moment when, as a teenager solo paddling on the blackwater Suwannee river, a sturgeon as long as my kayak materialized from the darkness, then vanished just as fast. Sometimes a place can be made magical just by knowing something big is out there.
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
Episode 21: Green Anole Lizards
The green anole, sometimes known as an American chameleon for its color changing abilities, is a small lizard native to the southeastern United States. The only species in its genus native to this region, green anoles are actually more closely related to iguanas than they are to chameleons. Their colors range from striking green to dull brown and vary based on mood and environment. Green anoles possess a bright-red dewlap, which they are capable of extending and retracting from their neck to communicate with one another and with potential predators. Often doing fast-paced pushups at the same time, a male anole will flash its dewlap to warn another male of its strength, or to convince a predator that it would be too difficult to catch, so why try?
This can be a bit of an overstated warning - in my experience, green anoles are some of the easiest lizards to catch in North America.
If pushups and a big bright dewlap aren’t enough to ward a predator (or childhood Rhett) off, green anoles have one final defense - they can drop their tails! The dropped tail wriggles for several minutes after detaching, distracting the would-be predator and giving the rest of the lizard a chance to escape. They can regrow their tails, but not with the same level of color changing abilities as they are born with. In rare cases, when a green anole begins to shed its tail, but complete detachment is not achieved, it can be triggered to grow a second, or even a third tail, branching off from the first.
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
