Alligator Egg Season

My stay at the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana was idyllic and beautiful. I lucked out and had nice 70-80 degree weather, with little bugs and low humidity. The dorms at Rockefeller were quite nice with a beautiful view. The people I met were so friendly with an old school sense of southern hospitality. I spent a few days collecting alligator embryos and observing the local wildlife.

The dorms at Rockefeller

 

I saw a few alligators lurking in the water behind me.

An alligator peeking its head up... not too far from the field lab

By pure coincidence, a mother alligator laid some eggs in a nest very close to headquarters.  I was able to observe the nest directly and recover the eggs from it.

Collecting eggs from a nest

Alligator eggs have a thick and brittle shell, much like a chicken's egg except larger and hardier.

American alligator egg nest

I am marking the top of the egg, to ensure the top side remains up

Transporting the eggs

At the lab outside, I began dissecting the eggs

Working at the field lab

An alligator embryo is attached to the shell

The embryos were between 5 and 13 days

Alligator mississippiensis embryos

A baby gator

Juvenile alligator

A baby alligator eating

Below is a pic of an alligator embryo (after being soaked in 95% Ethanol).

Foot, Pelvic girdle and Tail of an alligator embryo

I took one of the older 2 week embryos and placed it with A 0.2% solution of Alcian Blue (staining for cartilage). Next, I used a 0.2% Alizarin Red solution with less than 0.2% KOH. The KOH degraded the specimen a bit too much, leaving just the vertebral column. Here is a composite photo of the alligator embryo "spine." I believe the very early rudiments of vertebrae (dark blue) are forming beside the notochord (light blue).

Alligator embryo spine. Skeletal prep Alcian Blue staining for cartilage.

All embryos were treated ethically.  

Special thanks to Dr. Ruth Elsey at the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, for her all her generous help and for taking photos of the egg collection.

  


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