Big Thicket Research Articles

Myxomycetes isolated from submerged plant material collected in the Big Thicket National Preserve, Texas

Samples of submerged plant material obtained from streams and other bodies of water at 11 different collecting sites in management units of the Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas were used to prepare 90 moist chamber cultures for the isolation of myxomycetes. These cultures were maintained in the laboratory for 10 weeks, during which they yielded 14 species representing 12 genera. This total included five species (Licea belmontiana, Craterium concinnum, Diachea bulbillosa, Oligonema schweinitzii, and Physarum echinosporum) not recorded previously for the Big Thicket National Preserve and one species (D. bulbillosa) new for the state of Texas. Although usually not included in biodiversity surveys for myxomycetes, our data suggest that submerged plant material may support a few species that may be missed if only terrestrial habitats are considered.

The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies (review)

Reviewed by: The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies Barton Myers The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies. Victoria E. Bynum. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-8078-3381-0, 240 pp., cloth, $35.00. Victoria E. Bynum’s The Long Shadow of the Civil War is the culmination of nearly three decades of research into the lives of southern dissidents in the Civil War era. In this work, she examines three regions rife with southern dissent and violent, internal conflict: the Mississippi Piney Woods, the North Carolina Piedmont, and the Big Thicket region of eastern Texas. Bynum, a leading authority on southern unionists, well known for her outstanding volumes Unruly Women and The Free State of Jones, presents us with a comparative Civil War work of depth and nuance and an exciting postwar story of what happened to political dissidents in each of these regions. [End Page 111] The nature of Civil War loyalty, the history of racial identity, and the legacy of both in the postwar South are the focus of Bynum’s illuminating study. The book examines the complex web of kinship, family, and community, piecing together the historical legacy of dissent in the Confederate South. She devotes important space to addressing how southern unionists in these regions came to hold their political loyalty and why they resisted and hated the Confederacy. Bynum rarely shies away from examining the difficult questions that limited source material, contradictory evidence, and unusual Civil War loyalty stories can frequently pose. According to Bynum, “The mere publication of family facts does not make them true, nor did enlistment in the Confederate Army prove that one supported the Confederacy” (x). This is precisely the war that Bynum investigates, one that forces readers to take “the other South” seriously. The hallmark of Victoria Bynum’s work on the Civil War has been careful exploration of local county records and family histories. Her painstaking research has repeatedly revealed characters like Newt Knight, Jasper Collins, and Caroline Huline, whose loyalty stories are not easily synthesized into the traditional war narrative. Here, Bynum once again delivers the painful and difficult stories that historians have grown to expect from her important books. Her principal characters in Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas provide a window into the problems and difficulties faced by wartime dissidents and New South “radicals.” This book will challenge many undergraduate students’ view of a neat war of blue versus gray. The idea of a divided South at war with itself is still something many students struggle with, and this work deserves a wide audience at that level. This excellent addition to the literature of political and militant dissent in the South will doubtless leave many students of the Civil War with a better understand of internal conflict within the South and a better understanding of how minority groups in a society are affected in a time of war. Barton Myers Texas Tech University Copyright © 2012 The Kent State University Press

Redescription of Polylekithum catahoulensis (Trematoda) and Anatomical Differentiation from Polylekithum ictaluri

New collections of Polylekithum from catfishes in the Big Thicket National Preserve, Texas, U.S.A., provided material for a redescription of Polylekithum catahoulensis and an evaluation of the characters used to diagnose species in the genus. The new collections demonstrated that the relative size of the forebody is not a reliable diagnostic feature of P. catahoulensis, because the feature changes linearly as worms grow; similarly, the location of the maximum width of worms is not diagnostic because it depends on the number of eggs in the uterus. However, egg size reliably distinguishes between P. catahoulensis (small eggs) and Polylekithum ictaluri (large eggs). Other morphometric and relational characteristics did not distinguish between species.

Gray Ghosts and Red Rangers: American Hilltop Fox Chasing (review)

Reviewed by: Gray Ghosts and Red Rangers: American Hilltop Fox Chasing Lonn Taylor Gray Ghosts and Red Rangers: American Hilltop Fox Chasing. By Thad Sitton. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010. Pp. 250. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9780292723023, $30.00 cloth.) Thad Sitton has written several good books about various aspects of life in the southern backwoods during the first half of the twentieth century. His most recent, Gray Ghosts and Red Rangers, is about backwoods foxhunting. This is not the type of foxhunting that involves mounted men and women in red coats jumping Virginia fences. Sitton’s foxhunters wear windbreakers and billed caps, go to the hunt on foot or in pickup trucks, and do not chase the fox themselves but stay up all night by a campfire listening to their hounds chase it. The foxhunting Sitton writes about is not so much a sport as a nocturnal obsession, and Sitton, an oral historian with an anthropological bent, is as sensitive to its mystical aspects as he is to its techniques and rituals. It may come as a surprise to some to learn that the point of the kind of foxhunting Sitton writes about—he prefers to call it by its traditional names, fox chasing or hilltopping—is not to catch and kill the fox but to listen to the dogs as they chase it in a wide circle and determine where they are by the sounds they make. He describes the process as “an intense conversion of auditory information into visual.” The chases always take place at night, and some can go on for ten or twelve hours and cover twenty or thirty miles. The best ones end with the fox circling back to his den, ready to run another day, and the dogs limping back to camp at dawn. Sitton’s material is organized into five chapters and an epilogue. With the exception of chapter two, which deals with the history of foxhunting (the red-coat kind) in England and America and with the types of foxes (gray and red, thus the book’s title) and the breeds of dogs involved, most of his sources are gleaned from readers’ contributions to three foxhunting magazines, Red Ranger, Chase, and Hunter’s Horn. Sitton describes these contributions as “an outpouring of primary sources from forgotten men in nameless communities at the end of the county roads.” He makes excellent use of them. The most interesting and most poignant chapter in this book is the penultimate one, in which Sitton describes the decline of fox chasing in the rural South after World War II. He attributes this to the reintroduction of deer into the countryside by state game and fish agencies, which led to regulated hunting, perimeter fences, and the erosion of traditional “hunters’ rights,” meaning the custom of running dogs across other people’s property in pursuit of foxes. Fox hounds cannot resist chasing deer, and this led to the “dog wars,” confrontations all over the rural South between fox chasers and landowners whose income derived from [End Page 305] deer-hunting leases. Some of the most intense were in East Texas, where this reviewer once saw a dog collar pinned up on a bulletin board in a general store on the edge of the Big Thicket, with a note under it that read, “I will pay $500 for the name of the man who killed this dog.” Eventually the fox chasers, tired of having their dogs shot, gave up. If this book has a flaw, it is repetitiveness. A few of the stories Sitton garnered from his sources have slipped into the text twice. But who is to say that a good story should not be retold? This book will especially appeal to folklorists, anthropologists, historians, and anyone who savors being in the woods at night. Lonn Taylor Fort Davis, Texas Copyright © 2012 The Texas State Historical Association

Neochaetosphaerella thaxteriospora gen. et sp. nov. and Tympanopsis texensis sp. nov. (Coronophorales, Ascomycota) from Texas, USA

Ascomata of three species of coronophoraceous fungi collected from the Big Thicket National Preserve and an area immediately adjacent to the preserve were examined with a scanning electron microscope to reveal the distinctive features of the ascomatal surface. Based on the results of the examination, two new species (Neochaetosphaerella thaxteriospora and Tympanopsis texensis) are herein described and discussed. Both a description and an illustration of Scortechinia acanthostroma are also provided.

The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies (review)

Reviewed by: The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies Alwyn Barr The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies. By Victoria E. Bynum. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Pp. 236. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9780807833810, $35.00 cloth.) Bynum, a professor emeritus of history at Texas State University, explores the attitudes and actions of white Unionists and African Americans in areas of strong opposition to the Confederacy from North Carolina to Mississippi and Texas during and after the Civil War. She focuses on men and women among the plain folk in the piedmont of North Carolina, the Piney Woods of Mississippi, and the Big Thicket of East Texas. Two chapters examine the Civil War era. The first considers the rising sense of “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” (3) as non-slaveholders formed guerrilla bands to resist the Confederate draft and impressment of supplies. Their leaders ranged from harsh Bill Owens of Randolph County, North Carolina, to charismatic Newt Knight in Jones County, Mississippi, and clever Warren Collins of Hardin County, Texas. Quaker and Wesleyan Methodist religious views set apart North Carolina Unionists from the others. Family ties connected many of these Unionists [End Page 88] across the three states. Confederates broke up some guerrilla groups and forced men into the army, while others escaped capture. A second chapter discusses North Carolina women in conflict with Confederate soldiers over conscription of male relatives and seizure of food and animals. Some women faced arrest for taking government supplies and torture to gain information about the guerrillas. The focus shifts to Reconstruction and later years in the next section of the volume. Complex racial relationships included political coalitions of black and white Republicans in the North Carolina piedmont, who faced Klan violence toward men and women with only limited help from law enforcement. African Americans struggled against white efforts to gain apprentice control over black children. Interracial relationships faced increased opposition after the war when persons assumed to be of mixed ancestry met discrimination. Repeated efforts by Newt Knight to gain federal compensation for his Union military service in the Civil War failed for several reasons. Most former Confederates who testified refused to recognize his political motives, while fading memories, lost or limited documents, and government skepticism also weakened his case. Post-Reconstruction years found some former Unionists in Mississippi and Texas turning to new forms of dissent. In politics they became Populists and later rural Socialists. Their religious views turned to Universalism or they moved west to become Mormons. Some members of the Newt Knight family had formed interracial unions that led to multiracial younger generations. Female family members of mixed ancestry sought to avoid discrimination and achieve respectability through education, by becoming teachers and missionaries, or by leaving Mississippi to assume white or Native American identities. Others faced stereotypes such as “Jezebels” (120). The dissenters and their views challenged the dominant image of a Solid South built upon unified sympathy for the Confederate Lost Cause. An epilogue explains the varied family memories and portrayals of the dissenters, ranging from principled Unionists or backwoodsmen to criminals or traitors who betrayed their race. The more positive views appear to be gaining acceptance among recent generations of the families. Bynum has researched extensively in federal, state, and local records, as well as oral histories and memoirs. She has built upon her earlier studies of working class southern women and the “Free State of Jones” (x), while adding new information and analysis, especially about dissent in Texas. This volume offers insights into the complexities of southern dissent, gender roles, race relations, and the influences that shaped memories. Following the intricate family connections in the dissenter groups requires careful concentration at times, but rewards the reader by unraveling important ties from one state or generation to another. Alwyn Barr Texas Tech University Copyright © 2011 The Texas State Historical Association

A multitree perspective of the tree ring tropical cyclone record from longleaf pine (Pinus palustrisMill.), Big Thicket National Preserve, Texas, United States

[1] Tree rings afford the temporal resolution needed to characterize extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones, their frequency and variability. External factors such as soil water isotopic variability, soil heterogeneity, and/or stand disturbance affect the isotopic composition of individual trees in a stand, resulting in inaccuracies in the record. Single-tree isotope chronologies should be tested against multiple-tree chronologies to determine whether individual trees sufficiently characterize tropical cyclone variability. Eight individual trees from two sites in Big Thicket National Preserve were analyzed to evaluate whether they synchronously record tropical cyclone events. The ability of individual isotope models to capture an event was low (≤50%), and individual trees did not always record similar events. A composite chronology from the Turkey Creek Unit identified 5 false positive years and missed five storms. The composite chronology from the Big Sandy Creek Unit identified 5 false positives and missed four storms. All but 3 false positive years were characterized by above average precipitation that followed below average precipitation in the previous year. This mimics the negative isotopic excursion expected from tropical cyclones. Another year (1991) was coincident with a strong El Nino event, resulting in a shift in the dominant moisture source for the Texas Gulf Coast. Drought conditions occurred in years where storms were missed, which dampened the 18O-depleted signal associated with tropical cyclones. These data show that the number of trees is critical for properly characterizing tropical cyclone frequency through time, especially for periods prior to reliable instrumental records.

The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies

This book is by no means the first attempt to dismantle the myth of a “solid South” during and after the Civil War, but it surely ranks among the most innovative in its methods and its findings. Digging deep into the pasts of three communities on the margins of the plantation South—the Free State of Jones in Piney Woods, Mississippi; the Big Thicket region of southeastern Texas; and central North Carolina's Quaker Belt—Victoria E. Bynum unearths an array of intriguing stories from “other Souths that could never quite be buried” (p. 97). Building on her previous work on Mississippi and North Carolina, Bynum traces southern dissent from the Civil War and Reconstruction periods into the twentieth century. Throughout, she reveals clear sympathy for the men and women who resisted prevailing southern racial and political conventions. The book begins with white southern dissent during the Civil War (the extent and openness of which will surprise some readers), including the fierce unionism of guerilla fighters such as Mississippi's Newt Knight and Texas's Warren Collins. Bynum is not only interested in male leaders, though; on the contrary, women frequently take center stage. One of the major contributions of the book is its message that dissent was a family affair, fostered by kinship networks as well as political or religious convictions—and that familial or local cultures of dissent were transmitted through succeeding generations. Thus in the decades following Reconstruction, populism and socialism proved particularly popular among wartime unionists and their kin. Thus the wartime politics of Knight continued to reverberate well into the twentieth century, not only in his decades-long and ultimately unsuccessful battle with the federal government to secure compensation for his wartime unionist activities but also in the trials and tribulations of the next generation of the “multiracial community” that he founded. These are stories—and people—that deeply disturb the old narratives of Civil War and Jim Crow–era southern history.

Vertebrate Richness and Biogeography in the Big Thicket of Texas

Abstract The Big Thicket of Texas has been described as rich in species and a “crossroads:” a place where organisms from many different regions meet. We examine the species richness and regional affiliations of Big Thicket vertebrates. We found that the Big Thicket is neither exceptionally rich in vertebrates nor is it a crossroads for vertebrates. Its vertebrate fauna is predominantly eastern.

Socioeconomic Factors Affecting Local Support for Black Bear Recovery Strategies

There is global interest in recovering locally extirpated carnivore species. Successful efforts to recover Louisiana black bear in Louisiana have prompted interest in recovery throughout the species' historical range. We evaluated support for three potential black bear recovery strategies prior to public release of a black bear conservation and management plan for eastern Texas, United States. Data were collected from 1,006 residents living in proximity to potential recovery locations, particularly Big Thicket National Preserve. In addition to traditional logistic regression analysis, we used conditional probability analysis to statistically and visually evaluate probabilities of public support for potential black bear recovery strategies based on socioeconomic characteristics. Allowing black bears to repopulate the region on their own (i.e., without active reintroduction) was the recovery strategy with the greatest probability of acceptance. Recovery strategy acceptance was influenced by many socioeconomic factors. Older and long-time local residents were most likely to want to exclude black bears from the area. Concern about the problems that black bears may cause was the only variable significantly related to support or non-support across all strategies. Lack of personal knowledge about black bears was the most frequent reason for uncertainty about preferred strategy. In order to reduce local uncertainty about possible recovery strategies, we suggest that wildlife managers focus outreach efforts on providing local residents with general information about black bears, as well as information pertinent to minimizing the potential for human-black bear conflict.

A landscape-level survey of feral hog impacts to natural resources of the Big Thicket National Preserve

a survey of the impact of feral hog (Sus scrofa) on the natural resources of the Big Thicket National Preserve (BTNP), a unit of the National Park Service. We worked in 3 management units: Lance Rosier, Big Sandy, and Turkey Creek. Random stratifi ed sampling was conducted to assess impacts from hog damage on resources by vegetation type at a landscape scale. Landscape features such as topography, soil moisture, soil type, and dominant vegetative cover types were used to predict hog damage. The overall damage to vegetation from hog rooting or wallowing averaged 28% within the 3 units of the BTNP. In the Big Sandy unit, fl oodplains had the most damage (45%), whereas fl atlands were mostly impacted in the Turkey Creek unit (46%), and uplands in the Lance Rosier unit (32%). These levels of damage were more severe and widespread than previously believed and support the premise that hog damage in the BTNP parallels the increase in hog abundance over the past 20 years.

Conservation issues at the Watson Pinelands Preserve, Tyler County, Texas

The Watson Pinelands Preserve is a 4.8-ha (12-ac) privately owned facility nestled in the Big Thicket of east Texas, and is home to many species of carnivorous plants. Development and maintenance of the preserve as a living record of the rich diversity of East Texas herbaceous and woody plants has not been an easy task, and has had its share of conservation issues as well. This article will discuss some of the many conservation issues that affect the Watson Pinelands Preserve, and what can be done to reduce and/or eliminate some of these effects.

A New Species of Caecincola (Trematoda: Cryptogonimidae) from Spotted Bass (Micropterus punctulatus) in the Big Thicket National Preserve, Texas, U.S.A

Caecincola autumnae n. sp. is described from the pyloric ceca of spotted bass (Micropterus punctulatus) collected from Big Sandy Creek in the Big Sandy Creek Unit of the Big Thicket National Preserve, Polk County, Texas, U.S.A. It can be distinguished from all other species of Caecincola by the presence of an ovary with 4 lobes and a narrowly obpanduriform to narrowly obpyriform body.

A New Species of Lissorchis (Trematoda: Lissorchiidae) from Creek Chubsuckers (Erimyzon oblongus) in the Big Thicket National Preserve, Texas, U.S.A

Lissorchis amniculensis n. sp. is described from the small intestine of creek chubsuckers collected from a small tributary stream of Big Sandy Creek in the Big Sandy Creek Unit of the Big Thicket National Preserve, Polk County, Texas, U.S.A. Members of the new species possess a distinct trilobed ovary, a feature found in individuals of 9 other species of Lissorchis. The new species is distinguished from these species by possessing a bipartite seminal vesicle with the distal portion larger than the proximal portion, vitelline follicles that extend beyond the posterior extent of the testes, a small posttesticular space, and a single dextral uterine loop that originates from the posttesticular space.

Experimental test of the impacts of feral hogs on forest dynamics and processes in the southeastern US

The foraging activities of nonindigenous feral hogs (Sus scrofa) create widespread, conspicuous soil disturbances. Hogs may impact forest regeneration dynamics through both direct effects, such as consumption of seeds, or indirectly via changes in disturbance frequency or intensity. Because they incorporate litter and live plant material into the soil, hogs may also influence ground cover and soil nutrient concentrations. We investigated the impacts of exotic feral hogs in a mixed pine-hardwood forest in the Big Thicket National Preserve (Texas, USA) where they are abundant. We established sixteen 10m×10m plots and fenced eight of them to exclude feral hogs for 7 years. Excluding hogs increased the diversity of woody plants in the understory. Large seeded (>250mg) species known to be preferred forage of feral hogs all responded positively to hog exclusion, thus consumption of Carya (hickory nuts), Quercus (acorns), and Nyssa seeds (tupelo) by hogs may be causing this pattern. The only exotic woody species, Sapium sebiferum (Chinese tallow tree), was more than twice as abundant with hogs present, perhaps as a response to increased disturbance. Hogs increased the amount of bare soil by decreasing the amounts of plant cover and surface litter. Plots with hogs present had lower soil C:N, possibly due to accelerated rates of nitrogen mineralization. These results demonstrate that hogs may influence future overstory composition and reduce tree diversity in this forest. Management of hogs may be desirable in this and other forests where large-seeded species are an important component of the ecosystem. Further, by accelerating litter breakdown and elevating nitrogen in the soil, hogs have the potential to impact local vegetation composition via nitrogen inputs as well.

Effects of Hurricane Rita on three long-term forest study plots in east Texas, USA

We investigated variation in species resistance to hurricane winds and effects of Hurricane Rita on long-term forest dynamics using three 4-ha permanent plots in the Big Thicket of east Texas. Woody stems > 4.5 cm DBH that were severely damaged, uprooted, or snapped constituted 5% of stems at the dry upland site, 22% at the river floodplain site, and 31% at the mesic site. This variation corresponded to distance from the coast, distance from the storm track, and exposure. Nine of 27 canopy species populations showed a significantly positive relationship between mortality and DBH, and one showed a significant negative relationship. We identified 10 resistant, three intermediate, and 14 susceptible species populations. There was modest consistency in species behavior across sites, and consistency of some species between our results and the literature. Some inconsistencies can be accounted for by low vigor of some populations in our study. Relative dominance changes in the canopy and compositional trends in the small tree layer indicated that the hurricane accelerated long-term trends towards increasing dominance of shade-tolerant species at the dry and mesic sites but not at the wet site. We conclude that interspecific variation in resistance does not strongly alter temporal patterns that are based on shade tolerance and recruitment characteristics, in part because of relatively low overall damage rates.

Big Thicket People: Larry Jene Fisher’s Photographs of the Last Southern Frontier by Thad Sitton, C. E. Hunt (review)

Big Thicket People: Larry Jene Fisher’s Photographs of the Last Southern Frontier by Thad Sitton, C. E. Hunt (review)

An Important Beginning

An Important Beginning

Gregarina tropica n. sp. (Apicomplexa: Eugregarinorida: Gregarinicae: Gregarinidae) Parasitizing the Brown-Winged Earwig, Vostox brunneipennis (Dermaptera: Labiidae), in the Texas Big Thicket

Gregarina tropica n. sp. (Apicomplexa: Eugregarinorida) is described from the brown-winged earwig, Vostox brunneipennis (Dermaptera: Labiidae) collected from the Turkey Creek Unit, Big Thicket National Preserve, Tyler County, Texas, U.S.A. We review the morphometric data and nomenclatural status of the 8 previously described species of Gregarina infecting earwigs and recognize 7 valid species: Gregarina ovata, Gregarina nalae, Gregarina megaspora, Gregarina ambigua, Gregarina fallax, Gregarina chelidurellae, and Gregarina labidurae. Although apparently valid taxa, the latter 3 species are very poorly described and thus considered species inquirendae pending new collections and redescription. Gregarina forficulae is recognized as a junior synonymy of G. ovata.

Trichurispora wellgundis n. g., n. sp. (Apicomplexa: Eugregarinida: Hirmocystidae) Parasitizing Adult Water Scavenger Beetles, Tropisternus collaris (Coleoptera: Hydrophilidae) in the Texas Big Thicket

Trichurispora wellgundis n. g., n. sp. (Apicomplexa: Eugregarinida: Hirmocystidae) is described from the adults of the water scavenger beetle Tropisternus collaris (Coleoptera: Hydrophilidae) collected from B A Steinhagen Lake in the Cherokee Unit of the Big Thicket National Preserve, Tyler County, Texas, U.S.A. Trichurispora is distinguished from known genera of Hirmocystidae by a distinct ''trichurisiform'' oocyst that is hesperidiform in outline, comprising a fusiform oocyst with shallowly ovoid terminal knobs or caps. Oocyst residua are present but confined to a central fusiform residuum vacuole. Adult and larval hydrophilid beetles represent distinctly different opportunities for parasite colonization and diversification. Gregarines have been reported from both adult and larval hydrophilid beetles, but no species and no genus is reported from both adult and larval hosts. In fact, gregarine taxic richness is often more disparate between adult and larval beetles of the same species than between host beetle species. This is the first report of a septate gregarine from an adult hydrophilid beetle in the Nearctic.