Species of the Month

Up on the rooftop click click click, down through the chimney it's the species of the month! Christmas is right around the corner, so it’s time for another festive species of the month. The caribou is the wild version of the domesticated reindeer. Santa’s herd is safe, but their wild counterparts face habitat loss and in some areas have been hunted to extinction.

Woodland caribou

Scientific name: Rangifer tarandus

Kingdom: Animalia (animals)

Class: Mammalia (mammals)

Order: Artiodactyla (even-toed ungulates)

Range: Circumpolar- Canada, northwestern US, Greenland, northern Europe

Habitat: Arctic tundra and boreal forest

Lifespan: 4.5 years on average

Diet: Leaves, bark, lichen, mushrooms

Predators: Bears and wolves

Conservation Status: Endangered (US), IUCN Species of Least Concern

Lighter colored tundra caribou (NPS)

Other Information: Caribou are the only deer species featuring antlered females. Not all females grow antlers, however. Male antlers are larger and more intricate. Males use theirs in sparring during the rut. Like other deer species, mating is controlled by a dominant bull who fends of younger challengers. The fights leave males injured and/or exhausted and vulnerable to predators. Domesticated reindeer have been used as beasts of burden and for food for thousands of years. There are several subspecies of caribou. Northern caribou are nearly white and smaller than their southern counterparts. In North America, the woodland caribou is a dark brown and critically endangered. Just a handful lived in the wild in Washington and Idaho. Recently, they were all captured and sent to a secure area in British Columbia to protect them from predators in the hopes that their population will increase. Caribou hooves are very large and concave, serving as snowshoes.

Caribou hoof (Where To Next)

The size and shape also aid in swimming. Caribou migrate long distances and must cross many rivers. When walking, they make a loud clicking sound, caused by a foot tendon rubbing on bone.

Information once again comes from the good people at Michigan’s AnimalDiversity Web.

Domestic reindeer (The Nature Conservancy)

A Christmas Comet

Just in time for the holidays Earth has a celestial visitor! Comet Wirtanen makes one of the closest approaches ever recorded. It’s a small comet with a short orbital period of 5-6 years. It is bright enough to see with the naked eye, although because of its small size the way it scatters light, it is hard to spot. Keeping with the holiday tradition, if you’re lucky enough to see it, it will appear to be green.

Wirtanen approaches, as seen in November (NASA)

I am sadly surrounded by street lights, so I had to take a short trip to a state park where I had a dark sky. With a spotting scope and a general area of where to look, I was unable to find Wirtanen. The comet makes its closest approach to the sun tonight, and I decided to try again. However, I’ve been blessed with clouds. My next chance is Saturday night, when it is closest to Earth. Of course, rain is in the forecast.

Geminids (Smithsonian Magazine)

While I failed in my attempt to see just my second comet, I happened to see a meteor streak across the sky. Meteor showers are bits of cometary debris burning up in the atmosphere as Earth passes through the comet’s debris field. Comets are just dirty snowballs that melt a little bit as they approach the sun. As they break up, all the pieces that break off trail behind and wait for our orbit to sweep them up. This meteor was not associated with Wirtanen. It was part of the Geminid meteor shower, which is debris from the comet 3200 Phaethon, a dead comet. Its ice has melted and all that remains is rock. Most likely, if we ever pick up all the debris then there will be no more Geminids.

If you want to try your luck at finding Wirtanen, here’s a handy link that shows its location throughout the month. This month's information is from StarDate and NASA.

Habitat Rehab

Habitat restoration is one of the most important challenges facing conservationists today. Without adequate habitat, endangered species can’t be recovered. Many human activities require restoration as well. Fully functioning wetland systems can provide flood control and clean drinking water. How does the process of habitat restoration work?

Restored coastal marsh, where dikes were removed to
allow the sea to once again access the land

The first step, as in medicine, is “First, do no harm.” A site evaluation will determine exactly what needs to be done to restore what once was. Noting current conditions establishes a baseline for measuring success of the project. It might involve stabilizing a feature immediately, such as an eroding stream bank. After figuring out what needs to be done, the next step is figuring out how to do it.

In many cases, conservationists will use a reference site similar to what is being restored to determine plants and other features. Plants will influence what kind of animals will begin using the site, but the land and water on the site will determine what plants can live there.

Live willow stake planted to reforest
a former pastureland

A lot of times, restoration work is more than simply replacing plants and animals that lived on a site before people came in and messed it up. A site I monitored in Washington had once been a thriving salmon stream with a wide flood plain. 19^th century farmers drained the area by straitening the stream to allow water to flow in and out faster. They also cleared the trees. Fast forward to the 21^st century, and we’ve figured out that the stream needs to be slowed and shaded. Over a period of several years, the curves were put back in the stream and thousands of new trees and shrubs were planted. Fixing the stream required building temporary dams, removing fish by hand, and using heavy equipment to excavate a new stream bed at just the right depth and slope.

Ohop Creek after being restored to its twisted ways

After work has been completed, the site must be monitored for success. There should be some kind of measurable goal, and even if the restoration fails it can be a lesson for future attempts. The site I mentioned was restored for salmon habitat, and while it will take a few years for trees to begin cooling the water temperature, it has been under constant observation since work began. Several times a year, conservation groups involved in the restoration work check water levels, tree survival, how many salmon are spawning, and what kinds of animals are using the habitat. All of this is checked against initial observations from before the project began.

This prairie, currently a restoration work in progress,
was a field of weeds a few years ago

My work with habitat restoration has been monitoring (documenting wildlife and animal signs, as well as plant survival rates), site maintenance, and invasive species removal. The work is hard and sometimes conditions are brutal, but I find it to be very rewarding.

In many cases, restored habitat is second rate compared to what it once was and what nature has provided. It’s not for a lack of trying, but nature is a much better architect of natural features than what man could ever hope to be. But it’s better than nothing.

Species of the Month

Don’t laugh at November’s Species of the Month. Although it lends its name to the fiction hometown of the Griffin family in TV’s The Family Guy, the northern quahog (pronounced co-hog) is a real animal. A species of clam, it was likely eaten at the first Thanksgiving in 1621. The Pilgrims neglected to save a menu for posterity, so we’ll never know for sure. Will your Thanksgiving meal include any seafood? 

Northern quahog (NOAA Fisheries)

Scientific name: Mercanaria mercanaria 

Kingdom: Animalia (animals) 

Class: Bivalva (bivalves) 

Order: Veneroida (saltwater and freshwater molluscs) 

Range: East coast of North America from Gulf of St. Lawrence to Gulf of Mexico 

Habitat: Estuarine intertidal mudflats 

Lifespan: 30 years or more, a separate Arctic species was found to be 507 years old 

Diet: Zooplankton and phytoplankton 

Predators: Moon snails, oyster drills, whelks, rays, skates, shorebirds, humans 

Conservation Status: No special protection. 

Northern quahog (Chesapeake Bay News)

Quahogs are commercially harvested. In addition to a food source, they act as a natural filter by feeding. They filter feed through a siphon that extends from the shell. Plankton and pollutants go in, clean water comes out. Quahogs are mobile, although they don’t move much. A single foot at the base of the shell holds it in place in the mud or sand and can quickly dig in to avoid predators. It can also be used to move laterally. Quahogs reproduce by releasing sperm and egg cells into the water, where they randomly meet and fertilize. Within two weeks, the quahog larvae have formed a foot and shell and anchored to the substrate. Ocean currents aid in fertilizing the eggs and dispersing the larvae. This week's information comes from University of Michigan's Animal Diversity Web.

Ancient Trees

When you think of ancient trees, you probably think of petrified wood. You may be shocked to know that there are some ancient trees that are still living. The oldest known living organism is a bristlecone pine in Nevada that is over 5000 years old. When this tree sprouted, writing was a new concept and Egypt was under the rule of its first pharaohs. In fact, the pyramids weren’t even built yet, although Stonehenge was an active construction site.

Bristlecone pine (US Forest Service)

Other ancient trees are the giant sequoias of California in the 3000 year old range and limber pines date back to the 3^rd to 5^th centuries. East of the Mississippi, the oldest tree is a northern whitecedar in Ontario, which was just a gangly teen of 1100 years old when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Other trees around the world are estimated to be over 3000 years old, with a yew in a Welsh churchyard that might come close to 5000 years old.

Limber pine

None of those ancients come close to the ages of some cloned trees. Clones are genetically identical to the parent tree. Rather than germinating from a seed, they grow from the parent tree’s root system. Genetically identical Huon pines in Australia are estimated to be 3000 years old. Norway spruces in Sweden, which normally live to be about 600, are growing from live roots that are estimated at 9000 years old.

The king of ancient trees is the Pando in Utah. The Pando is a grove of quaking aspens with about 47,000 trees growing from a single root system. The individual trunk parts of the aspens average 130 years old, but the entire system is estimated to be anywhere from 80,000 to a million years old. The heaviest known organism in the world, the Pando recently made headlines because it is dying. Like so much else in the world, the cause of death is human activity.

The Pando (Smithsonian)

This week's information comes from Wikipedia, of all places. Not to be trusted as a reliable source, it's a great place to find lists.