Little brown bats slowly recovering from deadly fungus

        Surveys of bat maternity roosts in barns and attics around Rhode Island suggests that populations of little brown bats, which had declined by 95-98 percent across the Northeast as a result of a deadly fungus, are beginning to recover.
        “It’s speculative at this point, but from what I see anecdotally and in the data, we’re seeing evidence of recovery,” said Charles Brown, a wildlife biologist with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) who monitors bat populations in the state. “It seems like they hit bottom — at least I hope they did — and we’re seeing evidence of the bats rebounding and recovering to some degree.”
        Once considered the most common bat in the region, little brown bats are one of the species most significantly impacted by white-nose syndrome, a fungus found in the caves where the bats hibernate.

Little brown bats (Ann Froschauer/USFWS)

First discovered in 2006 in a cave in upstate New York, the fungus soon spread to bat hibernation caves throughout the Northeast. It has now been detected in 35 states and seven Canadian provinces, and it has been confirmed as a cause of death for 12 North American bat species.
        Brown began monitoring maternity roosts in Rhode Island in 2010, after the fungus had already had a significant impact on local bats, most of which are believed to hibernate in caves in Vermont, New Hampshire and New York.
        “Female little brown bats are here in the summer in their maternity roosts, where they’re not exposed to white-nose syndrome,” Brown said. “But they’ve come from a cave somewhere like Vermont where they’ve been exposed to it all winter, and then they go back there the following winter and may be re-exposed. We’ve learned that some bats have developed a resistance and are persevering, but every year bats are dying and not coming back.”
        Nonetheless, little brown bat numbers seem to be growing in the Ocean State.
        “We’ve seen some maternity colonies blink out through the years, whether because they all died or because they got down to such low numbers that the bats ended up going to another colony,” Brown said. “My guess is that there are probably fewer colonies on the landscape now than there used to be, but in general, all of our sites showed good recruitment this year.”
        Brown and a team of DEM staff and volunteers visit each of 15 bat maternity roosts twice each summer to count how many of the animals emerge to feed at dusk. Some of the sites contain little brown bats, others have big brown bats, and some have both species. June visits tally breeding females, while July visits count both adult females and their pups, which are able to fly and feed themselves by then. Males do not spend time in maternity roosts.
        “We had good recruitment of pups this year,” he said. “Some years we don’t see that. But, in general, this year we saw bats that did well as far as pups making it to flight stage. Whether they survive their first winter of life may be a different story, however.”
        Rebuilding bat populations is a long, slow process, according to Brown. Female bats give birth to just one pup each year, and the pup survival rate during their first year is only about 50 percent.
        “We’re not going to see a significant recovery in our lifetime,” Brown said. “We’re not going to see numbers we used to see for a long time. We need to think long-term about protecting maternity roost sites. If they’re going to recover, they need habitat, they need places to feed, they need places to raise their young. We’re going to have to maintain our forests and open spaces. If we don’t protect habitat, there won’t be a place for bats to come back to.”
        Brown is also worried about the long-term stability of the buildings containing bat maternity roosts. An old barn in Coventry that has long been a maternity roost is collapsing and may no longer be maintaining the environmental conditions that the bats require to reproduce.
        Not every bat species in Rhode Island was as impacted by white-nose syndrome as the little brown bat, however. Brown said big brown bats, some of which also migrate to caves in northern New England, are less susceptible to the fungus.
        Bats that do not hibernate in caves, such as red bats and hoary bats, were not affected by the fungus at all.
        Brown monitors these other bat species by conducting mobile acoustic surveys — driving five 20-mile transects twice each summer with a bat detector mounted on his vehicle to listen for the calls of bats. He also traps and bands bats at various locations each year, though the coronavirus pandemic put all bat handling on hold to ensure that humans do not transmit the virus to bats.
        The data he collects provides insights about where various species are found and how populations are trending from year to year. He shares this information with the North American Bat Monitoring Program, which assesses regional population trends.
        “We know more about bats than we did 10 years ago, but we still don’t know a lot,” Brown said. “There are still a lot of unanswered questions, especially about bat migration.”
        Brown is particularly concerned about the impact of the growing number of wind turbines on migrating bats.
        “It’s well documented that bats suffer mortality at wind turbines, and I don’t think that’s being adequately addressed by the regulatory process in place now,” he said. “We know bats move in the offshore environment in great numbers. We know bats are attracted to turbines, though we don’t know why. And we know they’re killed by wind turbines.”
        

        This article first appeared on EcoRI.org on September 30, 2021.

Light pollution's glare threatens all kinds of wildlife

        Global insect populations have declined by as much as 75 percent during the past 50 years, according to scientists, potentially leading to catastrophic impacts on wildlife, the environment and human health. Most studies point to habitat loss, climate change, industrial farming and pesticide use as the main factors driving the loss of insects, but a new study in the United Kingdom points to another cause: light pollution.
        The ever-increasing glow of artificial light from street lights, especially LED lights, was found to have detrimental effects on the behavior of moths, resulting in a reduction in caterpillar numbers by half. And since birds and other wildlife rely on caterpillars as an important food source, the consequences of this decline could be devastating.
        According to Douglas Boyes of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, street lights cause nocturnal moths to postpone laying their eggs while also making the insects more visible to predators

such as bats. In addition, caterpillars that hatch near artificial light exhibit abnormal feeding behavior.
        But moths are not the only wildlife affected by artificial light.
        Since most songbirds migrate at night, birds that have evolved to use the moon and stars as navigational tools during migration often become disoriented when flying over a landscape illuminated with artificial light.
        “City centers that are very bright at night can act as attractants to migrating birds,” said ornithologist Charles Clarkson, director of avian research at the Audubon Society of Rhode Island. “They get pulled toward cities, and when they find themselves amid heavily lit buildings, they become disoriented, leading to a large number of window strikes and increased mortality.”
        It is unclear why birds are attracted to lights, but studies have found increasing densities of migrating birds the closer one gets to cities.
        “Birds probably see these cities on the horizon from a long distance, and they get pulled toward these locations en masse,” Clarkson said.
        Street lights have also been found to be problematic to birds. Birds are active later into the evening when they are exposed to nearby artificial lighting at night, and they often sing later as well.
        “Sometimes that might lead to more food availability, since lights attract insects,” Clarkson said. “But it also affects the physiology of the birds when they’re active when they should be sleeping. Some birds that live in heavily lit urban or suburban areas begin nesting earlier, too, up to a month earlier than they typically would. And that leads to a phenological mismatch between when food is traditionally available and when the chicks are hatching and need to be fed.”
        Artificial lighting may cause other species to face a similar mismatch. Christopher Thawley, a lecturer and researcher in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Rhode Island, studied lizards in Florida and found not only that the reptiles advanced the onset of breeding when exposed to artificial light, but they also laid more eggs and even grew larger under artificial lighting conditions. Other kinds of wildlife could have comparable results.
        “Light at night can sometimes mimic a longer day length, and a lot of animals use length of day as a cue for when to start breeding,” he said. “If they’re exposed to light at night, they think the days are longer so it must be time to breed. Length of daylight is also a good cue for when to migrate or when to start calling, and that could potentially be an issue for some species.”
        Thawley said frogs that call at night near artificial light could be more vulnerable to predators.
        “When nights are darker, frogs call more, and when the moon is bright they call less,” he said. “It’s more dangerous to call during a full moon because predators could see you. That would be especially true under artificial lighting conditions, too.”
        Scientists are still trying to understand the intricacies of how light pollution impacts wildlife, and yet some cities are already taking action to reduce its impact. Dozens of cities around the United States and Canada, including Boston, New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., have launched “lights out” programs aimed at dimming city lights during the peak of bird migration.
        Providence is not among the cities participating in a “lights out” program, but local advocates have discussed how to get it started for several years. They say it would be a positive first step toward reducing the impact of artificial lighting on local and migrating wildlife.
        

        This article first appeared on EcoRI.org on September 29, 2021.

Fall means it's time to change

        Every September I’m reminded of that Brady Bunch episode when Bobby’s voice changes just as the Brady kids are about to record an album. They make the best of it by featuring his unreliably squeaky voice in a new song called “It’s time to change.”
        I’m reminded of that because September is the beginning of a time of change in the natural world. We know it best from the changing fall foliage, when many of our maple leaves turn red, our oaks turn to orange, and our beeches and birches turn yellow. For many people, the changing foliage colors make autumn their favorite season – especially in northern New England where the tourist economy depends on it.
        But foliage isn’t the only thing that changes colors in fall. Many birds do, too, as they transition from their bright breeding plumage into their drab winter plumage. And that makes it challenging to be a birdwatcher — or at least a bird identifier — when so many species look uncharacteristically dull.
        For many years I avoided birdwatching in the fall, in part because the songbirds were more quiet and therefore harder to find. But I was also frustrated by the difficulties in identifying many of what one field guide has even referred to as the “confusing fall warblers.” But eventually I figured most of them out and now I enjoy the challenge of fall birding.
        It was only recently, however, that I learned why some birds change colors and others don’t.
        In part, it has to do with their behavior on their wintering grounds. Some birds defend a territory during the winter months, just as they do in spring and summer to protect their mate from unwanted attention. In winter, they may be defending an area with an abundance of food instead. And keeping their bright colors helps to draw attention to themselves while protecting their territory.
        Other species flock together in the winter to make it easier to find productive foraging sites, and they no longer have a reason to defend a particular territory. Those birds are more likely to molt from their bright spring plumage into duller colors.
        Birds that look rather drab during the breeding season, like sparrows, tend to remain drab all year. And most resident birds – those that stay here year-round without migrating – also keep the same plumage all year. Though not all.
        It’s a confusing state of affairs, to be honest, but nature has a reason for everything, even though the scientific community hasn’t entirely figured out all the reasons for why things happen as they do.
        Plenty of mammals also change colors in the fall and winter, though not many around Rhode Island. In northern New England, where snow cover is more common throughout the winter, animals like snowshoe hares and weasels exchange their brownish summer pelage for white fur to help camouflage themselves in the snow. Further north, it’s even more common as Arctic foxes, lemmings and other species do the same.
        Around here, it’s mostly white-tailed deer that are a noticeably different color from season to season. In the fall, deer begin to molt their rusty summer coat into a faded brown or gray color. The transition into their darker winter fur, triggered by hormonal changes that occur each fall, helps them to absorb more of the sun’s heat to stay warm in winter.
        Regardless of how or why they do it, these colorful changes play an important role in their life cycle. Now if only I could do something about my ghostly white legs.

        This article first appeared in The Independent on September 25, 2021.

Whales of the Deep

        The small boat maneuvered within yards of a rare True’s beaked whale in the waters near Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The researchers held their breath as they tried to attach a digital tag to the animal’s back with a suction cup. Beaked whales seldom come to the surface for long, so the team’s window of opportunity was fleeting, and they had already made several attempts. If the whale dived again, they might not get another chance. Extending a long pole over the whale, they finally slapped the tag on the animal’s back, and the tag held tight. The team erupted in cheers — no one had ever successfully tagged a True’s beaked whale before.
        “We had all worked so hard to get to that moment, and it was a huge accomplishment,” said Danielle Cholewiak, a research ecologist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and the leader of the summer 2018 expedition. “For the first time, we were going to have a little more insight into the deep, underwater behavior of this elusive species.”
        Beaked whales are among the most mysterious marine mammals in the world. Because they are rarely seen and disappear underwater for long stretches of time, little is known about their behavior and

True's beaked whale (New England Aquarium)

life cycle. What are they feeding on? Why do they seem to prefer deep canyons? Do they travel widely or remain in one area for most of the year? Where do they reproduce? What is their social structure? The marine national monument 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is one of the few known places that is home to several beaked whale species, and scientists conducting research there are hoping to answer some of these questions about the unfamiliar cetaceans.
        Beaked whales have a distinct snout like that of a dolphin, and males can be identified by two tusklike teeth. The whales range in size from about 15 to 40 feet long and can weigh more than 12 tons. More than 20 species traverse the world’s oceans, and they prefer deep, offshore waters — unlike most of the best-known whale species, which spend much of their lives on the continental shelf. Most beaked whales are also shy and difficult to approach. Many species look so similar that even scientists find it challenging to tell them apart, and a couple of species are known only from dead specimens that have washed ashore.
        “Often the best way to identify a dead one on the beach is to cut off the head, freeze it and send it to an expert to make the ID from the clean skull,” said Robert Kenney, a retired marine mammal researcher at the University of Rhode Island.
        Three species of beaked whales — True’s, Cuvier’s and Sowerby’s — have been observed in the Northeast Canyons monument, a 4,900-square-mile protected area established by President Barack Obama in 2016 for its diverse habitats and abundant marine life, which includes billfish, tuna, sharks and more than 50 species of corals. The only marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean, it features four underwater mountains, or seamounts, and three 1-mile-deep canyons at the edge of the continental shelf. The topography facilitates upwelling, a process that brings nutrient-rich cold water to the surface and sustains numerous species, from cod to North Atlantic right whales.
        The monument is “one of the least human-impacted areas of the East Coast,” said marine ecologist Peter Auster from the Mystic Aquarium and University of Connecticut, who started studying the area in 1984.
        In 2020, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation that lifted restrictions on commercial fishing in the monument. NPCA has been advocating for the restoration of the monument’s protections, and the Biden administration is reviewing the legality of the proclamation.
        Since confirming in 2016 that True’s beaked whales visit the monument area, Cholewiak has spent two to four weeks each summer or fall studying the whales at sea. During every expedition, she and her colleagues scan the surface of the water with supersized binoculars mounted on the ship to locate whales up to 7 miles away. Because the animals remain submerged for extended periods, the researchers also use a variety of acoustic tools to detect them and learn about their underwater movement patterns. Cholewiak’s research vessel tows an array of up to eight hydrophones, and the team laid acoustic recorders on the seafloor, for instance, to listen for the unique echolocation sounds the beaked whales make as they forage for squid and other prey.
        “It’s above our hearing range, so we don’t actually hear it ourselves, but we watch for their signals to come in on a computer screen,” Cholewiak said.
        In addition to Cholewiak and her team, researchers from the New England Aquarium in Boston conduct several aerial surveys in the monument each year to count marine mammals and other wildlife visible at the surface. They fly six transects over the monument’s canyons in a twin-engine plane with two observers aboard, and when they spot marine mammals such as beaked whales, they depart from their route to get a closer look.
        “When we see some, we wonder how many we flew past that were down on a dive when we flew over,” said Orla O’Brien, assistant scientist at the aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life. “They’re such a cryptic species that every sighting is important.”
        Based on five years of survey data, Cuvier’s and Sowerby’s beaked whales appear to be more common in the monument than True’s, though the aquarium team has observed all three species swimming in the canyon area in most years.
        Cholewiak’s research group, which is affiliated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is slowly learning details of True’s beaked whales’ behavior. The team was the first to distinguish the echolocation sounds made by True’s (pictured below) from those of the closely related Gervais’ beaked whale, for example. And thanks to the data collected from the tagged whale, they finally have an idea of how long and how deep the whales can dive. The tag remained attached to the whale for 13 hours before falling off and floating to the surface. Once it was retrieved, it indicated that the whale had dived nine times to a depth of about 3,200 feet and that each dive lasted between 25 and 40 minutes.
        Data from just one whale isn’t enough to make generalizations about the species, however, so Cholewiak and her team are continuing their efforts to monitor beaked whales. The pandemic halted progress in 2020, but the researchers were planning to return to the monument this September. One of their longer-term goals is to tag both True’s and Cuvier’s beaked whales to track their movements and interactions to better understand how the two species may be sharing or partitioning their habitat.
        “I feel really excited and energized by this work,” she said. “We still have a lot to learn, but we’re definitely learning something new about beaked whales every time we get out there.”

        This article first appeared in the fall 2021 issue of National Parks magazine.

Tracking Brook Trout

        At Breakheart Brook in the Arcadia Management Area in Exeter, Ellie Madigan bushwhacks along the edge of the stream carrying a hand-held antenna and receiver to listen for an electronic beep that indicates a brook trout is nearby. During a half-mile of walking, she hears only the sounds of the gurgling brook, a few songbirds, and the buzzing of insects. So she heads in the opposite direction.
        Madigan, a University of Rhode Island student, is joined in the search by fellow student Mitchell Parizek and Corey Pelletier, a biologist with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental

DEM biologist Corey Pelletier and URI students (M. Derr)

Management, who devised the research project to track the movement of the state’s only native trout species. After capturing 75 trout in May and implanting a tracking device in each of them, Pelletier, Madigan and Parizek are trying to relocate each of the fish every week throughout the summer to figure out where the fish go as water temperatures rise.
        “One of the things brook trout need for survival is cool water during the summer and high levels of dissolved oxygen,” said Pelletier. “That dictates the habitats they can spend time in and survive in. But often there are significant numbers of impoundments — dams dating to pre-industrial times that not only inhibit trout movement but also warm up the water.
        “One reason why we find brook trout in these small streams is because the streams are often fed by groundwater — whether through seeps in the woods or seeps that come through the streambed — and groundwater is cool and contains enough oxygen,” he added.
        Most of the state’s small number of brook trout are found in the Wood-Pawcatuck watershed in South County, so that’s where Pelletier and his team are spending most of their time.
        Brook trout are considered “a species of greatest conservation need” in Rhode Island. They typically grow no larger than 12 inches, and often only 6 to 8 inches, because their limited habitat in small streams keeps them from growing larger. The chief threats they face are changing environmental conditions – mostly warming waters and low dissolved oxygen – as well as pollutants due to run-off from nearby developments. Stocked trout are also a concern, since they are usually non-native species that are larger than brook trout and can outcompete the native species for food and habitat.
        That’s why the state will no longer be stocking trout in the Beaver River, and fishing there will be limited to catch-and-release only to create a stream specifically managed for wild brook trout. Last year the state also increased the minimum size of trout that can be harvested in Rhode Island waters to eight inches, which means that most brook trout will have to be released if caught.
        Charlestown resident Jim Turek supports these efforts to protect brook trout and their habitat. An enthusiastic trout fisherman who has little interest in catching stocked trout, he calls brook trout an iconic species for New England.
        “They’ve always been here, and they’ve sustained local communities for centuries as a source of food and enjoyment,” he said. “It’s a heritage fish that looks better and tastes better than trout grown on food pellets in a hatchery.”
        Turek is one of dozens of Rhode Island trout fishermen who are committed to protecting the species and who are strict about not revealing the location of their favorite trout streams.
        “We believe we should do all we can to save these fish,” he said. “Brook trout populations are so small that if we tell the public where to go fish for them, they’ll remove some of the bigger ones and we won’t have a sustainable population any more. We’re happy to just walk along a stream and see a beautiful fish and know they’re still there. We don’t even need to catch them.”
        Even among the fishermen there is disagreement, mostly about the most appropriate fishing method for catching brook trout. The fly fishermen say that using flies is less likely to cause injuries to the fish that could lead to their death, enabling the fish to be released unharmed. The bait fishermen disagree.
        Pelletier isn’t taking sides. He’s mostly interested in learning as much as he can about where the trout go in summer so those areas can be protected from development and fishing pressure and to figure out how to keep the water temperature in those locations from getting too high.
        “The optimal water temperature for brook trout is 12 to 18 degrees Celsius, because that’s when they exhibit their highest growth rate, but above 18 you get into stressful conditions for them,” Pelletier said. “Above 23 and they don’t exhibit positive growth, and above 25 is potentially lethal, but it depends on how long they’re exposed to those temperatures.”
        His tracking study ran into difficulties immediately after the tagged fish were released in May because a stretch of hot weather in early June forced the fish to move much farther than Pelletier expected.
        “Wherever they were in May is now too warm for them, so they’ve had to go somewhere else,” he said. “But it seems like when temperatures are suitable, they can remain in the same spot for weeks.”
        Back at Breakheart Brook, the research team found just two tagged brook trout by the end of a long day of tracking. But they weren’t discouraged. They had many more miles of shaded streams to search to find the heart of the brook trout’s summer range.
        “The information that comes out of this study will be very important for the future management of this species,” Pelletier said. “We’ll understand the areas necessary to support trout through the very stressful high-temperature periods. It’s going to give us insight into management actions we can take to further protect the species.”

        This article first appeared in the August 2021 issue of South County Life magazine.

Thanks to rain, it's been a mushroom summer

        The incredible volume of rain that was dumped on southern New England last month has made for an unusual summer.
        While the drought-stricken southwestern United States is no-doubt jealous of our abundant precipitation, I’m not so thrilled with it. All that rain has made my weedy lawn grow so fast that I can’t mow it fast enough. It has also accelerated roadway runoff into local water bodies, increasing levels of pollutants in ponds and streams and leading to more algae blooms than usual.
         On the other hand, the rain has made it a banner year for mushrooms. During a five-minute walk around my yard last month, I counted more than 90 mushrooms of 11 different species. While I admit that I don't know a great deal about mushrooms, I know enough not to pick and eat any of them, since

Chestnut bolete (Todd McLeish)

many can be deadly and most are notoriously difficult to identify. And yet they are intriguing for their beautiful colors and forms, and they are vitally important to the health of trees and forests.
        I just love how some mushrooms look like coral and others like mounds of jelly; some are round puffballs and others like tiny parasols; some look like giant pancakes while others remind me of tree rings. In my yard alone, I’ve seen them in red, purple, yellow, white, brown and orange. And some even have bioluminescent qualities. Shine a black light around your yard at night and some of your mushrooms will probably glow in the dark.
        Strangely enough, those biology lessons in high school that probably instructed you that every living thing is either a plant or animal were wrong. Mushrooms don’t fall into either category. They belong to their own kingdom because, among other reasons, they differ from plants and animals in the way that they obtain their nutrients. Unlike plants, which use photosynthesis, and animals, which consume their food internally, mushrooms grow into and around their food source and digest it externally.
        The mushroom we see at the surface is only a tiny part of the entire organism, however. Simply put, the mushroom is the reproductive part of a fungi, sort of like the fruit of a plant. Once the mushroom distributes its spores, it melts away, but the rest of the fungal organism lives on, often for many years.
        Here’s another high school biology lesson that wasn’t entirely accurate – trees in the forest don’t actually take up water and nutrients through their roots. The underground part of mushrooms is responsible for that job. Healthy forests are dependent on hundreds of thousands of miles of fungal threads called hyphae to gather water and nutrients and supply it to the tree’s roots. (Some scientists say that these hyphae make up 90 percent of the life living in our soils.) In return, the trees give the fungus sugars they produce in their leaves. Without this symbiotic relationship – called mycorrhizae – our forests would cease to exist as we know them.
        But that’s not all we get from mushrooms and fungi. They are an important source of pharmaceutical compounds, too, and they have the unique ability to penetrate hard wood and biodegrade it. Yeast fungi also play a key role in the production of bread and wine, which puts them high on my list of the world’s most important organisms.
        All this, and mushrooms taste good, too. I only wish we didn’t have to get flooded out of our homes to see so many of them.

        This article first appeared in the Independent on Aug. 14, 2021.

Soggy July was good and bad for wildlife, environment

        Rhode Island experienced the third-rainiest July on record, with most areas receiving more than twice the average monthly precipitation and some areas receiving much more, especially in the northwest corner of the state. Local scientists said all that rain likely had an impact on wildlife and the environment, in both positive and negative ways.
        In many neighborhoods, it was the mushrooms that were the most visible winners. Mushrooms of numerous species sprouted from lawns, gardens, forests, meadows and elsewhere in huge numbers. Abundant rainfall brings to life the underground portion of a fungi — called the mycelium — resulting in the production of mushrooms, according to Ryan Bouchard, founder of the Rhode Island-based Mushroom Hunting Foundation.
        “You end up with larger flushes of mushrooms, species not normally seen in such abundance, and

Jackson's slender amanita (Ryan Bouchard)

species seen in uncharacteristic size,” he said. “This wasn’t just an extra rainy July, though. It was a comeback from the prolonged terrible mushroom season of 2020 when we had a lack of rain throughout the year that left the mycelium mostly dormant and weakened.”
        The near-daily July rains provided what Bouchard called “a kick in the pants to the mycelia to get back into action.” He said it was an especially good month for Jackson’s slender amanita, a brightly colored edible mushroom that is usually hard to find but which was abundant in many places in July. Black trumpet mushrooms and chantarelles also had a major comeback following a year in which Bouchard saw only one.
        Other wildlife didn’t fare nearly as well as the mushrooms, however. Butterflies, moths and dragonflies were barely noticed in many areas for much of the month, though that doesn’t mean the insects were killed by the rain. Most were probably just in hiding. They are typically visible only during sunny days, and since July had few sunny days, most species did not make their presence known.
        Butterflies and moths in their caterpillar stages, though, may have succumbed due to the rain. Martin Wencek, a butterfly expert and a supervisor in the Freshwater Wetlands Division of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, said any insect that goes through a caterpillar stage faces high mortality during especially wet years.
        “The dampness can promote bacterial growth that does them in effectively,” he said.
        An isolated month of extreme rain isn’t likely to have a serious impact on dragonflies, said Virginia Brown, author of Dragonflies and Damselflies of Rhode Island. But if torrential rains result in dam breaches, it could affect dragonfly populations and their habitats.
        “The problem from an odonate [dragonfly and damselfly] perspective is that when a dam breaches, the water it holds back — usually in the form of a pond or reservoir — is released downstream and, poof, there goes the pond habitat and all the aquatic critters like eggs and larvae in the water,” Brown said. “The pond becomes a stream channel, and then the hydrology and vegetation change.”
        Brown believes several populations of rare damselflies disappeared from the Ocean State in just this way as a result of the floods of March 2010.
        On the other hand, she said, “all this rain will probably result in high mosquito populations, which will mean more food for odonates.”
        More mosquitoes means more food for insect-eating birds as well. But since the rains occurred during the peak of bird nesting season, it may have negatively affected the ability of some birds to fledge their young successfully. According to Steven Reinert, an ornithologist who monitors the nests of one of Rhode Island’s most-imperiled birds in a marsh on the Bristol/Warren line, when heavy rains coincide with extreme high tides in salt marshes in mid-summer, saltmarsh sparrow nests can become flooded.
        “Rains coinciding with flooding events not only raises the elevation of the floodwaters, but also keeps water levels at or near nest level for longer periods of time,” he said. “Thus, the extensive rain of July likely cost the lives of nestling saltmarsh sparrows at Jacob's Point, but the extent of damage is impossible to quantify.”
        The abundant precipitation provided a significant boost to lawns and wild plants, but many cultivated plants, especially vegetables, struggled to survive. Heather Faubert, who directs the Plant Protection Clinic at the University of Rhode Island, said the rains led to significant impacts on tomatoes, peppers, onions, carrots, squash and other varieties from foliar diseases. Many fruiting shrubs were affected by pest insects as well.
        “Spotted-wing drosophila [a nonnative fruit fly] love high humidity, so they are doing great infesting blueberries, blackberries and raspberries,” Faubert said.
        Water quality in area lakes, ponds and streams was likely affected by the abundant rainfall, too, but not always in the same way. Elizabeth Herron of the URI Watershed Watch program said some lakes and ponds receive contamination from stormwater runoff, while others that are already contaminated may be improved by having stormwater flush out the contaminated water.
        “Increased runoff does mean we are seeing higher levels of bacteria in many of our sites, even in rural areas, after rainfall events,” she said. “We are also seeing some increased staining in our lakes and ponds due to water being flushed out of wetlands. Tannic acids often color the water like tea or even coffee. The darker stained water reduces water clarity and may impact algal and plant growth. In some places that can be a good thing, in other places that reduces productivity, potentially limiting growth of fish, zooplankton and other critters.
        “In other words, it is all very complicated. But ultimately I would argue that having more water in July is preferable for water quality than drought.”

        This article first appeared on EcoRI.org on August 9, 2021.