‘Tis the season for Christmas carols, and every time I hear the classic Twelve Days of Christmas, it has me wanting to go on a birdwatching adventure.
The song features six birds, and while most aren’t native to Rhode Island – the song originated in England, after all – that doesn’t mean that they’re difficult to find nearby. At least some of them.
Let’s start with the easy ones.
You’ll have little trouble finding seven swans a-swimming in the winter months around here. Just stop by any of the larger ponds or calm coves, like Easton’s Pond in Newport, Trustom Pond in South Kingstown, St. Mary’s Pond in Portsmouth, or Apponaug Cove in Warwick. Almost all of the swans you see will be mute swans, a European species introduced to New England in the late 19th century. But there’s a slim chance you may stumble upon a native tundra swan as it migrates through to the Mid-Atlantic States. They look very similar.
Six geese should also be easy, though they won’t be a-laying. Even seeing 600 won’t be a problem. Canada geese have become a nuisance in some parks, golf courses and turf fields, and winter is when they are at their most abundant in Rhode Island. Look for them at the same places as the swans, though also check the Slocum turf fields, the corn fields near Trustom Pond, Newport Country Club and Fort Adams State Park. And note that several other species of goose can also be found in Rhode Island in winter, including snow goose, brant and occasionally cackling goose, white-fronted goose and pink-footed goose.
Although most birds sing primarily during the breeding season in spring and summer, finding four calling birds in December should be a breeze. Since the lyrics don’t mention a particular species, you could count any number of species that make noise in winter, like chickadees, titmice, nuthatches and sparrows. But note that the original lyrics to the song referred to four “colly” birds, which is believed to be an archaic reference to the European blackbird. In that case, you’re out of luck without a plane ticket.
Three French hens are another story. It likely refers to Faverolles chickens, a French breed now primarily found in poultry exhibitions, though perhaps any domesticated chicken will do the trick in a pinch. Or better yet, search for wild chicken relatives, like wild turkeys, which can be found just about everywhere these days. Pheasants fit the bill, too, though the only place to find them in Rhode Island is Block Island.
While there are plenty of mourning doves that come to bird feeders, finding two turtle doves will be especially difficult. Your best bet would be finding a Eurasian collared dove, a member of the turtle dove family that has been expanding around the country but hasn’t quite made it to Rhode Island in any numbers. If you happen to be traveling to Florida for the holidays, you’ll find them perching on utility wires throughout suburbia.
Finding a partridge will also be challenging. No native partridges visit Rhode Island, but a few local game farms raise two species, gray partridges and chukars, to release for hunters. Occasionally a few escape and wander the area. A friend in North Smithfield had a chukar visiting his yard almost daily for a few weeks in September and October.
But finding one in a pear tree is next to impossible.
This article first appeared in the Newport Daily News on December 20, 2021.
Thursday, December 23, 2021
Wednesday, December 22, 2021
Scientists assessing how waterfowl interacts with aquaculture facilities
As aquaculture operations expand in Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island’s salt ponds, questions have arisen about how ducks and geese are affected by the facilities. To begin to answer these questions, a University of Rhode Island doctoral student is tracking the movements of local waterfowl.
“There haven’t been any Rhode Island studies yet, but studies on the Pacific Coast have found issues with diving ducks getting tangled up in netting used by aquaculture, and birds that have been deterred from areas that might otherwise be good habitat because of the activities of aquaculture operations,” said Tori Mezebish, a native of Maryland who is collaborating on the project with URI
Professors Peter Paton and Scott McWilliams and officials from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.
She noted that previous studies have also observed sea ducks like eiders and scoters, which feed on shellfish, preying on oysters and other shellfish being grown by aquaculturists.
“There’s also been some positive associations, like ducks and geese eating some of the aquatic vegetation that accumulates on the cages,” Mezebish said. “It’s a mixed bag of how the birds might interact with aquaculture.”
Last winter, Mezebish attached transmitters to 30 black ducks and 30 brant, a species of goose that lives in salt water. This winter she will deploy an additional 30 transmitters on common goldeneyes, a diving duck. All three species are common during winter in Narragansett Bay, the salt ponds, and adjacent salt marshes.
Most of the brant have returned from their breeding grounds in the Arctic, and several of them spend every day with dozens of other brant on the lawn at Colt State Park in Bristol. Others are spending most of their time in the Upper Bay and Providence River. The black ducks are just beginning to return to the area from Maine and southern Canada, and the early arrivals have been tracked to the salt ponds and the Galilee area.
Mezebish is tracking the movements of each bird using a GPS unit on their transmitters to see how much time they spend near aquaculture facilities. She is also observing the birds in the field to validate the GPS data and see what the birds are doing around the shellfish farms.
“The goal is to understand what is important to these species outside of the aquaculture facilities,” she said. “Maybe brant need shallow areas with submerged vegetation, so that may not be the best place to put an aquaculture lease.”
In addition to Mezebish’s study, URI postdoctoral researcher Martina Müller is conducting land-based surveys throughout the year to see what other kinds of birds may be interacting with the aquaculture facilities.
“Ultimately we want to provide recommendations about the good and not so good places for aquaculture leases to be placed,” said Mezebish, who became interested in waterfowl research as an intern at the Pawtuxet Wildlife Research Center in Maryland, where she hand-reared ducklings used in the center’s research activities.
When the project is complete, Mezebish hopes to use the study as a springboard to study related questions about other conflicts and interactions between waterfowl and humans.
“There haven’t been any Rhode Island studies yet, but studies on the Pacific Coast have found issues with diving ducks getting tangled up in netting used by aquaculture, and birds that have been deterred from areas that might otherwise be good habitat because of the activities of aquaculture operations,” said Tori Mezebish, a native of Maryland who is collaborating on the project with URI
 |
| Tori Mezebish with black duck |
She noted that previous studies have also observed sea ducks like eiders and scoters, which feed on shellfish, preying on oysters and other shellfish being grown by aquaculturists.
“There’s also been some positive associations, like ducks and geese eating some of the aquatic vegetation that accumulates on the cages,” Mezebish said. “It’s a mixed bag of how the birds might interact with aquaculture.”
Last winter, Mezebish attached transmitters to 30 black ducks and 30 brant, a species of goose that lives in salt water. This winter she will deploy an additional 30 transmitters on common goldeneyes, a diving duck. All three species are common during winter in Narragansett Bay, the salt ponds, and adjacent salt marshes.
Most of the brant have returned from their breeding grounds in the Arctic, and several of them spend every day with dozens of other brant on the lawn at Colt State Park in Bristol. Others are spending most of their time in the Upper Bay and Providence River. The black ducks are just beginning to return to the area from Maine and southern Canada, and the early arrivals have been tracked to the salt ponds and the Galilee area.
Mezebish is tracking the movements of each bird using a GPS unit on their transmitters to see how much time they spend near aquaculture facilities. She is also observing the birds in the field to validate the GPS data and see what the birds are doing around the shellfish farms.
“The goal is to understand what is important to these species outside of the aquaculture facilities,” she said. “Maybe brant need shallow areas with submerged vegetation, so that may not be the best place to put an aquaculture lease.”
In addition to Mezebish’s study, URI postdoctoral researcher Martina Müller is conducting land-based surveys throughout the year to see what other kinds of birds may be interacting with the aquaculture facilities.
“Ultimately we want to provide recommendations about the good and not so good places for aquaculture leases to be placed,” said Mezebish, who became interested in waterfowl research as an intern at the Pawtuxet Wildlife Research Center in Maryland, where she hand-reared ducklings used in the center’s research activities.
When the project is complete, Mezebish hopes to use the study as a springboard to study related questions about other conflicts and interactions between waterfowl and humans.
Tuesday, December 14, 2021
Grad student investigating distribution of one of Rhode Island's rarest turtles
Wood turtles are among the rarest turtles in Rhode Island, and yet little is known about where they can be found in the state and what conservation strategies may boost their populations. A University of Rhode Island graduate student is taking the first steps in addressing those questions by surveying the state to identify local populations of the turtle and the habitat they require from season to season.
“There has never been a statewide survey of wood turtles in Rhode Island before, and before we can protect them, we have to figure out where they are,” said Chloe Johnson, a native of Atlanta,
Georgia, who is in her second year of studying the turtles as part of her master’s degree.
Wood turtles, which have been proposed for inclusion on the federal endangered species list, are found from Virginia to southern Canada and west to Minnesota. Sporting orange patches on their neck and legs, they spend time in slow-moving rivers and streams as well as in terrestrial environments like forests, croplands and pastures. They nest in open sandy areas.
Working in collaboration with URI Associate Professor Nancy Karraker and Scott Buchanan at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, Johnson conducted upland surveys during the summer of 2021 in hopes of finding nesting turtles, and she scoured rivers and streams in fall and spring. So far, she has identified 13 locations where the turtles have been documented. But finding the turtles has been harder than she expected.
“I’ve done more than 70 surveys and found fewer than 15 wood turtles,” she said. “They’re much more difficult to find than I anticipated. In the summer I went three weeks without seeing one. It’s hard, but when you find one it’s so much more rewarding.”
In the upcoming field season, when Johnson finds a wood turtle, she will attach a GPS data logger on its shell so she can track its movements.
“We want to know where the turtles go at night. Are they in fields or forests or streams?” she said. “How often do they cross roads? We’ve seen and heard from a lot of people that they’re seen crossing roads. Maybe we can find potential hotspots of road mortality.”
According to Johnson, wood turtles are threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation from the construction of roadways, houses and other human-based development. Their streams are also being negatively impacted by these developments. In addition, their bright coloration makes them popular in the pet trade and a prime target for wildlife traffickers.
“They’re endangered range-wide,” said Johnson, “but compared to surveys in Virginia, they’re much harder to find here in Rhode Island.”
The URI student anticipates completing her wood turtle research by next fall, when she hopes to have located previously unidentified breeding areas that state wildlife officials can include in future management and conservation plans.
“There has never been a statewide survey of wood turtles in Rhode Island before, and before we can protect them, we have to figure out where they are,” said Chloe Johnson, a native of Atlanta,
 |
| Chloe Johnson with wood turtle |
Wood turtles, which have been proposed for inclusion on the federal endangered species list, are found from Virginia to southern Canada and west to Minnesota. Sporting orange patches on their neck and legs, they spend time in slow-moving rivers and streams as well as in terrestrial environments like forests, croplands and pastures. They nest in open sandy areas.
Working in collaboration with URI Associate Professor Nancy Karraker and Scott Buchanan at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, Johnson conducted upland surveys during the summer of 2021 in hopes of finding nesting turtles, and she scoured rivers and streams in fall and spring. So far, she has identified 13 locations where the turtles have been documented. But finding the turtles has been harder than she expected.
“I’ve done more than 70 surveys and found fewer than 15 wood turtles,” she said. “They’re much more difficult to find than I anticipated. In the summer I went three weeks without seeing one. It’s hard, but when you find one it’s so much more rewarding.”
In the upcoming field season, when Johnson finds a wood turtle, she will attach a GPS data logger on its shell so she can track its movements.
“We want to know where the turtles go at night. Are they in fields or forests or streams?” she said. “How often do they cross roads? We’ve seen and heard from a lot of people that they’re seen crossing roads. Maybe we can find potential hotspots of road mortality.”
According to Johnson, wood turtles are threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation from the construction of roadways, houses and other human-based development. Their streams are also being negatively impacted by these developments. In addition, their bright coloration makes them popular in the pet trade and a prime target for wildlife traffickers.
“They’re endangered range-wide,” said Johnson, “but compared to surveys in Virginia, they’re much harder to find here in Rhode Island.”
The URI student anticipates completing her wood turtle research by next fall, when she hopes to have located previously unidentified breeding areas that state wildlife officials can include in future management and conservation plans.
Monday, December 13, 2021
URI student takes birdwatching community by storm
When University of Rhode Island senior Sam Miller discovered a sharp-tailed sandpiper at the Galilee Bird Sanctuary in Narragansett in November, it caused significant excitement among the birdwatching community. During the three weeks the bird remained in the area, hundreds of people from throughout the eastern U.S. flocked to see the bird, which breeds in Siberia and winters in Australia.
Miller found the bird – a species never previously observed in the Ocean State – during an all-day event he organized in which dozens of local birders sought rare birds along the Rhode Island coast.
“November is rarity season in the Northeast, so we targeted the most rarity-productive habitats in Rhode Island and hoped that someone would find something cool,” said Miller, a wildlife and
conservation biology major from Gambrills, Maryland. “I didn’t think I’d be the one finding the rarest bird, but other rare and uncommon birds were discovered as well.”
The event, which he called a Rarity Round-up, is an annual event in his home state, and Miller wanted to launch something similar in Rhode Island.
“Hopefully there was enough interest to make it an annual event,” he said. “It seemed to work out pretty well.”
Miller has been interested in wildlife since early in his childhood, and he eventually obtained a camera to take photos of the birds at his birdfeeders. After flipping through a field guide to identify the birds in his photographs, he realized how many other species could be found, so he started looking for them.
“I mostly go birding around Maryland and Rhode Island, but I take advantage of family vacations to do some birding, and last winter I road-tripped to Florida with friends to see birds there,” he said.
He chose to enroll at URI after meeting the University’s ornithology professors, Scott McWilliams and Peter Paton and discovering that Rhode Island is an excellent place to observe fall migration. He has served as a teaching assistant in Paton’s field ornithology class for two years, and he is in the midst of a research project to learn about nocturnal bird migration and morning flight along the Rhode Island coast.
“Most songbirds migrate at night, and as the sun rises, they descend to land,” he said. “Birds descending in the vicinity of Point Judith either continue their migrations to Block Island or land at the coast. In most cases, those that land at the coast continue flying farther inland in search of more productive habitat to refuel. Others may find the coastal habitat suitable and refuel there. At Camp Cronin on the Point Judith peninsula, I could study this decision making and see how it may be impacted by varying weather conditions.”
Camp Cronin is where Miller spent his early morning hours in September and October recording the nocturnal flight calls of birds flying by for the two hours before dawn. He also conducted flight counts at sunrise and walked transects to document the species and numbers of birds that spent the daylight hours at the site.
“I got more intensified morning flights when visibility was less than ideal to Block Island,” he said. “When there’s poor visibility, more birds seem to descend at the coast rather than continuing over water where weather conditions and the presence of habitat is uncertain. When birds descending at the coast can see across Block Island Sound, I believe many decide to continue their migrations to Block Island, but this will require further research.”
“In my 26 years at URI, Sam is undoubtedly the most field-savvy undergraduate I have had the pleasure of working with,” said Paton. “He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the birds of Rhode Island. He has already established himself as one the most skilled birders in Rhode Island, and he has yet to graduate from URI. I am sure he will go far in the field of ornithology.”
As a relative newcomer to Rhode Island, Miller made an extra effort to reach out to the local birding community, and he even helped start a text messaging group to quickly share information about interesting bird sightings. It not only helped him become acquainted with the state’s most active birders, but it also helped other new birders get connected to the community.
With one semester left before graduation, Miller is looking ahead to graduate school and a career as an ornithologist.
“I’m probably going to take a year to work and get some field jobs before going to grad school,” he said. “What happens after that is a bit up in the air. I’ve always thought about a career in academia, because I like to teach, but I’m going to take one step at a time and see what opportunities come my way. And I’ll take it from there.”
Miller found the bird – a species never previously observed in the Ocean State – during an all-day event he organized in which dozens of local birders sought rare birds along the Rhode Island coast.
“November is rarity season in the Northeast, so we targeted the most rarity-productive habitats in Rhode Island and hoped that someone would find something cool,” said Miller, a wildlife and
 |
| Sam Miller birding at Sachuest Point NWR (Peter Paton) |
The event, which he called a Rarity Round-up, is an annual event in his home state, and Miller wanted to launch something similar in Rhode Island.
“Hopefully there was enough interest to make it an annual event,” he said. “It seemed to work out pretty well.”
Miller has been interested in wildlife since early in his childhood, and he eventually obtained a camera to take photos of the birds at his birdfeeders. After flipping through a field guide to identify the birds in his photographs, he realized how many other species could be found, so he started looking for them.
“I mostly go birding around Maryland and Rhode Island, but I take advantage of family vacations to do some birding, and last winter I road-tripped to Florida with friends to see birds there,” he said.
He chose to enroll at URI after meeting the University’s ornithology professors, Scott McWilliams and Peter Paton and discovering that Rhode Island is an excellent place to observe fall migration. He has served as a teaching assistant in Paton’s field ornithology class for two years, and he is in the midst of a research project to learn about nocturnal bird migration and morning flight along the Rhode Island coast.
“Most songbirds migrate at night, and as the sun rises, they descend to land,” he said. “Birds descending in the vicinity of Point Judith either continue their migrations to Block Island or land at the coast. In most cases, those that land at the coast continue flying farther inland in search of more productive habitat to refuel. Others may find the coastal habitat suitable and refuel there. At Camp Cronin on the Point Judith peninsula, I could study this decision making and see how it may be impacted by varying weather conditions.”
Camp Cronin is where Miller spent his early morning hours in September and October recording the nocturnal flight calls of birds flying by for the two hours before dawn. He also conducted flight counts at sunrise and walked transects to document the species and numbers of birds that spent the daylight hours at the site.
“I got more intensified morning flights when visibility was less than ideal to Block Island,” he said. “When there’s poor visibility, more birds seem to descend at the coast rather than continuing over water where weather conditions and the presence of habitat is uncertain. When birds descending at the coast can see across Block Island Sound, I believe many decide to continue their migrations to Block Island, but this will require further research.”
“In my 26 years at URI, Sam is undoubtedly the most field-savvy undergraduate I have had the pleasure of working with,” said Paton. “He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the birds of Rhode Island. He has already established himself as one the most skilled birders in Rhode Island, and he has yet to graduate from URI. I am sure he will go far in the field of ornithology.”
As a relative newcomer to Rhode Island, Miller made an extra effort to reach out to the local birding community, and he even helped start a text messaging group to quickly share information about interesting bird sightings. It not only helped him become acquainted with the state’s most active birders, but it also helped other new birders get connected to the community.
With one semester left before graduation, Miller is looking ahead to graduate school and a career as an ornithologist.
“I’m probably going to take a year to work and get some field jobs before going to grad school,” he said. “What happens after that is a bit up in the air. I’ve always thought about a career in academia, because I like to teach, but I’m going to take one step at a time and see what opportunities come my way. And I’ll take it from there.”
Boom in mouse population has implications for Lyme disease, predators
A wildlife biologist at the University of Rhode Island has observed a significant growth in the local population of white-footed mice this year, which could increase Lyme disease risk next year while also providing additional food to area predators and increasing the likelihood that homeowners find mice in their basements.
Christian Floyd, a URI teaching professor who studies rodents and other small mammals, said that his mammalogy class set 50 box traps in a forest to the north of the Kingston campus this fall, and in
one night they captured and released 24 white-footed mice. They typically capture no more than 6. The students also captured many more images of white-footed mice on trail cameras than usual.
“Even in down years, this mouse is the most abundant mammal in Rhode Island,” said Floyd. “They’re everywhere – in fields, forests, farms, homes, everywhere.”
According to Floyd, mice typically live short lives because they are the primary prey for many common predators. But because females can reproduce just 30 days after being born, and they can produce 3 to 4 broods of 4 to 8 babies per year, their populations can grow rapidly if the conditions are right.
“A white-footed mouse outbreak is all about survival,” he said. “They have a high rate of being predated, but they seem to have survived better this year for some reason. The predator populations don’t really change, but what does change is their winter survival rates. The last couple winters haven’t been very severe, and that’s one important factor.”
Floyd said that the abundance of acorns in the last two years has also provided plenty of food to carry the mice through the winter months.
“Acorns are a major food source. They’ll eat seeds and other parts of plants, but it’s mostly acorns, and acorns were abundant this year and last year,” Floyd said. “That influences the size of their food cache for the winter.”
The combination of high food availability, mild winters and their typically high reproductive rate has led to a banner year for mice.
“What that means is a higher risk for Lyme disease and babesiosis,” he said. “Both are transmitted by black-legged ticks, but mice are the primary reservoir for the bacteria that cause those diseases. Mice transmit Lyme and babesia to the ticks.”
Floyd said that homeowners should also expect a greater number of mice than usual in their basements and garages this year.
“Since the weather turned cool, I’ve been catching about one mouse a day in my basement,” he said. “I’m up to 25 already. And that’s a problem, because they chew the wiring, they make a nest out of the insulation, and they get inside vehicles.”
An abundant mouse population isn’t all bad news, however. Just as the abundance of acorns probably contributed to the increase in the mouse population, the abundance of mice will likely give a boost to wildlife populations that feed on mice, like hawks, owls, foxes and weasels.
And by burying seeds and mushroom spores, mice also play an important role in supporting the regrowth of forests. So more mice could lead to healthier forests. But a lot will depend on the weather this winter.
“It’s already looking like we’re going to have another mild winter, and that’s a good sign for white-footed mice.” Floyd said.
Christian Floyd, a URI teaching professor who studies rodents and other small mammals, said that his mammalogy class set 50 box traps in a forest to the north of the Kingston campus this fall, and in
 |
| Christian Floyd with white-footed mouse (Bailey Wolf) |
“Even in down years, this mouse is the most abundant mammal in Rhode Island,” said Floyd. “They’re everywhere – in fields, forests, farms, homes, everywhere.”
According to Floyd, mice typically live short lives because they are the primary prey for many common predators. But because females can reproduce just 30 days after being born, and they can produce 3 to 4 broods of 4 to 8 babies per year, their populations can grow rapidly if the conditions are right.
“A white-footed mouse outbreak is all about survival,” he said. “They have a high rate of being predated, but they seem to have survived better this year for some reason. The predator populations don’t really change, but what does change is their winter survival rates. The last couple winters haven’t been very severe, and that’s one important factor.”
Floyd said that the abundance of acorns in the last two years has also provided plenty of food to carry the mice through the winter months.
“Acorns are a major food source. They’ll eat seeds and other parts of plants, but it’s mostly acorns, and acorns were abundant this year and last year,” Floyd said. “That influences the size of their food cache for the winter.”
The combination of high food availability, mild winters and their typically high reproductive rate has led to a banner year for mice.
“What that means is a higher risk for Lyme disease and babesiosis,” he said. “Both are transmitted by black-legged ticks, but mice are the primary reservoir for the bacteria that cause those diseases. Mice transmit Lyme and babesia to the ticks.”
Floyd said that homeowners should also expect a greater number of mice than usual in their basements and garages this year.
“Since the weather turned cool, I’ve been catching about one mouse a day in my basement,” he said. “I’m up to 25 already. And that’s a problem, because they chew the wiring, they make a nest out of the insulation, and they get inside vehicles.”
An abundant mouse population isn’t all bad news, however. Just as the abundance of acorns probably contributed to the increase in the mouse population, the abundance of mice will likely give a boost to wildlife populations that feed on mice, like hawks, owls, foxes and weasels.
And by burying seeds and mushroom spores, mice also play an important role in supporting the regrowth of forests. So more mice could lead to healthier forests. But a lot will depend on the weather this winter.
“It’s already looking like we’re going to have another mild winter, and that’s a good sign for white-footed mice.” Floyd said.
Friday, December 10, 2021
Nature writer cultivated craft on streets of New York
Naturalist and writer Scott Turner credits his keen wildlife observation skills to the talents he developed out of necessity growing up in a tough neighborhood in the Bronx, N.Y.
“I was a survivor among the anarchy of the 1960s and ’70s, and I survived through my observational skills, through my senses,” said Turner, who wrote a nature column for The Providence Journal for 11 years and for GoLocalProv.com for two more. “Over time, I realized that some of the things I saw — if a gang was coming or if someone had a gun and I had to get out of there — weren’t
that different from seeing a bird of prey zip through the forest or noticing a berry hanging on a Virginia creeper vine. It’s the same sort of enhanced sensory experience. It’s not about survival any more but more like a celebration.”
His curiosity about the natural world started during a life-changing moment when he was 11.
“That’s when my parents sent me to day camp, which I found was so much more peaceful and so much safer than being on the street corner,” Turner said. “I was fascinated that this entire world was around me and I’d never seen it before. I never knew that so much could be in such a small spot. I was hooked from there on out.”
Turner’s weekly column featured many of his nature observations in the Bronx, as well as those in Rhode Island and wherever he traveled. A collection of his columns, which ran from 2007 to 2020, have now been compiled into a book, Beauty in the Street: Nature Tales from the Neighborhood.
He started writing his column following the death of longtime nature columnist Ken Weber. When The Providence Journal editors selected him to succeed Weber, he considered it a chance to finally speak.
“There’s a story in the book about when I was 4 and wanted to show my dad a garden,” Turner said. “My dad was a rough guy, and I already knew not to talk with him, and he just told me to shut up. The column was an opportunity to not shut up any more.”
Because he spent most of his life living in cities, Turner’s essays have a decidedly urban slant to them. Many feature the New York City parks he found to be sanctuaries during his youth, while others explore the nature in Rhode Island neighborhoods, trails, and landmarks. And his essays don’t ignore the human element, whether it is stories about his family or people he bumps into at local refuges.
“We’re all part of the natural world, even when you’re in Providence,” he said. “The column was an opportunity to tell people about what I saw. At times I’d see something or smell something — the bay or the bike path maybe — and want to write about it, and it would often take me back to being along the Hudson River in 1974. I’d let that stretch out, not only in what I was experiencing in the moment, but also what it was reminding me of.”
Turner worked in the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and at Pennsylvania State University before moving to Providence in 1996 to work as a science writer for Brown University, where he worked for almost 20 years. He is now the director of communications for the American Mathematical Society.
The Providence resident described his book as part memoir and part “love letter to the people, the streets, the parks, and what I experienced there,” he said. “It’s a lot of observation, what I saw, heard, and smelled that has stuck with me my entire life. It has more about Rhode Island than anywhere else because I love Rhode Island’s nature. Rhode Island is small, but when it comes to nature, it’s pretty big. And diverse.”
He decided to publish the book in part because his columns generated so much feedback from readers, more than 1,000 of whom wrote to him about particular columns or about their own observations. But he also compiled his columns into a book because his 87-year-old mother asked him to.
“I did it more for my loved ones than for anyone else,” he said. “But it’s also for anybody who feels the same way I do when you’re outside or when you’re experiencing something that you’re appreciating or feeling wonder about. I meet a lot of people on the trail and they talk about all the different reasons why they love it out there. The book is for anyone who has had that kind of reaction when they’re outside.”
This article first appeared on EcoRI.org on December 10, 2021.
“I was a survivor among the anarchy of the 1960s and ’70s, and I survived through my observational skills, through my senses,” said Turner, who wrote a nature column for The Providence Journal for 11 years and for GoLocalProv.com for two more. “Over time, I realized that some of the things I saw — if a gang was coming or if someone had a gun and I had to get out of there — weren’t
 |
| Scott Turner |
His curiosity about the natural world started during a life-changing moment when he was 11.
“That’s when my parents sent me to day camp, which I found was so much more peaceful and so much safer than being on the street corner,” Turner said. “I was fascinated that this entire world was around me and I’d never seen it before. I never knew that so much could be in such a small spot. I was hooked from there on out.”
Turner’s weekly column featured many of his nature observations in the Bronx, as well as those in Rhode Island and wherever he traveled. A collection of his columns, which ran from 2007 to 2020, have now been compiled into a book, Beauty in the Street: Nature Tales from the Neighborhood.
He started writing his column following the death of longtime nature columnist Ken Weber. When The Providence Journal editors selected him to succeed Weber, he considered it a chance to finally speak.
“There’s a story in the book about when I was 4 and wanted to show my dad a garden,” Turner said. “My dad was a rough guy, and I already knew not to talk with him, and he just told me to shut up. The column was an opportunity to not shut up any more.”
Because he spent most of his life living in cities, Turner’s essays have a decidedly urban slant to them. Many feature the New York City parks he found to be sanctuaries during his youth, while others explore the nature in Rhode Island neighborhoods, trails, and landmarks. And his essays don’t ignore the human element, whether it is stories about his family or people he bumps into at local refuges.
“We’re all part of the natural world, even when you’re in Providence,” he said. “The column was an opportunity to tell people about what I saw. At times I’d see something or smell something — the bay or the bike path maybe — and want to write about it, and it would often take me back to being along the Hudson River in 1974. I’d let that stretch out, not only in what I was experiencing in the moment, but also what it was reminding me of.”
Turner worked in the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and at Pennsylvania State University before moving to Providence in 1996 to work as a science writer for Brown University, where he worked for almost 20 years. He is now the director of communications for the American Mathematical Society.
The Providence resident described his book as part memoir and part “love letter to the people, the streets, the parks, and what I experienced there,” he said. “It’s a lot of observation, what I saw, heard, and smelled that has stuck with me my entire life. It has more about Rhode Island than anywhere else because I love Rhode Island’s nature. Rhode Island is small, but when it comes to nature, it’s pretty big. And diverse.”
He decided to publish the book in part because his columns generated so much feedback from readers, more than 1,000 of whom wrote to him about particular columns or about their own observations. But he also compiled his columns into a book because his 87-year-old mother asked him to.
“I did it more for my loved ones than for anyone else,” he said. “But it’s also for anybody who feels the same way I do when you’re outside or when you’re experiencing something that you’re appreciating or feeling wonder about. I meet a lot of people on the trail and they talk about all the different reasons why they love it out there. The book is for anyone who has had that kind of reaction when they’re outside.”
This article first appeared on EcoRI.org on December 10, 2021.
Monday, November 29, 2021
Rodents key players in forest health
When University of Rhode Island teaching professor Christian Floyd brought students in his mammalogy class to a nearby forest in September to set 50 box traps to capture mice and other small mammals, he was surprised the next morning when more than half of the traps contained a live white-footed mouse.
“I usually expect to catch three or four, and on a good year we’ll get about 12, but you never get 50 percent trap success,” URI’s rodent expert said. “White-footed mouse populations fluctuate in boom and bust years, and this year seems to be a boom year.”
Floyd speculated that abundant acorns, recent mild winters, and healthy growth of concealing vegetation were probably factors in the unusual numbers of mice captured this year. But whatever the reason for their abundance, healthy mouse populations are a good sign for local forests.
A new study by scientists at the University of New Hampshire concluded that small mammals such as mice, voles, shrews, and chipmunks play a vital role in keeping forests healthy by eating and dispersing the spores of mushrooms, truffles, and other fungi to new areas.
According to Ryan Stephens, the postdoctoral researcher at UNH who led the study, all trees form a mutually beneficial relationship with fungi. Healthy forests are dependent on hundreds of thousands of miles of fungal threads called hyphae that gather water and nutrients and supply it to the trees’ roots. In return, the trees provide the fungi with sugars they produce in their leaves. Without this symbiotic relationship, called mycorrhizae, forests would cease to exist as we know them.
Different fungal species enhance plant growth and fitness during different seasons and under different environmental conditions, so maintaining diverse fungal communities is vital for forest composition and drought resistance, according to Stephens.
But fungal diversity declines when trees die because of insect infestations, fires, and timber harvests. That is why the role of small mammals in dispersing mushroom spores is so critical to forest ecology.
To effectively support healthy forests, Stephens said these animals must scatter spores of the right kind of fungi in sufficient quantities and to appropriate locations where tree seedlings are growing. But not every kind of small mammal disperses all kinds of spores, so it’s imperative that forest managers support a diversity of mammal species in forest ecosystems.
“By using management strategies that retain downed woody material and existing patches of vegetation, which are important habitat for small mammals, forest managers can help maintain small mammals as important dispersers of mycorrhizal fungi following timber harvesting” and other disturbances, Stephens said. “Ultimately, such practices may help maintain healthy regenerating forests.”
Distributing mushroom spores isn’t the only important role played by mice and voles in the forest environment. They are also tree planters.
“Almost all rodents cache food — they have a cache of acorns, seeds, maybe truffles, little bits of mushrooms,” Floyd said. “Our oak forests are probably all planted by rodents. They scurry around and dig holes and bury things.”
White-footed mice, which Floyd said are the most abundant mammal in Rhode Island, are also voracious consumers of the pupae of gypsy moths.
“For a mouse, gypsy moth pupae are like little jelly donuts; they’re a delicacy,” he said. “The theory is that when mouse numbers are high, they can regulate gypsy moth populations.”
Mice, voles, shrews, and chipmunks are also the primary prey of most of the carnivores in the forest, from hawks and owls to foxes, weasels, fishers, and coyotes. These small mammals are a vital link in the food chain between the plant matter they eat and the larger animals that eat them.
Are these small mammals the most important players in maintaining healthy forests? Probably not. Floyd believes that accolade probably goes to the numerous invertebrates in the soil. But this new research on the dispersal of mushroom spores by mice and voles may move them up a notch in importance.
This article first appeared in EcoRI.org on November 28, 2021.
“I usually expect to catch three or four, and on a good year we’ll get about 12, but you never get 50 percent trap success,” URI’s rodent expert said. “White-footed mouse populations fluctuate in boom and bust years, and this year seems to be a boom year.”
Floyd speculated that abundant acorns, recent mild winters, and healthy growth of concealing vegetation were probably factors in the unusual numbers of mice captured this year. But whatever the reason for their abundance, healthy mouse populations are a good sign for local forests.
 |
| White-footed mouse (iStock) |
According to Ryan Stephens, the postdoctoral researcher at UNH who led the study, all trees form a mutually beneficial relationship with fungi. Healthy forests are dependent on hundreds of thousands of miles of fungal threads called hyphae that gather water and nutrients and supply it to the trees’ roots. In return, the trees provide the fungi with sugars they produce in their leaves. Without this symbiotic relationship, called mycorrhizae, forests would cease to exist as we know them.
Different fungal species enhance plant growth and fitness during different seasons and under different environmental conditions, so maintaining diverse fungal communities is vital for forest composition and drought resistance, according to Stephens.
But fungal diversity declines when trees die because of insect infestations, fires, and timber harvests. That is why the role of small mammals in dispersing mushroom spores is so critical to forest ecology.
To effectively support healthy forests, Stephens said these animals must scatter spores of the right kind of fungi in sufficient quantities and to appropriate locations where tree seedlings are growing. But not every kind of small mammal disperses all kinds of spores, so it’s imperative that forest managers support a diversity of mammal species in forest ecosystems.
“By using management strategies that retain downed woody material and existing patches of vegetation, which are important habitat for small mammals, forest managers can help maintain small mammals as important dispersers of mycorrhizal fungi following timber harvesting” and other disturbances, Stephens said. “Ultimately, such practices may help maintain healthy regenerating forests.”
Distributing mushroom spores isn’t the only important role played by mice and voles in the forest environment. They are also tree planters.
“Almost all rodents cache food — they have a cache of acorns, seeds, maybe truffles, little bits of mushrooms,” Floyd said. “Our oak forests are probably all planted by rodents. They scurry around and dig holes and bury things.”
White-footed mice, which Floyd said are the most abundant mammal in Rhode Island, are also voracious consumers of the pupae of gypsy moths.
“For a mouse, gypsy moth pupae are like little jelly donuts; they’re a delicacy,” he said. “The theory is that when mouse numbers are high, they can regulate gypsy moth populations.”
Mice, voles, shrews, and chipmunks are also the primary prey of most of the carnivores in the forest, from hawks and owls to foxes, weasels, fishers, and coyotes. These small mammals are a vital link in the food chain between the plant matter they eat and the larger animals that eat them.
Are these small mammals the most important players in maintaining healthy forests? Probably not. Floyd believes that accolade probably goes to the numerous invertebrates in the soil. But this new research on the dispersal of mushroom spores by mice and voles may move them up a notch in importance.
This article first appeared in EcoRI.org on November 28, 2021.
Friday, November 19, 2021
Local weasel population difficult to assess as national study finds decline
A national study of weasels found across much of the United States has revealed significant declines in all three species evaluated, which has a local biologist wondering about the status of the animals in Rhode Island.
The study by scientists in Georgia, North Carolina, and New Mexico found an 87-94 percent decline in the number of least weasels, long-tailed weasels, and short-tailed weasels harvested annually by trappers over the past 60 years.
While a drop in the popularity of trapping and the low value of weasel pelts is partially to blame for the declining harvest, the researchers still detected a significant drop in the populations of all three species.
“Unless you maybe have chickens and you’re worried about a weasel eating your chickens, you probably don’t think about these species very often,” said Clemson University wildlife ecologist David
Jachowski, who led the study. “Even the state agency biologists who are charged with tracking these animals really don’t have a good grasp on what is going on.”
The three weasel species are small nocturnal carnivores that feed primarily on mice, voles, shrews, and small birds, often by piercing their preys’ skull with their canine teeth. The weasels prefer dense brush and open woodland habitats, where they search for prey among stone walls, wood piles, and thickets. Because of their secretive nature and cryptic coloring, they are difficult to find and observe.
By assessing trapper data, museum collections, state statistics, a nationwide camera trapping effort, and observations reported on the internet portal iNaturalist, the scientists found the animals to be increasingly rare across most of their range.
“We have this alarming pattern across all these data sets of weasels being seen less and less,” Jachowski said. “They are most in decline at the southern edges of their ranges, especially the Southeast. Some areas like New York and the Canadian provinces can still have some dense populations in localized areas.”
Jachowski noted weasel populations in southern New England are likely facing similar declines as the rest of the country. He believes, however, there is the potential for some areas of the Northeast to still have robust numbers of weasels, especially long-tailed weasels, which are considered the most common of the three species.
Charles Brown, a wildlife biologist at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, who contributed data to the national study, said in his 20 years of monitoring mammal populations in the Ocean State, the only one of the three weasel species he has found is the long-tailed weasel.
“I’ve had a few infrequent encounters with them over the years and seen a few dead ones on the road,” he said. “A mammal survey done in the 1950s and early ’60s documented two short-tailed weasels, and those are the only records I’ve found for the species.”
Least weasels are not found within 300 miles of Rhode Island.
Brown has contributed 19 or 20 long-tailed weasel specimens to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University over the years from many mainland communities, including Little Compton, East Providence, Warwick, and South Kingstown. Weasels are not known to inhabit any of the Narragansett Bay islands.
“It’s hard to say what their status is here,” he said. “Trappers might bring in one or two a year, and some years none, and we don’t have any other indexes to monitor them because they’re cryptic and we rarely see them.”
Brown said a monitoring program could be developed for weasels in the state using track surveys and camera traps, but because the animals have little economic value and do not cause significant damage, they have not been a priority to study.
“In a perfect world, I’d certainly like to try to find a specimen of a short-tailed weasel to see if they’re still around here, but I have nothing to go on about them from a historic perspective,” he said.
Data from the University of Rhode Island is helping to provide a current perspective of the species’ distribution. URI scientists recently concluded a five-year study of bobcats and the first year of a study of fishers, each using 100 trail cameras scattered throughout the state. Among the 850,000 images collected so far are about 150 photos of long-tailed weasels.
According to Amy Mayer, who is coordinating the studies, the weasel images were collected at numerous locations around the state, suggesting the population does not appear to be concentrated in any particular area of Rhode Island.
It is uncertain what could be causing the national decline in weasel numbers, though Jachowski and Brown believe the increasing use of rodenticides, which kill many weasel prey species, could be one factor. A recent study of fishers collected from remote areas of New Hampshire found the presence of rodenticides in the tissues of many of the animals.
“How it’s getting into the food chain in these remote areas, we don’t know,” Brown said. “There was some discussion that a lot of people go up there to summer camps, and when they close the camp up for the season, they bomb it with rodenticides to keep the mice out. That’s just speculation, but it makes sense.”
The decline of weasels may also have to do with changes to available habitat, the scientists said. The maturing of forests and decline of agricultural land has caused a reduction in the early successional habitats the animals prefer. Brown also believes the recovery of hawk and owl populations, which compete with weasels for mice and voles and which may occasionally kill a weasel, could also be a factor.
Jachowski said the findings from his national study have led to the formation of what he is calling a “weasel working group” to share data and discuss how to monitor the animals around the country. Brown is among the state biologists and academic researchers who are members of the group.
“We’re hoping the public will become involved, too, by reporting their sightings to iNaturalist,” Jachowski said. “We need to see where they persist, and then we can tease out what habitats they’re still in, what regions, and then do our studies to figure out what kind of management may be needed.”
This article first appeared on EcoRI.org on November 18, 2021.
The study by scientists in Georgia, North Carolina, and New Mexico found an 87-94 percent decline in the number of least weasels, long-tailed weasels, and short-tailed weasels harvested annually by trappers over the past 60 years.
While a drop in the popularity of trapping and the low value of weasel pelts is partially to blame for the declining harvest, the researchers still detected a significant drop in the populations of all three species.
“Unless you maybe have chickens and you’re worried about a weasel eating your chickens, you probably don’t think about these species very often,” said Clemson University wildlife ecologist David
 |
| Long-tailed weasel (iStock) |
The three weasel species are small nocturnal carnivores that feed primarily on mice, voles, shrews, and small birds, often by piercing their preys’ skull with their canine teeth. The weasels prefer dense brush and open woodland habitats, where they search for prey among stone walls, wood piles, and thickets. Because of their secretive nature and cryptic coloring, they are difficult to find and observe.
By assessing trapper data, museum collections, state statistics, a nationwide camera trapping effort, and observations reported on the internet portal iNaturalist, the scientists found the animals to be increasingly rare across most of their range.
“We have this alarming pattern across all these data sets of weasels being seen less and less,” Jachowski said. “They are most in decline at the southern edges of their ranges, especially the Southeast. Some areas like New York and the Canadian provinces can still have some dense populations in localized areas.”
Jachowski noted weasel populations in southern New England are likely facing similar declines as the rest of the country. He believes, however, there is the potential for some areas of the Northeast to still have robust numbers of weasels, especially long-tailed weasels, which are considered the most common of the three species.
Charles Brown, a wildlife biologist at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, who contributed data to the national study, said in his 20 years of monitoring mammal populations in the Ocean State, the only one of the three weasel species he has found is the long-tailed weasel.
“I’ve had a few infrequent encounters with them over the years and seen a few dead ones on the road,” he said. “A mammal survey done in the 1950s and early ’60s documented two short-tailed weasels, and those are the only records I’ve found for the species.”
Least weasels are not found within 300 miles of Rhode Island.
Brown has contributed 19 or 20 long-tailed weasel specimens to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University over the years from many mainland communities, including Little Compton, East Providence, Warwick, and South Kingstown. Weasels are not known to inhabit any of the Narragansett Bay islands.
“It’s hard to say what their status is here,” he said. “Trappers might bring in one or two a year, and some years none, and we don’t have any other indexes to monitor them because they’re cryptic and we rarely see them.”
Brown said a monitoring program could be developed for weasels in the state using track surveys and camera traps, but because the animals have little economic value and do not cause significant damage, they have not been a priority to study.
“In a perfect world, I’d certainly like to try to find a specimen of a short-tailed weasel to see if they’re still around here, but I have nothing to go on about them from a historic perspective,” he said.
Data from the University of Rhode Island is helping to provide a current perspective of the species’ distribution. URI scientists recently concluded a five-year study of bobcats and the first year of a study of fishers, each using 100 trail cameras scattered throughout the state. Among the 850,000 images collected so far are about 150 photos of long-tailed weasels.
According to Amy Mayer, who is coordinating the studies, the weasel images were collected at numerous locations around the state, suggesting the population does not appear to be concentrated in any particular area of Rhode Island.
It is uncertain what could be causing the national decline in weasel numbers, though Jachowski and Brown believe the increasing use of rodenticides, which kill many weasel prey species, could be one factor. A recent study of fishers collected from remote areas of New Hampshire found the presence of rodenticides in the tissues of many of the animals.
“How it’s getting into the food chain in these remote areas, we don’t know,” Brown said. “There was some discussion that a lot of people go up there to summer camps, and when they close the camp up for the season, they bomb it with rodenticides to keep the mice out. That’s just speculation, but it makes sense.”
The decline of weasels may also have to do with changes to available habitat, the scientists said. The maturing of forests and decline of agricultural land has caused a reduction in the early successional habitats the animals prefer. Brown also believes the recovery of hawk and owl populations, which compete with weasels for mice and voles and which may occasionally kill a weasel, could also be a factor.
Jachowski said the findings from his national study have led to the formation of what he is calling a “weasel working group” to share data and discuss how to monitor the animals around the country. Brown is among the state biologists and academic researchers who are members of the group.
“We’re hoping the public will become involved, too, by reporting their sightings to iNaturalist,” Jachowski said. “We need to see where they persist, and then we can tease out what habitats they’re still in, what regions, and then do our studies to figure out what kind of management may be needed.”
This article first appeared on EcoRI.org on November 18, 2021.
Wednesday, November 17, 2021
Different kinds of phytoplankton respond differently to warming oceans
Tiny marine plants called phytoplankton are the foundation of most food webs in the ocean, and their productivity drives commercial fisheries, carbon sequestration, and healthy marine ecosystems. But little is known about how they will respond to increasing ocean temperatures resulting from the changing climate. Most climate models assume they will all respond in a similar way.
But a team of researchers at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, led by former doctoral student Stephanie Anderson, has concluded that different types of phytoplankton will react differently. An examination of how four key groups of phytoplankton will respond to ocean
temperatures forecast to occur between 2080 and 2100 suggests that their growth rates and distribution patterns will likely be dissimilar, resulting in significant implications for the future composition of marine communities around the globe.
“Phytoplankton are some of the most diverse organisms on Earth, and they fix roughly as much carbon as all the land plants in the world combined,” said Anderson, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Every other breath you take is generated by phytoplankton. And which ones are present affects which fish can be supported in a given region.”
Anderson, URI Oceanography Professor Tatiana Rynearson and colleagues from MIT, Scripps Institute of Oceanography and Old Dominion University published the results of their research in the Nov. 5 issue of the journal Nature Communications.
“This study represents a key contribution to the understanding of how phytoplankton respond to ocean warming,” said Rynearson. “All climate change forecasts of marine ecosystems include a term that reflects how we think phytoplankton growth responds to temperature. In this study we've generated new, more accurate values for the temperature-growth response that better reflect the diversity of phytoplankton in the ocean. These new values can be used in future climate change forecasts, helping them to become more accurate. "
The researchers compiled temperature-related growth measurements from more than 80 existing research studies on four types of phytoplankton – diatoms, which thrive in high-nutrient regions; cyanobacteria, which dominate in the open ocean where nutrients are low; coccolithophores, which are especially important in the uptake of carbon; and dinoflagellates, which migrate vertically in the water column. They also reviewed the heat tolerance for each group and conducted a simulation of projected temperatures to determine how phytoplankton distribution and growth rates would change in different parts of the world.
They found that each group has a different tolerance for warming.
“The coccolithophores will probably face the greatest proportional growth decreases near the equator, which could potentially alter community composition there,” Anderson said. “The cyanobacteria, on the other hand, are expected to face the greatest proportional growth increases at mid-latitudes, and they might expand their range poleward.”
"We were surprised that our simulations predicted the greatest range shift for the cyanobacteria in the Gulf of Alaska and northeast Pacific Ocean, regions that support rich and abundant fisheries,” Rynearson added. “Importantly, cyanobacteria are not known to be very good fish food."
The researchers said that all four phytoplankton groups are expected to increase their growth rates in cooler regions, but the degree of increase varies by group.
“With all the groups, we expect their growth rates to decrease closer to the equator,” Anderson said. “The equator is already the warmest region, so increasing temperatures there might push them to their limits. The temperatures there will exceed the levels they’re comfortable at, which will hinder their growth.”
Most species can tolerate temperatures greater than those they typically face, the researchers said, but the margin between what they typically face and the level at which they cannot survive decreases the closer they get to the equator.
“There’s a lot of capacity to handle warming towards the poles, but that capacity drops at the equator,” Anderson said.
The research team also found that the dinoflagellates had the smallest change in growth rate in response to increasing temperature of all of the groups examined, and they tolerated the widest range of temperatures.
“They’re metabolic rates are not as likely to be affected by temperature changes as the other groups,” said Anderson. “We hypothesize that it could be due to the fact that they are vertical migrants. Their ability to swim up and down exposes them to more temperatures, potentially enabling them to handle more temperature change.”
The implications of these results are significant. At the equator, where phytoplankton growth rates are projected to decrease as temperatures increase, the reduced biomass of phytoplankton may support fewer fish and other marine organisms.
“If you’re a fish and you’re dependent on one type of food and that’s no longer present, you might have to move with your prey to survive,” Anderson said. “This could lead to shifts in food webs regionally.”
At higher latitudes where growth rates are predicted to increase, the higher biomass of phytoplankton may be able to support a greater number of fish, providing a boost to commercial fisheries.
The study did not consider other factors that might affect phytoplankton growth rates, like nutrient or light availability, so Anderson said the implications of the study are somewhat speculative. She is now incorporating those additional factors into a new model to see how the results may change.
But a team of researchers at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, led by former doctoral student Stephanie Anderson, has concluded that different types of phytoplankton will react differently. An examination of how four key groups of phytoplankton will respond to ocean
 |
| Phytoplankton (Stephanie Anderson) |
temperatures forecast to occur between 2080 and 2100 suggests that their growth rates and distribution patterns will likely be dissimilar, resulting in significant implications for the future composition of marine communities around the globe.
“Phytoplankton are some of the most diverse organisms on Earth, and they fix roughly as much carbon as all the land plants in the world combined,” said Anderson, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Every other breath you take is generated by phytoplankton. And which ones are present affects which fish can be supported in a given region.”
Anderson, URI Oceanography Professor Tatiana Rynearson and colleagues from MIT, Scripps Institute of Oceanography and Old Dominion University published the results of their research in the Nov. 5 issue of the journal Nature Communications.
“This study represents a key contribution to the understanding of how phytoplankton respond to ocean warming,” said Rynearson. “All climate change forecasts of marine ecosystems include a term that reflects how we think phytoplankton growth responds to temperature. In this study we've generated new, more accurate values for the temperature-growth response that better reflect the diversity of phytoplankton in the ocean. These new values can be used in future climate change forecasts, helping them to become more accurate. "
The researchers compiled temperature-related growth measurements from more than 80 existing research studies on four types of phytoplankton – diatoms, which thrive in high-nutrient regions; cyanobacteria, which dominate in the open ocean where nutrients are low; coccolithophores, which are especially important in the uptake of carbon; and dinoflagellates, which migrate vertically in the water column. They also reviewed the heat tolerance for each group and conducted a simulation of projected temperatures to determine how phytoplankton distribution and growth rates would change in different parts of the world.
They found that each group has a different tolerance for warming.
“The coccolithophores will probably face the greatest proportional growth decreases near the equator, which could potentially alter community composition there,” Anderson said. “The cyanobacteria, on the other hand, are expected to face the greatest proportional growth increases at mid-latitudes, and they might expand their range poleward.”
"We were surprised that our simulations predicted the greatest range shift for the cyanobacteria in the Gulf of Alaska and northeast Pacific Ocean, regions that support rich and abundant fisheries,” Rynearson added. “Importantly, cyanobacteria are not known to be very good fish food."
The researchers said that all four phytoplankton groups are expected to increase their growth rates in cooler regions, but the degree of increase varies by group.
“With all the groups, we expect their growth rates to decrease closer to the equator,” Anderson said. “The equator is already the warmest region, so increasing temperatures there might push them to their limits. The temperatures there will exceed the levels they’re comfortable at, which will hinder their growth.”
Most species can tolerate temperatures greater than those they typically face, the researchers said, but the margin between what they typically face and the level at which they cannot survive decreases the closer they get to the equator.
“There’s a lot of capacity to handle warming towards the poles, but that capacity drops at the equator,” Anderson said.
The research team also found that the dinoflagellates had the smallest change in growth rate in response to increasing temperature of all of the groups examined, and they tolerated the widest range of temperatures.
“They’re metabolic rates are not as likely to be affected by temperature changes as the other groups,” said Anderson. “We hypothesize that it could be due to the fact that they are vertical migrants. Their ability to swim up and down exposes them to more temperatures, potentially enabling them to handle more temperature change.”
The implications of these results are significant. At the equator, where phytoplankton growth rates are projected to decrease as temperatures increase, the reduced biomass of phytoplankton may support fewer fish and other marine organisms.
“If you’re a fish and you’re dependent on one type of food and that’s no longer present, you might have to move with your prey to survive,” Anderson said. “This could lead to shifts in food webs regionally.”
At higher latitudes where growth rates are predicted to increase, the higher biomass of phytoplankton may be able to support a greater number of fish, providing a boost to commercial fisheries.
The study did not consider other factors that might affect phytoplankton growth rates, like nutrient or light availability, so Anderson said the implications of the study are somewhat speculative. She is now incorporating those additional factors into a new model to see how the results may change.
Monday, November 15, 2021
Bumblebee survey reveals species thought extirpated from Rhode Island
The results of a survey of bumblebees in Rhode Island conducted by a University of Rhode Island graduate student included one species that had not been seen in more than a decade. But it also confirmed that four other species appear to have disappeared from the state.
“There had never been a bumblebee survey of Rhode Island – or a statewide survey of any kind of bee – and there are some species in the URI historical insect collection that are no longer found in the state,” said Elizabeth Varkonyi of Cranston, who led the project with URI Professor Steven Alm.
“There used to be 11 species in Rhode Island, but only six of those had been seen since 2014. I wanted to get a better idea if those six were truly the only species found here now. And it turns out that we’ve added a seventh species to the list.”
Bumblebees are important pollinators of flowers and agricultural crops. Certain crops like tomatoes, peppers and blueberries require a specific kind of pollination called buzz pollination that only a few types of bees, including bumblebees, can do efficiently, Varkonyi said. During buzz pollination, bumblebees vibrate their flight muscles when they land on a flower, and that vibration causes the plants to release their pollen.
With the assistance of fellow URI graduate students Casey Johnson and Julia Vieira, Varkonyi trapped bumblebees at 54 sites around Rhode Island from 2019 to 2021 and surveyed 48 other sites with abundant flowers to record bumblebees and the flower species they were visiting. Of the 7,096 bumblebees she documented, just two species – the common eastern bumblebee (Bombus impatiens) and the brown belted bumblebee (Bombus grisecollis) – made up 82 percent of the total.
“Bombus impatiens seems to be dominant in the region, and that could be a factor contributing to our bumblebee decline – competition with this species,” Varkonyi said. “A lot of farmers purchase colonies of this species to pollinate their crops, and they might carry parasites or diseases that could be spread to wild populations of other species.”
The most notable finding in her survey was the rediscovery of a single specimen of the American bumblebee (Bombus pensylvanicus) in southern Rhode Island, a species being considered for endangered species status and that had not been documented in Rhode Island since 2009. Robin Baranowski, a field botany instructor at URI, was the first to spot the American bumblebee in August 2021.
“We were really only expecting to find the six species that we knew were here, so we couldn’t believe it when we found that seventh species,” she said.
Varkonyi also found 23 individuals of the yellow bumblebee (Bombus fervidus), another rare and declining species.
She did not, however, find any evidence of four other species that used to be found in the state – Bombus affinis, Bombus citrinus, Bombus terricola, and Bombus ternarius. While some of these four species are still found in nearby states, all appear to be declining. Some have shifted their ranges northward, perhaps due to the changing climate.
“Having a higher diversity of bumblebee species is important because we found that each species has its own floral preferences,” said Varkonyi, who will graduate next August and plans a career involving the management and conservation of habitat for pollinators. “Losing one species can negatively affect the flowers and crops it pollinates.”
The most common plants that Varkonyi found bumblebees visiting were bee balm, common St. John’s wort, yellow wild indigo and red clover. The newly rediscovered American bumblebee was found visiting bee balm, while the rare yellow bumblebee primarily visited red clover.
Varkonyi presented the results of her bumblebee survey at the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America in Denver on Nov. 1, where her research poster won first place in the Systematics, Evolution and Biodiversity category.
“There had never been a bumblebee survey of Rhode Island – or a statewide survey of any kind of bee – and there are some species in the URI historical insect collection that are no longer found in the state,” said Elizabeth Varkonyi of Cranston, who led the project with URI Professor Steven Alm.
 |
| Elizabeth Varkonyi and Julia Vieira |
Bumblebees are important pollinators of flowers and agricultural crops. Certain crops like tomatoes, peppers and blueberries require a specific kind of pollination called buzz pollination that only a few types of bees, including bumblebees, can do efficiently, Varkonyi said. During buzz pollination, bumblebees vibrate their flight muscles when they land on a flower, and that vibration causes the plants to release their pollen.
With the assistance of fellow URI graduate students Casey Johnson and Julia Vieira, Varkonyi trapped bumblebees at 54 sites around Rhode Island from 2019 to 2021 and surveyed 48 other sites with abundant flowers to record bumblebees and the flower species they were visiting. Of the 7,096 bumblebees she documented, just two species – the common eastern bumblebee (Bombus impatiens) and the brown belted bumblebee (Bombus grisecollis) – made up 82 percent of the total.
“Bombus impatiens seems to be dominant in the region, and that could be a factor contributing to our bumblebee decline – competition with this species,” Varkonyi said. “A lot of farmers purchase colonies of this species to pollinate their crops, and they might carry parasites or diseases that could be spread to wild populations of other species.”
The most notable finding in her survey was the rediscovery of a single specimen of the American bumblebee (Bombus pensylvanicus) in southern Rhode Island, a species being considered for endangered species status and that had not been documented in Rhode Island since 2009. Robin Baranowski, a field botany instructor at URI, was the first to spot the American bumblebee in August 2021.
“We were really only expecting to find the six species that we knew were here, so we couldn’t believe it when we found that seventh species,” she said.
Varkonyi also found 23 individuals of the yellow bumblebee (Bombus fervidus), another rare and declining species.
She did not, however, find any evidence of four other species that used to be found in the state – Bombus affinis, Bombus citrinus, Bombus terricola, and Bombus ternarius. While some of these four species are still found in nearby states, all appear to be declining. Some have shifted their ranges northward, perhaps due to the changing climate.
“Having a higher diversity of bumblebee species is important because we found that each species has its own floral preferences,” said Varkonyi, who will graduate next August and plans a career involving the management and conservation of habitat for pollinators. “Losing one species can negatively affect the flowers and crops it pollinates.”
The most common plants that Varkonyi found bumblebees visiting were bee balm, common St. John’s wort, yellow wild indigo and red clover. The newly rediscovered American bumblebee was found visiting bee balm, while the rare yellow bumblebee primarily visited red clover.
Varkonyi presented the results of her bumblebee survey at the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America in Denver on Nov. 1, where her research poster won first place in the Systematics, Evolution and Biodiversity category.
Friday, November 12, 2021
Reducing noise has benefits for wildlife - and us
During a birdwatching trip last month to Costa Rica, I was impressed by how little our enjoyment of the wildlife and natural world was interrupted by human-made noises.
Nearly everywhere we went – and we visited many parts of the West Virginia-sized country – we were mesmerized by the unimpeded sounds of howler monkeys waking us up each morning, unusual insect noises in the rainforests, and beautiful birdsong everywhere. While hiking and observing hummingbirds, parrots, sloths and all sorts of other amazing creatures, we seldom heard the noise of cars or planes or other signs of human civilization. Not even other people.
It was a far cry from the experience of most places in the United States, where traffic noise, planes and other abrasive man-made sounds often intrude upon one’s enjoyment of the natural world. As I’ve learned, it’s not just my poor hearing that makes it difficult to listen to birds singing in many places around our region.
Yet people seeking to enjoy nature aren’t the only ones who are sometimes annoyed by harsh human noises in seemingly wild corners of the country. Many animals are, too. And it may be having negative consequences on their health and safety.
Many birds and frogs in urban and suburban areas, for example, must sing louder to attract a mate than their relatives in the countryside. Those that don’t increase their volume can have difficulty finding a prospective partner because the soundscape is so cluttered that the animals can’t hear each other calling.
Whales and dolphins face a similar difficulty. Despite how loud their underwater calls are and the great distances those sounds can travel through water, marine mammals struggle to have their voices heard because of the tremendous increase in shipping, oil and gas exploration, seafloor mining, offshore construction and other industrial uses of the oceans. Even recreational boats and Jet Skis traversing coastal environments are having negative consequences on marine mammals seeking to communicate with their fellow creatures.
Lots of other marine life, from fish to shrimp and crabs, make sounds in the water to communicate, detect prey, avoid predators or for other purposes, and the abundance of ship noises and other human sounds has been shown to have an impact on their behaviors, too.
Another example: Owls have evolved particularly refined hearing to be able to detect and capture prey in complete darkness, but that skill erodes as background noise gets louder. One study found that for every 1 decibel increase in background noise, owls are 8 percent less successful in capturing prey. And bats, which use sound to navigate at night, can become disoriented when an area becomes noisier and noisier until they must abandon the area entirely.
With this in mind, let’s take some steps to reduce noise pollution to improve our enjoyment of the natural world and decrease its impact on local wildlife. There’s not much we can do individually about shipping noises, traffic noise, or airplanes flying overhead, but we can use quieter, non-mechanical tools when performing outdoor maintenance and find quieter ways of enjoying the outdoors.
The easiest thing we can do, however, is to keep our voices low when walking on trails. Talk like you’re in a museum. Voices travel far in the forest, and for most of us it’s the loud voices when you’re not expecting them that has the greatest negative impact on our enjoyment of nature.
Your fellow park lovers and nature enthusiasts will appreciate your efforts. And so will the birds, the bats and the bees.
This article first appeared in The Independent on November 11, 2021.
Nearly everywhere we went – and we visited many parts of the West Virginia-sized country – we were mesmerized by the unimpeded sounds of howler monkeys waking us up each morning, unusual insect noises in the rainforests, and beautiful birdsong everywhere. While hiking and observing hummingbirds, parrots, sloths and all sorts of other amazing creatures, we seldom heard the noise of cars or planes or other signs of human civilization. Not even other people.
It was a far cry from the experience of most places in the United States, where traffic noise, planes and other abrasive man-made sounds often intrude upon one’s enjoyment of the natural world. As I’ve learned, it’s not just my poor hearing that makes it difficult to listen to birds singing in many places around our region.
Yet people seeking to enjoy nature aren’t the only ones who are sometimes annoyed by harsh human noises in seemingly wild corners of the country. Many animals are, too. And it may be having negative consequences on their health and safety.
Many birds and frogs in urban and suburban areas, for example, must sing louder to attract a mate than their relatives in the countryside. Those that don’t increase their volume can have difficulty finding a prospective partner because the soundscape is so cluttered that the animals can’t hear each other calling.
Whales and dolphins face a similar difficulty. Despite how loud their underwater calls are and the great distances those sounds can travel through water, marine mammals struggle to have their voices heard because of the tremendous increase in shipping, oil and gas exploration, seafloor mining, offshore construction and other industrial uses of the oceans. Even recreational boats and Jet Skis traversing coastal environments are having negative consequences on marine mammals seeking to communicate with their fellow creatures.
Lots of other marine life, from fish to shrimp and crabs, make sounds in the water to communicate, detect prey, avoid predators or for other purposes, and the abundance of ship noises and other human sounds has been shown to have an impact on their behaviors, too.
Another example: Owls have evolved particularly refined hearing to be able to detect and capture prey in complete darkness, but that skill erodes as background noise gets louder. One study found that for every 1 decibel increase in background noise, owls are 8 percent less successful in capturing prey. And bats, which use sound to navigate at night, can become disoriented when an area becomes noisier and noisier until they must abandon the area entirely.
With this in mind, let’s take some steps to reduce noise pollution to improve our enjoyment of the natural world and decrease its impact on local wildlife. There’s not much we can do individually about shipping noises, traffic noise, or airplanes flying overhead, but we can use quieter, non-mechanical tools when performing outdoor maintenance and find quieter ways of enjoying the outdoors.
The easiest thing we can do, however, is to keep our voices low when walking on trails. Talk like you’re in a museum. Voices travel far in the forest, and for most of us it’s the loud voices when you’re not expecting them that has the greatest negative impact on our enjoyment of nature.
Your fellow park lovers and nature enthusiasts will appreciate your efforts. And so will the birds, the bats and the bees.
This article first appeared in The Independent on November 11, 2021.
Friday, October 29, 2021
Overeager photographers may harm birds
The increasing popularity of bird photography and the desire of photographers to showcase their images on social media is raising concerns that birds are being harassed and disturbed, leading to potentially harmful effects on their health.
Bird conservation organizations around the globe, from the National Audubon Society to Britain’s Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds, are asking bird photographers to avoid getting too close and reminding the photographers of the codes of ethics that many wildlife photography organizations have established.
Local wildlife advocates have noted that it’s also an increasing problem in Rhode Island.
“It’s definitely a problem here, and it’s getting worse,” said one longtime birder who wished to
remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. “There are more photographers, and there are more forums that photographers can post their photos on. It’s an ego trip for them. They want to post their photos and get likes, and that leads them to harass the birds.”
Laura Carberry, refuge manager at the Audubon Society of Rhode Island’s Fisherville Brook Wildlife Refuge, and Rachel Farrell, a member of the Rhode Island Avian Records Committee, said getting too close to wild birds can pose serious dangers to them. Birds see people as predators, and when people approach, the birds must stop feeding and instead exert extra energy they may not have to escape the area. They also may be forced to leave their nests unattended, making their eggs and chicks vulnerable to predation, thermal stress, or trampling.
When a rare European bird was discovered at Snake Den State Park in Johnston last year and birders and photographers flocked to the site to observe the visitor, some photographers chased the bird across a farmer’s fields to get better photographs. Birders say that is a common occurrence whenever rarities are discovered.
Owls are particularly sensitive to disturbance, Farrell said, and the managers of Swan Point Cemetery in Providence have resorted to putting yellow caution tape from tree to tree around an area where great horned owls have nested in recent years to keep photographers from going too close.
“I remember seeing a photographer banging a stick against the bottom of a tree to get an owl to come out of its hole,” Farrell said.
Other birders recalled when a photographer played a recording of a screech owl for so long that one of the nestlings almost fell out of the nest because it was so distressed by the recording.
According to Carberry, Audubon has occasionally had to close parts of its refuges when owl nests have been discovered because photographers go off trail and disturb habitats to approach the nest. The organization has asked birders not to report where owls are nesting until after the breeding season to reduce the problem.
“We often tell people that if the bird is looking at you, you’re too close,” she said.
It’s not just a problem with photographers, however. Some birdwatchers are also at fault for similar behaviors. Some will play audio recordings of bird songs to attract the birds out into the open, for example, a practice condemned by ornithologist Charles Clarkson, the director of avian research at the Audubon Society of Rhode Island.
“The daily energetic demands of birds are extremely high, even when they are not actively nesting,” he said. “Distracting birds from essential tasks — foraging, preening, defending territory — can leave them in an energy deficit, which is difficult to make up,” he said. “To lure birds in using taped calls can have serious negative consequences for individual birds and even local bird populations where taped calls are used regularly. It’s best to leave birds be and use your own power of observation to find as many as possible.”
How to resolve the problem is unclear. Enforcing codes of ethics is difficult, and speaking up sometimes results in abusive responses. The Atlantic Flyway Shorebird Initiative is surveying birders and bird photographers to assess the scale of the problem and to see if educational messaging and communication tools could be developed to address the issue.
“I think folks lose sight of what they may be doing to the species they are trying to get a glimpse of or take a photo of,” Carberry said. “They should always think of the bird first and think if they are impacting it in any way. I think that if they put the birds’ needs first, they would be more careful about approaching a nest or getting a little too close.”
Bird conservation organizations around the globe, from the National Audubon Society to Britain’s Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds, are asking bird photographers to avoid getting too close and reminding the photographers of the codes of ethics that many wildlife photography organizations have established.
Local wildlife advocates have noted that it’s also an increasing problem in Rhode Island.
“It’s definitely a problem here, and it’s getting worse,” said one longtime birder who wished to
 |
Laura Carberry, refuge manager at the Audubon Society of Rhode Island’s Fisherville Brook Wildlife Refuge, and Rachel Farrell, a member of the Rhode Island Avian Records Committee, said getting too close to wild birds can pose serious dangers to them. Birds see people as predators, and when people approach, the birds must stop feeding and instead exert extra energy they may not have to escape the area. They also may be forced to leave their nests unattended, making their eggs and chicks vulnerable to predation, thermal stress, or trampling.
When a rare European bird was discovered at Snake Den State Park in Johnston last year and birders and photographers flocked to the site to observe the visitor, some photographers chased the bird across a farmer’s fields to get better photographs. Birders say that is a common occurrence whenever rarities are discovered.
Owls are particularly sensitive to disturbance, Farrell said, and the managers of Swan Point Cemetery in Providence have resorted to putting yellow caution tape from tree to tree around an area where great horned owls have nested in recent years to keep photographers from going too close.
“I remember seeing a photographer banging a stick against the bottom of a tree to get an owl to come out of its hole,” Farrell said.
Other birders recalled when a photographer played a recording of a screech owl for so long that one of the nestlings almost fell out of the nest because it was so distressed by the recording.
According to Carberry, Audubon has occasionally had to close parts of its refuges when owl nests have been discovered because photographers go off trail and disturb habitats to approach the nest. The organization has asked birders not to report where owls are nesting until after the breeding season to reduce the problem.
“We often tell people that if the bird is looking at you, you’re too close,” she said.
It’s not just a problem with photographers, however. Some birdwatchers are also at fault for similar behaviors. Some will play audio recordings of bird songs to attract the birds out into the open, for example, a practice condemned by ornithologist Charles Clarkson, the director of avian research at the Audubon Society of Rhode Island.
“The daily energetic demands of birds are extremely high, even when they are not actively nesting,” he said. “Distracting birds from essential tasks — foraging, preening, defending territory — can leave them in an energy deficit, which is difficult to make up,” he said. “To lure birds in using taped calls can have serious negative consequences for individual birds and even local bird populations where taped calls are used regularly. It’s best to leave birds be and use your own power of observation to find as many as possible.”
How to resolve the problem is unclear. Enforcing codes of ethics is difficult, and speaking up sometimes results in abusive responses. The Atlantic Flyway Shorebird Initiative is surveying birders and bird photographers to assess the scale of the problem and to see if educational messaging and communication tools could be developed to address the issue.
“I think folks lose sight of what they may be doing to the species they are trying to get a glimpse of or take a photo of,” Carberry said. “They should always think of the bird first and think if they are impacting it in any way. I think that if they put the birds’ needs first, they would be more careful about approaching a nest or getting a little too close.”
Monday, October 25, 2021
Feeling a little weasel-y
My backyard has an assortment of large and small holes scattered throughout the landscape, all excavated by animals of some sort, and I enjoy watching their occupants scamper from one hole to the next. Most are home to chipmunks, which can be seen during most of the year filling their cheeks with sunflower seeds spilled from the birdfeeders and dashing off to hide them under ground.
The hole closest to my abandoned vegetable garden is twice the size of the chipmunk holes, and I have often wondered what creature lived there. One day as I walked by it, I was surprised to glance in and see a tiny face looking my way from six or eight inches beneath the surface. I’ve long suspected
that long-tailed weasels might live on my property, and that’s what I think I saw that day, but I’m still not sure.
Despite their small size – just 10 inches, half of it tail — and a dachshund-shaped body, weasels are voracious predators. Not ones to pick on small prey, they feed primarily on mammals like mice, voles, moles and shrews, which are nearly the same size as the weasels. They kill their prey by clamping their jaws down on the face or skulls of these animals and crushing their heads. It’s messy and vicious, but it’s usually a quick death.
Last month, I came home from running errands, and as soon as I set foot in the garage, my eyes were drawn to the hose of my Shop Vac lying on the floor. Peeking out from the hose was a tiny face. Rather than retreating further into the hose, the animal slowly walked out into the closed garage. It was a long-tailed weasel, no doubt about it. And it seemed to have little interest in me.
First cautiously, then boldly, it wandered around the garage, apparently sniffing out the mice that I knew lived in the wood pile in the corner. It crawled up the leg of my work bench, clambered over a pile of old rags and a container of screws, then disappeared into a bucket of kindling before reappearing from behind an old pallet.
The animal’s stealthy movements while hunting contrasted sharply with what could only be described as a prance across the open floor — a happy-go-lucky hop with all four feet off the ground at once that reminded me of a cartoon sheepdog I had seen on TV as a kid. I couldn’t help but smile. My eyes continued to follow the weasel’s every move, but my body remained still, fearful that any movement would cause it to bolt.
After about three minutes that seemed like 20, it had given up hunting mice and instead turned to figuring out how to escape from the garage. As I stood at the door, the weasel came slowly toward me, seemingly unafraid. It had apparently eyed its best chance for escape – a tiny crevice beneath the door sill that had formed due to the effects of three decades of harsh weather on the wooden frame. That was probably how it had gotten into the garage in the first place.
The weasel took the most direct path to the outside – a stroll across my foot – then pushed its skinny body through the crevice and out into my driveway. By the time I opened the door to follow, it was gone. Why it decided to enter the garage in the first place, I’ll never know. But I sure hope it returns.
The hole closest to my abandoned vegetable garden is twice the size of the chipmunk holes, and I have often wondered what creature lived there. One day as I walked by it, I was surprised to glance in and see a tiny face looking my way from six or eight inches beneath the surface. I’ve long suspected
 |
| Long-tailed weasel (Mia McPherson) |
that long-tailed weasels might live on my property, and that’s what I think I saw that day, but I’m still not sure.
Despite their small size – just 10 inches, half of it tail — and a dachshund-shaped body, weasels are voracious predators. Not ones to pick on small prey, they feed primarily on mammals like mice, voles, moles and shrews, which are nearly the same size as the weasels. They kill their prey by clamping their jaws down on the face or skulls of these animals and crushing their heads. It’s messy and vicious, but it’s usually a quick death.
Last month, I came home from running errands, and as soon as I set foot in the garage, my eyes were drawn to the hose of my Shop Vac lying on the floor. Peeking out from the hose was a tiny face. Rather than retreating further into the hose, the animal slowly walked out into the closed garage. It was a long-tailed weasel, no doubt about it. And it seemed to have little interest in me.
First cautiously, then boldly, it wandered around the garage, apparently sniffing out the mice that I knew lived in the wood pile in the corner. It crawled up the leg of my work bench, clambered over a pile of old rags and a container of screws, then disappeared into a bucket of kindling before reappearing from behind an old pallet.
The animal’s stealthy movements while hunting contrasted sharply with what could only be described as a prance across the open floor — a happy-go-lucky hop with all four feet off the ground at once that reminded me of a cartoon sheepdog I had seen on TV as a kid. I couldn’t help but smile. My eyes continued to follow the weasel’s every move, but my body remained still, fearful that any movement would cause it to bolt.
After about three minutes that seemed like 20, it had given up hunting mice and instead turned to figuring out how to escape from the garage. As I stood at the door, the weasel came slowly toward me, seemingly unafraid. It had apparently eyed its best chance for escape – a tiny crevice beneath the door sill that had formed due to the effects of three decades of harsh weather on the wooden frame. That was probably how it had gotten into the garage in the first place.
The weasel took the most direct path to the outside – a stroll across my foot – then pushed its skinny body through the crevice and out into my driveway. By the time I opened the door to follow, it was gone. Why it decided to enter the garage in the first place, I’ll never know. But I sure hope it returns.
Friday, October 1, 2021
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.
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.”
“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) |
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.”
Thursday, 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.
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
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.
Monday, September 27, 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.
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.
Tuesday, September 14, 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
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.
“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) |
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)