Field notebook
Opening the requested public page…
Field notebook
Opening the requested public page…
Theme trail
This is a live full-text trail through published facts, not a fixed marketing category.
By clearing depressions in the marsh, alligators create pools that persist after the surrounding wetland dries. Fish, turtles, invertebrates and wading birds concentrate around them, which is why the alligator is treated as an ecosystem engineer rather than merely a large predator.
Canada closed the northern cod fishery in 1992 expecting a two-year pause. More than three decades later the stock remains far below its historical size, and the ecosystem around it reorganised in ways that appear to hold cod down.
The European rabbit is a byword for uncontrollable increase in Australia, yet in Iberia, where it evolved, myxomatosis and rabbit haemorrhagic disease have cut it so far that the IUCN lists the species as Endangered.
A bilby digs constantly, and a forward-facing pouch would fill with soil within minutes. Its pouch opens towards the tail instead, which keeps the young clean while the mother excavates.
Eastern indigo snakes shelter and overwinter in burrows dug by gopher tortoises. Protecting the snake therefore means protecting a reptile that does not resemble it at all, and the pine habitat that supports both.
No male of this species has ever been found. It reproduces by parthenogenesis, each female producing daughters that are clones of herself, and a single animal carried in a plant pot can found a population anywhere warm.
In the Serengeti, the great majority of wildebeest births fall inside a window of roughly two to three weeks. The synchrony floods predators with more calves than they can take, and a newborn is standing within minutes.
In parts of Newfoundland and Iceland, capelin come ashore to breed. Waves carry masses of fish onto gravel beaches, where eggs are shed and fertilised in the swash before the survivors are washed back out.