Said biology student Ivy Yen, quoted in "Meet the Mice Who Make the Forest/Scientists are unearthing a quiet truth about the woods: Where trees grow, or don’t, depends in part on the quirky decisions of small mammals" (NYT).
Although researchers already studied the ways that animals move seeds across landscapes, the possible role of their personalities had gone largely unexamined.
The Penobscot Experimental Forest, with its 1,800 acres of closely monitored woodlands managed according to various forestry techniques, offered a landscape-scale setting to explore this question. Each summer for the past seven years... students have trapped deer mice and southern red-backed voles in their study plots — about 2,000 animals in all — and run them through tests that measure where they fall on a spectrum between bold and shy.
Before being released, each is tagged with a microchip, not unlike those used to identify lost pets. The tags trigger sensors, like the one that Ms. Yen had mounted above her tray of acorns. Each acorn was painted with colored bands to indicate its species: red oak, bur oak, black oak, white oak, swamp white oak, scarlet oak, pin oak, willow oak. Red oak are already abundant in the region, but the other species have arrived only recently or are expected to, as rising temperatures push their ranges north....
Maybe certain personality types will prove more likely than others to select certain oaks. It may take an especially bold rodent to hoist a massive bur oak acorn..... Perhaps shy mice will be more likely to secret them in places best suited to germinate a forgotten nut.....
This research has a high cuteness factor, which, I've got to admit, is why I'm blogging it. The personality of mice! The 8 different types of acorns!
We're invited to treasure the "diversity of personalities" among the animals — not because it's endearing, though, of course, but because it's good ecologically.
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46 comments:
They just now understand that trees evolved to have edible fruit around a seed such that animals, really mammals and birds, will eat the fruit and late defecate out the seed, now surrounded with fertilizer to grow somewhere further from the parent tree?
Will there be individuals who are more likely to help?
You mean will some animals that depend on fruit/nuts from trees decide to starve rather than eat the fruit/nut and defecate it somewhere else later rather than in their own domicile?
Let us ponder.
It's hard to see the value of this study. What matters is what populations of mice do. Learning that mice can have personalities is interesting but it's not going to tell us anything about the health of our forests without giving personality tests to all the mice that live within it.
Marginally related: brown squirrels are indigenous to my region, but they are slowly being pushed out by more aggressive black squirrels, an invasive species from the UK. This is bad for the forests because black squirrels are smarter and less likely to forget where they buried their nuts--thus fewer of their nuts will germinate and grow into trees. But that's species level. The individual squirrels don't matter.
A very old joke:
"I didn't waste my life as a scientist researching trivia."
"I didn't waste my life as a scientist researching trivia."
"I didn't waste my life as a scientist researching trivia."
First, this isn't news (but university people routinely repeat the work of those who came before). Animals indeed eat fruit/nuts and then poop out seeds to spread plant species about. This ranges from ultra expensive civit-pooped coffee to the very large and extinct animals responsible for the avocado's large size.
Second, I'm surprised to see the anthropomorphic notion of 'personality' creep into animal research. Historically, animal behavior patterns would be attributed to random mutations (evolution) of flavor receptors and body sizes. Each animal specimen is born a wee bit different from the next, and thereby each behaves in accord with their personal mutations. See probability theory and the physical ability to execute (e.g., large size ==> "brave").
In the end it doesn't surprise me that animal science has lost its tight definitions and narrow conclusions, as everything in academia has become blurry, wishful, and political too. The pendulum swings.
so Now it's Okay?
For "scientists" to anthropomorphize animals? If it increases research funding that is?
'the cute little mice have just the most charming personalities!'
Mind you, i'm not talking about lawyers or bloggers anthropomorphizing; i'm talking about "scientists"
"their personalities" ---> their behaviour. Anthropomorphising animals (in general), especially small wild animals, is nonsense. We cannot observe them closely enough or long enough to evaluate such things. That's partly a lifespan issue. Domesticated animals are a different story.
I've raised cattle and hogs for years commercially, and personality is obvious when it's outside statistical norms for the species. I once had a bull who clearly mourned when his calves occasionally died in birth, and he comforted the cow. But SQUIRRELS ? Probably not. The ancient Hebrews had a special word for such creatures NEPHESHIM, best translated as "soulish" animals which could interact emotionally with other created beings, and thus were granted a separate category in the Genesis creation account(s).
I predict transgender animals help trees the most.
I wonder if I could get generously funded to do a study on just letting nature take its course. In a way, that's what so many animal and plant studies end up proving. Nature has this stuff figured out. It adapts, it evolves and it keeps on going.
Is there anything so infinitesimal that won't trigger you people. I like it how ascribing personality to mere animals is so terribly disturbing because you know they are just meat puppets based on their genetics and environmental factors.
Of course when modern neuroscientists say the same thing about human beings you people cry foul because Jehovah imbued Adam and Steve with free will so that he could then blame us for all of our ills and have people feel guilty just for living. No wonder the environmental wackos want everyone to wear hair shirts: it a tried and true method of crowd control.
It Is An Immense World by Ed Yong is reviewed by the WSJ this morning. It is a compelling and fun read.
Bart, I have to disagree with you, mildly. Genetics aka evolution don't stop working from the neck up (or forward). We're responsible for anthropomorphising behavior in *any* animal. They are simply responding the way they have been programmed to survival pressure over the eons. While your bull certainly seems to have been an outlier, it likely benefits cattle in general to have what we would consider a sympathetic to neutral reaction to a stillborn calf. Similarly, it would benefit squirrels in general to have a certain percentage that would range afield into new territory that might either be better suited to the growth of their food sources, or would replace habitat that had been destroyed.
Cedar trees along the fence line. Not hard to figure out. I'm not a biologist.
What "shifting temperatures"?
On two recent occasions we've watched this one Fox Squirrel* take a chestnut from beneath the chestnut tree that stands near the 16th green, hop across the fairway with it to the (deep) fairway bunker next to the green, dig a substantial crater, and place the nut at the bottom. My guess it's because the digging is good there. Better than the cart path, anyways...
(*If you're asking How do you know it's the same Fox Squirrel?...well, I don't but I'm fairly certain because Fox Squirrels, unlike their Gray Squirrel kissing cousins, come in a variety colors and patterns of gray, white, black and brown. Some of them look like little bears, or something. This one looks really looks like a bear...)
Interesting way to make a living.
I don't know much about mice or trees, other than I love trees and I see mice occasionally being carried up and off by hawks in our area. But I do know this:
There are about 90 varieties of Oak trees in the US alone. Oaks of various types are found in all but three US states- Hawaii (too tropical), Alaska (too harshly cold), and Idaho (for some reason. I suspect it's political).
These varieties have moved around throughout years. The mice, as well as other seed eaters, have plenty to do with this. Perhaps everything.
But determining the small movement of mice due to tiny, incremental changes in seasonal temperatures- and laying this on Climate Change- seems a far jump. Do the mice react to a less than 1% of a degree from one season to the next?
Anyway, as Oaks were here before we were, and will be here after we're gone, I would suggest that if you want to note a real sign of in-your-face climate change, keep an eye out for Palm trees in Ohio. When you see those, we've got a problem.
Man is an oak. Nature contains nothing sturdier.
- Lautreamont
Has anyone considered the effects of the animals' capture, measurement, testing, and release? Some, I am sure, are traumatized, and some emboldened. Some have their worldview shattered and their subsequents lives ruined.
Won't somebody think of the children?
I'm with Bart from Kansas.
Raising live stock, it is easy to pick the outlier of the group as different. Calmer, more aggressive, just mean. But the one is easy to find, because they stand out. We always picked out one steer we could sit on, from the new lot brought in from out west. Out of a couple of hundred we could find one maybe two, but even those were on a scale from ok with a person on their back, to kind of liking the attention.
Breeders, bulls and boars, all had their own personalities, for no reason other than the close repeated contact,
Definition of optimism: Old man planting acorns.
You’re missing a global warming scam tag. Oak trees don’t need to migrate and certainly can survive in temperatures one degree warmer on average. Has all of science studies been reoriented to the Huge Global Scam?
Myself, I wonder how many generations of ancient gingko biloba trees---which occur in male and female varieties----have quietly suffered a hundred million years yearning for surgery to reflect their "real" sexuality.
The evil dendrologists who assigned their sexes "at birth" deserve to hang from their branches in nooses, for all eternity!
Too much anime? Too many perky, wide-eyed, little cartoon critters in Ivy's childhood?
It sounds like what she's talking about are the usual notions of dominance. The animal who could win all the fights is the animal who moves the big acorn. The timid mouse is the weak, submissive one. So it's more physical strength and the boldness that can go with it, rather than personality. But turn it around the other way: the anti-humanist could ask how much of our own personalities are also about dominance and submission, rather than anything deeper or more subtle.
And if squirrels and chipmunks could read, they'd be writing letters to the editor complaining about being written out of the picture.
The feminization of science continues apace.
Hmmmm....if certain mice species innately have personality types affecting their environment, doesn't that imply some humans have innate personality types that do the same to theirs?
Maybe we should ask Kanye about that....
Owls, hawks, herons, foxes, fishers, etc have a significant impact on seed migration, as well. They are personality type A ravenous.
As they start interacting more with credentialed experts, the rodent population will likely experience a sharp increase in alcohol and drug abuse, mental illness and suicide.
Give the oaks root blockers when they're saplings and maybe the trees will grow up to be able to migrate after all. If we cut off their limbs and give them fake arms, the trees could carry their own nuts as they go. Problem solved.
Of course, we'll have to put the unemployed squirrels on government assistance, but then they'd have time to go to college and become nuts themselves.
Whoever is stashing nuts in my garage is personality type 'stupid'.
Earth needs rodent psychologists to help the shy ones overcome. If they believe in themselves, they'll sling more nuts.
'This research has a high cuteness factor...'
Rabies is cute, especially the mouth-frothing and agonizing death part : )
Trees produce nuts.
Mice and squirrels eat nuts.
Scientists practicing a Global Religion is nuts.
'On two recent occasions we've watched this one Fox Squirrel* take a chestnut from beneath the chestnut tree that stands near the 16th green, hop across the fairway with it to the (deep) fairway bunker next to the green, dig a substantial crater, and place the nut at the bottom.'
Two stroke penalty in medal play and loss of hole in match play.
Howard said...
Is there anything so infinitesimal that won't trigger you people
Howard? When YOU are the one that keeps hearing these dog whistles.. YOU are the bitch
"Cute" study? More like a waste of time and resources for a novel "pet project" that has little validity and no ROI. Perhaps the researchers can train the mice to plant forests, because that would be so much easier than actually finding ways to manage our forests and other natural resources thru direct human activity and real science...
So no invasive species concerns?
Prices are often considered minuscule when they are paid by others…..
The study seems to be overlooking the point that it is the nuts buried by forgetful squirrels that grow into mighty oaks. Bold Viking-like squirrels may be needed to pick up an acorn and move it north but feckless Viking-squirrels who probably spend the autumn nights eating fermented windfalls and forgetting where they put the acorns are needed to explain why the acorn hoard lies undisturbed till spring.
A surprisingly enlightening and interesting book about trees & their environments:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28256439-the-hidden-life-of-trees
It need not be left to rodents. One can often obtain free saplings from state forestry departments for planting, to reforest places devoid of desirable species of trees. I got 200 baby oak trees, no more than footlong twigs with roots attached, for free in Maryland 25 years ago, and planted all of them in the greenspaces abutting my neighborhood and along back yard property lines..
Most of the trees grew, and now my old neighborhood there is overrun with fat squirrels. Maybe they are continuing the good work of tree propagation. Go forth and do likewise!
The Forest Service manages the forests and sets strict boundaries and even blocks off areas for certain mice and owl species here in New Mexico. Then they burn it all to the ground when a proscribed burn, set on a windy day gets out of hand. It would be far better to study the personalities of the idiots that make prescribed burn decisions so they can figure out who to NOT hire. (Alas, it would be of little use - it is a systemic issue in the FS and the majority of their leadership is incompetent and corrupt.)
We had a big rain here in Austin last week. Lotsa acorns got knocked off trees, carried away in the runoff across lawns, shot down street gutters to storm drains and into local creeks. The acorns were moved great distances and deposited in piles marking high water on creek banks. They'll be scavenged in their new locations by mice, squirrels, and other critters up to deer, cows and horses. Sometimes miles from where the acorns started.
But yeah, sure, it is the feisty miceys determining where new trees grow. Not the dispersion by natural forces, oh no, not at all. Snort.
The whole thing is idiotic. As was pointed out, small changes in the yearly temperatures in the area are easily compensated for by nature, as it now exists. Moreover, the underlying assumption is almost entirely based on highly suspect models, that invariably run hot (overestimating warming), in comparison to reality. It’s really natural selection at a broader sense. Squirrels are always burning oak seeds just outside the habitable range of the oaks, and the trees fail to flourish as well. But then, if the temperature shifts a bit, the optimal range of the oaks shifts a bit, as seeds planted in formerly inhospitable areas not thrive, and those just inside the former rang at the other extreme that would have thrived, now don’t. This dynamic is many millions of years old. One type of tree regularly replaces another, along the boundary between the two, when the climate changes. Where we had them, the trees were quite different during the Ice Ages, and even during the Medieval Warming Period. Not trees, quite, but just think of grapes (for wine) in Vinland and England.
On the flip side, CAGW is the hook that probably got them funded. It’s that way through much of natural science these days. Just sneak in Climate Change (which means CAGW, except that CAGW as a theory has effectively been falsified), and your chances of getting funded increase.
"pollinators". Meanwhile, the global "average" temperature, outside of simulations ("models"), has failed to breach one degree, and the normal distribution is still characterized by 20, 30, 40 or more degree swings in a matter of minutes, hours and sustained for days, weeks, even months at a time.
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
"You’re missing a global warming scam tag. Oak trees don’t need to migrate and certainly can survive in temperatures one degree warmer on average. Has all of science studies been reoriented to the Huge Global Scam?"
Originally trees didn't grow on the tops of the moraines here on the prairies. Prairie fires kept the hilltops free of trees. The beautiful oaks on the hillsides are the result of Europeans cutting the trees in the stream bottoms and plowing the land.
LUCY:
DO YOU SEE THIS TREE?
IT IS A FIR TREE.
IT'S CALLED A FIR TREE BECAUSE IT GIVES US FUR FOR COATS.
IT ALSO GIVES US WOOL IN THE WINTER TIME.
LINUS:
I never knew that before, Lucy. That's very interesting.
LUCY:
THIS IS AN ELM TREE.
IT'S VERY LITTLE
BUT IT WILL GROW UP INTO A GIANT TREE...
AN OAK.
YOU CAN TELL HOW OLD IT IS BY COUNTING IT'S LEAVES.
LINUS
Gosh Lucy, that's fascinating.
CHARLIE BROWN:
Now wait a minute Lucy! I don't mean to interfere, but...
LUCY:
AND WAY UP THERE THOSE FLUFFY LITTLE WHITE THINGS,
THOSE ARE CLOUDS,
THEY MAKE THE WIND BLOW.
AND WAY DOWN THERE,
THOSE TINY LITTLE BLACK THINGS...
THOSE ARE BUGS
THEY MAKE THE GRASS GROW.
LINUS:
Is that so?
LUCY:
That's right! They run around all day,
tugging and tugging on each tiny seedling until it grows into a great tall blade of grass!
LINUS:
Boy, that's amazing!
CHARLIE BROWN:
Oh, good grief!
LUCY:
AND THIS THING HERE,
IT'S CALLED A HYDRANT.
THEY GROW ALL OVER
AND NO ONE SEEMS TO KNOW
JUST HOW A LITTLE THING LIKE THAT
GETS SO MUCH WATER.
SEE THAT BIRD?
IT'S CALLED AN EAGLE.
SINCE IT'S LITTLE IT HAS ANOTHER NAME,
A SPARROW.
AND ON CHRISTMAS AND THANKSGIVING
WE EAT THEM.
CHARLIE BROWN:
Lucy, how could you say that? I'm sorry but I can't stand idly by and listen to...
LUCY:
AND WAY UP THERE,
THE LITTLE STARS AND PLANETS
MAKE THE RAIN THAT OFTEN SHOWERS.
AND WHEN IT'S COLD AND WINTER IS UPON US
THE SNOW COMES UP!
JUST LIKE THE FLOWERS.
CHARLIE BROWN:
Now Lucy, I know that's wrong! Snow doesn't come up, it comes down!!
LUCY:
After it comes up, the wind blows it around so it looks like it's coming down,
but actually it comes up out of the ground, just like grass. It comes up,
Charlie Brown, snow comes up!
CHARLIE BROWN:
Oh, Good Grief! (He exits, from off stage there is a hollow thumping sound.)
LINUS:
Why is Charlie Brown banging his head against that tree?
LUCY:
To loosen the bark to make the tree grow faster!
Some quick research:
Deer mice travel up to 500 feet from where they're born to set up a new territory. Their range is about 300 feet. I will round-up and say that a deer mouse travels up to 1/5th mile away from where it's born.
Oak trees take 20-40 years before they produce acorns. I will round down to 20 years.
So, to extend the range of some species of Oak, via Deer Mouse, it would take 100 years to move one mile.
Two conclusions: 1. Wouldn't squirrels be much more effective at spreading acorns? They're larger and have larger ranges, so why focus on mice? 2. Since the last glaciation was 10-12 thousand years ago, why worry about Oaks moving 120 miles north, when glaciers are going to push them right back and further, in the same time frame?
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