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an ecological digression

By | September 6, 2009

i was learning about lane country, oregon, my new home, when came across a list of endangered, threatened, imperiled, and insecure creatures. (i encourage you, dear reader, wherever you are, to scroll down this link to learn how to recognize the insecure creatures in YOUR locale.)

here some of the species of concern with the coolest names.

Peacock larkspur
Wayside aster
Pink sand-verbena

Due to an ironic twist of fate, pink sand-verbena was the first North American plant collected and described from west of the Mississippi. Pink sand-verbena seeds were first collected at Monterey Bay, CA on a 1786 scientific expedition. The collector, Jean-Nicolas Collignon, was subsequently lost at sea with his ship… Pink sand-verbena’s ultimate fate may be as grim as that of the man who discovered it.

Thin-leaved peavine
Dotted water-meal
Adder’s-tongue
Coffee fern


Some individuals of this species are diploid and reproduce sexually, while some are triploid or tetraploid and reproduce by apogamy (growth of a plant from a gamete without fertilization).
It is interesting horticulturally because apogamy guarantees the fern comes true to form… Moreover, apogamous ferns, bypassing the sexual phase, produce new sporophytes faster.
…Apogamy poses a number of riddles. How does apogamy coexist with evolution? …Did this arise once or many times? If once, how did new species evolve? If many times, is apogamy a dead-end evolutionally? …[It] is theorized to have an advantage in desert climates due to rapid establishment of the new plant after a rainfall. What is the advantage in woodlands?

Straggly gooseberry
Drooping bulrush
Hotroot polypody


Polypodium have a bitter-sweet taste and are among the rather few ferns that are used in cooking; in this case as a spice e.g. for nougat.

Creeping starwort
Humped bladderwort
Many many liverworts, lichens, mosses, and fungi


selected Oregon State University Lichen Research Group interests: Lichen culture, Air quality monitoring with lichens, Radionuclide accumulation in lichens, Epiphyte succession on oaks, Tree-climbing techniques, Effects of grazing by molluscs…

Western pearlshell snail
Pristine spring snail
Broadwhorl tightcoil snail
Salamander slug


Type locality is in leaf litter under bushes in mature conifer forest at elevation of 600′.
“It is an hermaphrodite, both sexes being in each individual, and both in the coitus impregnate, and are impregnated, at the same time.” – James Barbut, 1783

Lillian’s lace bug
Tombstone Prairie caddisfly
Fender’s blue butterfly


Invasive species, such as Himalayan blackberry and Scotch broom, have been outcompeting and displacing the Kincaid’s lupine and other native wildflowers in upland prairies where the butterflies live.

Insular blue butterfly
Bueno’s velvet water bug
American unique-headed bug
True fir plant bug
Clouded salamander


They are climbing salamanders and are often found 20 feet and higher in trees. They lay their eggs inside rotting logs or underneath slabs of bark. The female will guard her eggs, which are each attached to the surface by a mucus stalk. They spend the dry summers deep inside rotten logs where they are protected from high temperatures.

Cascade torrent salamander
Western toad
Cascades frog
Painted turtle
Grasshopper sparrow
Vesper sparrow


One well-studied individual had a repertoire of 43 different trill types, and sang 218 different trill sequences in 400 songs… One male had a reduced song repertoire and sang like a Bewick’s Wren.

Purple martin
Common nighthawk
Olive-sided flycatcher
Black swift
Harlequin duck
Acorn woodpecker


It lives in extended family groups, and all members of the group spend hours and hours storing thousands of acorns in carefully tended holes… One granary tree may have up to 50,000 holes in it, each of which is filled with an acorn in autumn.

Mountain quail
Western meadowlark
Pallid bat
Hoary bat


Courtship is believed to proceed during day flights… The sperm is stored in the female reproductive tract all winter and is available to fertilize the egg when ovulation takes place in the spring… The hoary bat’s ears and eyes are closed at birth and open on days three and twelve, respectively. Purposeful flight is possible for the infants by the thirty third day. The young cling to the mother in the day, while she sleeps, and hang on a twig or leaf while she hunts at night.

White-footed vole
Columbian white-tailed deer
Canada lynx
Gray wolf
Fisher


2000: A petition to list a large, weasel-like animal under the U.S. Endangered Species Act could severely curtail logging… Fishers must have mature timber to survive. The multistoried, closed canopies of ancient forests protect them from predators such as golden eagles. Such woods also support abundant populations of their preferred prey: porcupines, snowshoe hares, wood rats and reptiles.
2003: A federal judge has ruled that U.S. Secretary of Interior Gale Norton acted illegally by ignoring a petition to list the Pacific fisher as “endangered.”
2004: They deserve federal protection as a threatened or endangered species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday, but the fisher will not receive this protection due to a lack of money and staff… The Bush administration is the only presidency in the history of the Endangered Species Act not to have listed a single species except in response to petitions and lawsuits.
2009: In August 2008, the Commission followed a recommendation by the Department of Fish and Game to reject the petition. After a public-records act request from the Center revealed that most of the Department’s own biologists had in fact supported accepting the petition… the [California Fish and Game] Commission decided to reconsider its decision, resulting in the vote to advance the fisher to candidacy [=protection].
3/3/2009: President Barack Obama today vowed to let science guide decisions at the Department of the Interior, and recognized the vital role of the Endangered Species Act in protecting America’s imperiled wildlife.

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