Their extremely low numbers mean that they are suffering from low genetic diversity, their habitat is being fragmented, trapping still occurs and human disturbance from snowmobiling and backcountry skiing disrupts denning wolverines.
The global population was down to just 15 tortoises by the 1960s. Now there are some 1,000 tortoises breeding on their own. The population is secure. It’s a rare example of how biologists and managers can collaborate to recover a species from the brink of extinction.
Known to impact native plant species, invertebrate populations and soil nutrients, it has also been noticed that in areas with Japanese stiltgrass, numbers of American toads have fallen.
Until very recently it was believed that evolutionary processes only happened over very long periods of time, but these findings indicate that the presence of a non-native predator can induce a process of rapid evolutionary change in a native species.
More rodents means more fleas, and genetic screens of these fleas showed that they carry significant numbers of disease-causing bacterial pathogens called Bartonella.
Their presence in such huge numbers has led scientists to try to discover the impact of this invasive species on the natural ecosystem and native species living in the park.
The one place where this species is found naturally is a freshwater bog where the plants are in standing water, but it was found that the plant actually does better without standing water.
Study recommends that future research should focus on the availability of shade habitat and the energetic consequences of the behavioural changes that climate change may cause in the species.
Large deer populations are forever altering natural forests by disrupting the soil’s seed banks. Deer are not only slowing down forest succession, in some cases they are preventing forests from establishing in the first place.
The pikas ingest the low quality moss over and over again and, with the help of microbes in their gut, the moss is turned into high-quality food. The end product is 6 times more nutritious than the moss itself.