The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
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The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
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Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#2I’m kind of miffed that he didn’t include humans in the list of megafauna. Certainly Americans are over 100 pounds.
Being an anachronistic species is not necessarily an inevitable decline. I have a magnolia tree in my front yard — the leaves and petals are frustratingly indestructible, because it was once beetle-pollinated long before bees existed. I wonder how many anachronistic species will do well in the future changed climate. I know dawn redwood has a small range now, in China, but their fossils are found in Alaska.
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#3There is a book on my reading list about this, "The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronsims", by Connie Barlow. I saw a review of it somewhere, and given the timing, it may be an expansion of the article.
Glad to see them take on the "pristine forest" thing, ecologies are complex open systems. Human activity doesn't do them any favors, for sure, but also there's no edenic prior state to which they can be returned. The only way out is forward.
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#4NZ has a lot of divaricated plants, as well as species that have a very unpalatable juvenile form of foliage, that changes to more efficient leaves once the tree is above a certain height.
There's a lot of discussion if these were adaptations to browsing by moa.
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Bio32Tuat-t1-bo...
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#5In my Texas childhood we called Osage oranges "horseapples" and fed them to horses. I'm not sure how effective this was at dispersing their seeds.
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#6I’m kind of miffed that he didn’t include humans in the list of megafauna. Certainly Americans are over 100 pounds. Being an anachronistic species is not necessarily an inevitable decline. I have a magnolia tree in my front yard — the leaves and petals are frustratingly indestructible, because it was once beetle-pollinated long before bees existed. I wonder how many anachronistic species will do well in the future ch…
I would hope that all cultures average over 100 pounds (45 kg) as adults.
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#7I’m kind of miffed that he didn’t include humans in the list of megafauna. Certainly Americans are over 100 pounds. Being an anachronistic species is not necessarily an inevitable decline. I have a magnolia tree in my front yard — the leaves and petals are frustratingly indestructible, because it was once beetle-pollinated long before bees existed. I wonder how many anachronistic species will do well in the future ch…
I would hope that all cultures average over 100 pounds (45 kg) as adults.
The average weight for an adult Efé male is 43.3 kg (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Patterns_of_Human_Growt... The Efé are one of the well known African pygmy tribes.
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#8Good, except it propagates the notion that the marginal human presence at the time wiped out continent-spanning species.
The best evidence now is that a meteor strike on the Canadian ice shield wiped out most of the megafauna, and the Clovis culture, at one stroke, initiating the 1200-year Younger Dryas cold spell. The damage reached as far as Syria and southern Africa, leaving a layer of platinum-enriched dust.
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#9I have a huge Osage orange tree. Generally nothing eats them, but when the snow stays on the ground for weeks, and forms a crust of ice… eventually the squirrels will tear apart the fruit and eat a few of the hundreds of oranges. It might be that the squirrels using it as a famine food in anomalous weather years is enough to spread it.
In my neighborhood the big Osage oranges were planted in the late 1800s along the property lines, so they are long lived. A once in a hundred year weather event would be enough to keep a population going.
Re: The trees that miss the mammoths (2011)
#10I have a huge Osage orange tree. Generally nothing eats them, but when the snow stays on the ground for weeks, and forms a crust of ice… eventually the squirrels will tear apart the fruit and eat a few of the hundreds of oranges. It might be that the squirrels using it as a famine food in anomalous weather years is enough to spread it. In my neighborhood the big Osage oranges were planted in the late 1800s along the…
> A once in a hundred year weather event would be enough to keep a population going.
The concept of a tree that propagates by tornado is hilarious, but somehow not unbelievable.