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This is Episode 2 of the 4 part “Fascination”. You can listen to Episode 1 here.
transcript
[CLIP: Ambience of vernal pools at marine base outside San Diego, Calif.]
Christopher Carved: this is Scientific Americanof science, quickI’m Christopher Kaved.
If there’s one thing that unites the many creatures that live in Vernalpool, it’s their extreme lifestyles.
Chuck Black: They have a very distinctive strategy.
Engraved: A few months ago, wildlife biologist Chuck Black took me to see a spring pond at a marine station outside San Diego, California. These are small, temporary ponds that form when it rains, and are small oases inhabited by a variety of organisms. , the most iconic of which is the fairy shrimp.
black: It has no spines or defense mechanisms. They are like a lunch that comes with beetles, birds, whatever. But…they are very fast to breed…so…the shrimp strategy is to start early and finish your breeding.
Engraved: It reminds me of my childhood “just add water” toys. When it rains, these pools fill up, activating the fairy shrimp eggs that have been sitting there for a long time.
Fairy shrimp then grow and reproduce as fast as they can, lay their own eggs, and those eggs stay there for some time. They endure drought and fire until the next rain. It may take decades…
black: Or 100 years from now.
Engraved (tape): So it’s like “live early, die young”.
black: Yes exactly.
Engraved: But life in Vernalpool isn’t all about fairy shrimp.
Marie Simovich: So, gillpods, crustaceans, copepods, antler… and much more than crustaceans.
Engraved: I called population biologist Marie Simovich to ask more about the diversity of life here. I was.
Simovich: There are earthworms, many kinds of insects….if you want to be small, there are rotifers and other kinds of…protozoa. There are bacteria, algae and vascular plants. It’s minestrone.
Engraved: minestrone. I like that.You got noodles and beans, pieces of vegetables and it attracts the whole other A layer of life to the pool.
Simovich: Tree frogs, spadefoot toads, etc. There are snakes coming in… eating tadpoles… and ducks eating plants. Some even eat fairy shrimp.that is many progressing.
Engraved: There is so much going on. It’s life to life. And the great thing about all this is that this complex soup of life comes out of nowhere. because before it rains teeth No spring pool.
Sharon Collinge: They are kind of invisible until the right conditions occur.
Engraved: Sharon Collinge is an ecologist at the University of Arizona. She explained to me that spring ponds are a kind of temporary wetlands, habitats that are there one month and are gone the next. is.
So if you drive past these places during the summer months (August, September) there isn’t much to see.
Collinge: It just looks like a brown field of dry grass and you wouldn’t think anything of it. But when it rains, these areas come to life.
Engraved: You can’t drive around and see them anytime.
Collinge: There’s a seasonality to this….ephemeral, but I think that’s really special. You have to be in the right place at the right time….Time and space are very limited.
Engraved: Collinge studies these electric yellow flowers that bloom when spring puddles die. They are called Contra Costa Goldfields and, as the name suggests, they bloom in dense carpets of incredible beauty.
Collinge: They are very bright and cheerful and very persistent. And I’m really impressed with the resilience over time in these pools. The exotic invasive species that are common throughout California cannot survive these extremely extreme conditions.
Engraved: Therefore, the invaders cannot handle it, but the Goldfields are uniquely adapted to it. Their seeds lie dormant in the dry soil, waiting for their moment.
And just like fairy shrimp, when it rains, the seeds germinate and turn into tiny bright green seedlings that slowly grow over the course of several months. underwater.
Then, as the water in the pool evaporates, the plants boom, growing 8 to 10 inches tall and pushing out the flowers in just a few weeks.
Collinge: And the flower display is just spectacular…and if you know where to look, this is just the thing, it’s quite magical.
[CLIP: Toad ambience]
Engraved: There’s another magical scenario unfolding in a temporary pool in the Arizona desert…
Engraved: A spadefoot toad burrows into the desert soil and hibernates before being awakened by a raindrop alarm clock.
[CLIP: Toad ambience]
Michael Bogan: It is often the monsoon storm itself that wakes them up.
Engraved: Michael Bogan is an aquatic ecologist at the University of Arizona.
Bogan: That is, thunder, lightning, water, heavy rain falling on the ground, all of which can act as cues to let the toad know that the pool is being refilled.
Engraved (tape): It’s like in a fairy tale … that is, such a toad falls asleep … and wakes up with the sound of thunder … and thinks “oh, oh well, it’s time to go” .
Bogan: that’s right. And considering what they sleep on, they’ve been sleeping in temperatures of 105, 110 degrees for months. It’s like they’re sleeping in some incredibly harsh conditions…and…just bounce back…and spring into action as soon as the conditions are good for them again.
Engraved: Bogan is fascinated by these pop-up aquatic ecosystems…and has traveled far beyond his home base in Arizona to find them. While hiking through the zone, I trekked through the northern Mexican desert to visit a temporary pool there.
Bogan: It’s one of the steepest, harshest places I’ve ever worked..and it’s a landscape dominated by…. lava flows and, you know, black jagged basalt…really For miles and miles….and it hits the dunes…surrounding it.
Engraved: Last October, he says, a cyclone brought several inches of rain to the area, turning the volcanic rock depressions into large puddles.
Bogan: You know, in some cases it looks like a beautiful pool.
Engraved: Bogan has cameras installed in the pool to track water flow. But they also capture the vast range of wildlife that visits these temporary waters.
Bogan: As you know, morning pigeons and other birds come in and drink from the edge of this pool….coyotes come to drink and bobcats and foxes come into the pool. ..
Engraved (tape): And I think the only thing that ties all this together is that when they contain water, they are these incredible oases for life.
Bogan: that’s right. And…it’s really a challenge. Studying these ephemeral waters requires long-term challenges and a lot of patience.
The bottom line is to try to document what’s there when the situation is right…and tell people that 70% of the time it seems like nothing’s there, the other 30% of the time Time…, unbelievable. There is a whole world of biodiversity.
Engraved: A whole world of biodiversity that can overcome incredible potential to survive in these harsh and totally unpredictable ecosystems.But how do you convince people To protect something that 70% of the time doesn’t even exist?
In the next episode, we zoom in on one species that is often at the center of the conflict between conservationists and developers. Kind of like the unofficial mascot of Bernalpool, my personal favorite is the Fairy Shrimp.
Adam Wall: I love fairy shrimp because they are crazy.
Engraved (tape): yes.
wall: me too. It’s me too. nice.
Engraved: Go behind the scenes at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History with Crustacean Collections Manager Adam Wall (fairy shrimp are crustaceans).
Engraved (tape): Also, how many fairy shrimp have you seen in your career so far?
wall: Probably 100,000 at this point…. I’ve dealt with dozens, dozens, maybe 100,000.
Engraved: that in the next episode. stay tuned.
for science, quick, My name is Christopher Kaved.
science fast Produced by Jeff Dervicio, Turika Bose and Kelso Harper. Music by Dominic Smith.
don’t forget to subscribe science, quick Get podcasts anywhere. For more scientific news, visit ScientificAmerican.com.
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