Regarding Piping Plovers and other losers

A group of zoo staff recently went as a group to a local beach to help restore habitat for shore birds, including piping plovers. A friend posted on facebook about it, how much they enjoyed the day, and how he appreciated learning about the complexities of doing conservation work when different stakeholders have input and so on.

A friend of his commented: "There's a part of me that feels like the piping plover is sort of just going through a natural survival of the fittest type situation because they're not very good at evolution. They lay their eggs on exposed rocks! I want to be more sympathetic to them but... ? "

That is a cruel sentiment, expressed stupidly.

I didn't say so, because, perhaps she was commenting quickly and off-the-cuff, something she hadn't thought through. I've certainly posted comments on Facebook, and probably even Livejournal, that I thought better of later. What I did post in reply was:

"By that model all we'll have left are rats and house sparrows. Almost all species fall into either the pest category or the 'not very good at evolution' category, simply because of human influence. (An oversimplification of course, but not far from the mark). If we let the piping plovers go extinct, what's next?"

How stupid are these loser birds to have evolved a breeding system where they lay eggs out on an open beach, where humans and their loose dogs can trample right over them? Sure, it worked for millions of years, allowing them to see from a distance when the predators they evolved alongside would be coming, but why didn't they anticipate human colonization of North American coastlines? What a bunch of idiots, doing what nature and their genetics programmed them to do over countless eons, only to be squashed by cars driving on the beach.

My oversimplification is, I think, basically accurate. There are living things that happen to have adaptations that allow them to thrive alongside human changes to the planet (most of the living things I post about here) and then there are those that do not. If we follow the ethic expressed in the comment at the top, we will lose all the species that do not. Or we can decide that these creatures have inherent value, and that it is our responsibility to make room for them. We can write policies and regulations that ensure the survival of ecosystems and species that otherwise suffer from our presence. We can try to foster the belief that all living things have worth, that biodiversity is a value unto itself.

We will always have the rats and house sparrows, no matter what we decide.

3:00 snapshot #803

My dad pauses for the snapshot, on his way back home after a nice visit to Contentment Cottage. We are going to meet up today for the Athol Fungus Fair!

A mushroom from the great indoors.

You know, I said a little while ago that I should make a special website or other media project that collects all the mushrooms commonly found in human-impacted and human created ecosystems. Something like http://urbanmushrooms.com/ which, as it turns out, already exists. It's not perfect (found some obsolete synonyms in use there) but it is exactly what I was thinking of doing. Not that I can't do the same thing in my own style, but I thought you should know it's there.


So, speaking of which, here is a mushroom found only indoors--at least in temperate zones. This is a tropical species, Leucocoprinus birnbaumii which has found its way into the highly fragmented yet consistent ecosystem of greenhouses and house plants. This fruiting appeared in one of the planters in the Tropical Forest exhibit at Franklin Park Zoo (in a place not visible to the public nor accessible by the animals, in the giant anteater exhibit). A zookeeper friend (perhaps one seen here earlier, pointing her lips at a beetle grub) brought it to my attention, as I am becoming known as "the mushroom guy" around work.

As luck would have it, I had seen photos of the mushroom online the week before--a gardener found it in his potted pepper plant and was posting it concerned that it would harm his peppers or transfers poisons to them. (By the way, the answer is no to both. Mushrooms coming from the soil near a plant are almost always beneficial or neutral to the plant--parasites usually grow directly from the visible plant tissue. Poisonous mushrooms don't imbue their neighbors with poisonous essence--if anything, they are more likely to remove poisons from the nearby soil.)

This fascinating adaptation to the great indoors is paralleled by many small tropical animal species as well as tropical microbes. There are studies being done as we speak comparing the indoor wildlife of households in different parts of the world. I look forward to seeing the results of these studies--what do we all share, what's unique to one place or another. This mushroom is one of only two mushrooms I am aware of that is primarily found indoors, at least through much of its range.


A freshly emerged Leucocoprinus button. Common names for this mushroom boil down to some combination of "yellow," "potted plant," and "parasol."

This mushroom is dainty and beautiful, and resembles mushrooms in the Coprinus group, most of which are edible. This species is not edible to humans, causing some gastric distress. Its edibility to anteaters is not known to be, but fortunately they were growing out of his reach.

3:00 snapshot #804

Went to a new friend's birthday party, one of four friends of mine whose birthday is the eleventh of September, and knew no one there, and was the only one present without children. (What I mean is, I felt really really awkward.) When the alarm went off I told her I was going to take my picture, did it quickly and put my camera away. Never checked the pic which was wildly overexposed due to being left on manual exposure. I balanced the levels best I could and stripped the color out. Now it looks like an old snapshot found loose fallen from a forgotten album (I hope).

People who I do know, and also don't have kids did arrive, so I felt much less awkward and had a nice time.