Coming Down the Mountain

One of the features of behaviour that I've mentioned a few times while covering deer species this year is that, typically, the males and females spend much of their lives apart, only meeting up during the rutting season. While, clearly, many group-living mammals don't do this, deer are hardly unique, with many other species (and not just mammalian ones) having a similar lifestyle. Females gather together in herds, or whatever the group name is for the animal in question, where they can gather together to protect and nurture their young. Males of such species often live in bachelor herds, which are typically smaller.

Sometimes this is due to a simple imbalance in numbers. In species where males monopolise multiple females, a typical herd, while predominantly composed of females, will also have a single dominant male, forcing any subordinate males to live elsewhere. But this is not the case in deer, because, while stags do indeed mate with as many does as they can get away with, they don't live with them outside the rut. Nor are they alone, since other herd animals, such as goats and antelope, often do the same.

Why Forest Fires Are Good For You (if you're a big brown bat)

Big brown bats

Forest fires are both destructive and spectacular. Not quite up there with volcanoes or tsunamis, perhaps, but nonetheless pretty dramatic, wreaking havoc on the local environment. Human-caused fires, when they get out of control, can be very damaging to the ecosystem, which may take years to recover. Yet forest fires have been around since long before humans, and, for at least some forests, they are just a natural part of the cycle of life. Indeed, there are some plants whose seeds germinate specifically after a local wildfire. But how does this affect animal communities?

One such environment is that of sandhill forests. Sandhills are so named because of their sandy, well-drained soils, often dominated by ash, but (unlike the much more barren sand dunes) they support significant plant communities. In the southeast USA, between Virginia and eastern Texas, the dominant tree in these forests is the longleaf pine. Frequent fires are essential for this species to do well, and, left without fire for too long, the nature of the forests change dramatically, in this case being replaced by denser oak woodland.