Temperate Rainforests

What comes to mind when someone says the word 'rainforest'? No points for saying 'rain'. Most people would imagine a steamy, tropical envioroment, lush and green, with palms and ferns growing everywhere, and monkeys and parrots frolicking in the canopy. This is the typical image of a rainforest, and it is one that I shared with most of the public up until a few years ago. Most people think that rainforests are restricted to tropical envioroments, making the words rainforest and jungle pretty much synonymous. This is actually a false image, and when you think about it, it makes sense. The definition of a rainforest is simply an area of woodland in which the annual rain level is between 250 and 450 centimetres - notice the exception of the word 'tropical'. It only makes sense that there would be 2 variations of rainforest: the tropical type, which we are used to, and the temperate type. And indeed, this is true, although many people don't realise it. The temperate rainforest habitat is just as fascinating as its tropical counterpart, but for a few years, my knowledge of it was pitiful in amount. Recently, a personal project on creating a speculative ecosystem lead me to do some more research on the habitat, and I was so fascinated by what I found, that temperate rainforest has immediately been promoted to high up on the list of my favourite habitats. I have decided to write a blog post about what I found out.

Perhaps one of the reasons that temperate rainforests are so little known is that they are not very common.

By Koppen_World_Map_Hi-Res.png: Peel, M. C., Finlayson, B. L., and McMahon, T. A.(University of Melbourne)derivative work: Me ne frego (talk) - Koppen_World_Map_Hi-Res.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14798010

The above is a map of the distribution of tropical rainforests. As you can see, the habitat is in large chunks in South and Central America, Africa, Madagascar, and in the south-west Asian islands.

 Now compare that to this:

 By KarlUdo - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9468236

The above is the distribution of temperate rainforests. While they can be found in a variety of countries, they are in much smaller areas than in their tropical counterparts.

 Perhaps the most well-known definition of a temperate rainforest is by Alaback:

"Annual precipitation over 140 cm (55 in)

Mean annual temperature is between 4 and 12 °C (39 and 54 °F)."

However, this applies only to North American temperate rainforests.
In short, the habitat in general is anywhere where a forest recieves large amounts of rainfall, creating a typically damp habitat.

By Wsiegmund - Self-published work by Wsiegmund, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=336095

An image taken in the Pacific temperate rainforest ecoregion, in North America. It is the largest temperate rainforest ecoregion in the world.

This location is of special interest for being a standout example of the habitat. In certain areas, the biomass is at least 4 times that of any similar area in tropical regions.

The Pacific temperate rainforests are mostly coniferous, but they do sometimes have an understory of deciduous shrubs and trees. It rains a lot during the winter, but not so much during the summer - however, during the latter season, fog creeps through the forest, letting water droplets collect on surfaces, which then drip to the ground, keeping the envioroment moist. The habitat is mostly coastal, which leads to an interesting combination of both marine and forest species - for example, salmon come in from the sea, and swim up the rivers which wind their way through the rainforest. The salmon, returning inland to spawn, attract predators, such as bears. Grizzly bears, although once more widespread in the habitat, are now mostly confined to areas north of the Canada-US border. Black bears and their beautiful white subspecies, the Kermode or spirit bear, are present here.

An unusual species found in this habitat is the marbled murrelet. This small seabird feeds mostly on sandeels, and will also feed on other small fish - but what's odd about this marine piscivore is its nesting habits. Most seabirds nest on cliffs, so that they are relatively safe from predators, and so they are beside the sea. However, the close proximity of the rainforest to the ocean has meant that the marbled murrelet has decided to take the jump to nest not on cliffs, but in the forest. It makes nests out of moss and lichen amongst the branches of conifers, sometimes up to 80 km inland!

 By Gus van Vliet (not with USFWS) - [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=322937 

A marbled murrelet swimming

The Appalachian temperate rainforest can be found in the southern Appalachian Mountains. There are multiple subcategories of forest that can be found within the habitat: at low elevation, mixed woodlands can be found, at middle elevation spruce is predominant, and at high elevation it is fir. The Appalachian rainforest is notable for its high diversity: around 10,000 species can be found here, including several endemic species of vertebrates. There are more than 30 salamanders that can be found here, as the damp envioroment is perfect conditions for them. Most do not have lungs, instead breathing directly through their skin.

There are also 2 species of endemic turtles. Perhaps most predominant are the fungi: there is an estimated 2000 species living here, with many more yet to be identified.

The Valdivian temperate rainforest is located in Chile, with a small part creeping into Argentina. They can easily be told apart from other temperate rainforests discussed so far by the plant life here. Angiosperms are the most predominant trees, but conifers are also present, in the form of monkey puzzles, fitzroyas, and others. Understories consisting of bamboo and ferns can also be found, home to species such as Chusquea quila, an endemic bamboo, and giant rhubarbs.

 By Albh - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22934013

The understory of the Valdivian temperate rainforest

There are a variety of unusual mammals present in this habitat, including the monito del monte. This small marsupial is a nocturnal, arboreal insectivore, occaisonally feeding on fruit. Worryingly, this endearing little mammal is declining, due to deforestation and fragmentation of habitat, and predation by introduced domestic cats. The locals also kill them because they believe they are bad luck, and they think that it causes diseases and is venomous - this has led to incidents such as houses been burnt down simply because this creature was seen inside. In reality, these animals are harmless, but may soon need our help if they are to survive.

 By José Luis Bartheld from Valdivia, Chile - Monito del Monte, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7198520

A monito del monte clings to a bit of bamboo

The world's smallest deer, the pudú, is also found here, although it too is threatened. Finally, the smallest cat in the Americas makes its home here: the kodkod, or güiña.

 By Mauro Tammone - http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?enlarge=0000+0000+0212+2554, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26102188

A kodkod

 The Japanese temperate rainforest is a habitat found on Japanese islands, dominated by firs in alpine areas, and beeches and other broadleaves being predominant in areas of lower elevation. Up to 5300 species of plant can be found in this habitat, 40% of which are endemic to Japan.

Several unique creatures can be found in the Japanese temperate rainforest, such as birds like the black woodpecker, and mammals like the arboreal Japanese dormice, Japanese serow, and Japanese macaques. In the forest streams, the vulnerable Japanese giant salamander can be found.

Of course, this is just a brief look at the temperate rainforests. They are also present in New Zealand, Australia, UK, and elsewhere - but I decided to focus on the examples which were particularly unique, or simply interested me more than the others.

I think that the damp, foggy, dripping, mossy habitat of the temperate rainforest is a wonderful one - and the flora and fauna which live there are fascinating. Unfortunately, they are also threatened by habitat loss and other dangers.

I hope that you have enjoyed this look at the temperate rainforest, a unique and wonderful habitat, and have maybe been inspired to think about rainforests differently.

Until next time, keep on the wild side! 

Looking back at the summer

First of all, a little update on our wildlife garden. It's looking really nice this time of year, as the dryness of the summer is abating, being replaced with more frequent rain showers, which means that our pond is rather full, and looking lovely. There are lots of spiderwebs about, and a large common garden spider has made its web spanning from one of our conifers to some figwort. When you find a spider, it's always worth taking a close look at it, because you suddenly see how intricate and beautiful it is. For example, the other day we had a medium-sized house spider scurrying across our carpet. Most people would immediately either jump onto the safety of a chair, scream for somebody to put the spider outside, or simply crush it. I know a certain charming character who took great pleasure in explaining to me, in grim detail, the different ways that his father kills spiders. I, on the other hand, was down on my hands and knees, with my face pressed against the carpet, peering intently at the spider's mouthparts. 

The summer seems to have passed so quickly! It's been good, though, and I've done some great things. I've done some rockpooling with the Phoenix group and had some great encounters with some unusual marine life (see here), and done a variety of other wildlife-related activities, like a beach clean and making an insect hotel. I have been to Jersey and learnt about the conservation work that Durrel Wildlife Park is doing, and been greatly inspired by it. I've seen some great wildlife in Jersey, including some new species to me, and explored the beautiful coastline and its wildlife (see here). I've searched for Roesel's bush crickets at Humber Bridge Country Park, unfortunately showing that the likelyhood is that the species is not currently present in the locations that we explored. I learnt more about a variety of creatures, including treehoppers, immortal jellyfish, and the insect with gears in its legs! I also turned 14 this summer, went boating on a river, experienced sleeping in a wood in a hammock, and went camping with my friends several times. Our shed became home to a wasp nest, which is now huge (see here), leading me to learn some more about this fascinating creature. I learnt more about the different species of flora and fauna in our garden, and identified a bird pelvis (see here). I also have a mystery mammal pelvis, which is yet to be identified (see the previous link). I found my first cellar spider in our house (see here), and did some nature hunting on our local patch, too (see here).
Not all of my wildlife-related experiences have been so positive, though - some have been painful! In Jersey, I slipped while rockpooling and ended up with lots of barnacle scratches (it looked rather like I'd been attacked by a bloodthirsty predator!), and in Humber Bridge Country Park, I found how painful a nest of angry European fire ants can be!

Overall, it's been a great summer. I can't wait to see what the rest of the year brings!
 Until next time, keep on the wild side!

Rockpool Excitement!

Somehow, rockpooling seems to have become quite a regular topic on the BioBlog! It is one of my favourite ways of looking for wildlife, as I love both the sea and the life forms which reside in it. Today, the subject is again rockpooling, this time with the Phoenix Group, which I have talked about several times before, here, here, and here. I did do rockpooling with the group once before, at Robin Hood's Bay, which can be seen in the third link, so this time I was hoping for a similarly great outing. As usual, Phoenix did not disappoint.

We travelled to the Flamborough coast for our rockpooling, and met up with Anthony Herd from the Living Seas Centre. I have met Anthony several times before, and he's a great guy, and very knowledgable on marine life. He regularly goes in search of aquatic creatures on this stretch of coastline, but even he was excited about today, as it was an unusually low tide, revealing the lower shore. Here the water would normally be quite deep, allowing kelp to grow, attracting a variety of life forms which you wouldn't find higher up on the shore. This unusually low tide allowed to explore this particularly biodiverse area which normally we would only be able to reach by diving down to it!

The weather was sunny and warm, and so we got straight to rockpooling, following the tide as it went out, exploring area by area as they were revealed. My first find was hidden under a rock: a group of tiny long-clawed porcelain crabs. I'm not sure why, but there's something that I find very endearing about this diminutive species. Its carapace grows to around 1 centimetre wide, and it has a different method of feeding from other crabs which you can find in British waters. It is a filter-feeder, rather than a scavenger, catching organic particles in the water column, then eating them. There is another species, the broad-clawed porcelain crab, which has a similar lifestyle, but I don't think that I need to explain the different between the 2 species!

After our porcelain crabs (which could be found under most rocks), our finds came thick and fast. I was pleased to find several small edible crabs, as I don't generally find these in Filey, which is where I usually go rockpooling. Next was a shore crab, then some breadcrumb sponge and star ascidians under the same rock, and then, the highlight of my day: what appeared to be a slender seaweed stem. Once Anthony put it in our white bucket, it quickly become clear that this was actually something that I've always wanted to see, a worm pipefish! These slender, eel-like fish are relatives of the seahorse, with tubular snouts with a small mouth at the end, used for sucking up food particles. Like seahorses, the male looks after the eggs, but in the pipefish's case, he doesn't keep the eggs in a pouch. Instead, they are stuck to a patch of soft skin on his underside in rows.

 See if you can spot the 3 worm pipefish in this picture!

By Gabrielle Ringot - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48466462

Not long after our find of the worm pipefish, shouts from a nearby group of rockpoolers attracted our attention. 2 girls had found a close relative of our specimen: a snake pipefish. This is an entirely different creature to the worm pipefish, as it is much longer, bears stripes down its side, and it has a dark marking running from its snout to its eye, and then along its head.

Next we found a small-ish common lobster, which began to flop rapidly through the rockpool when I tried to capture it. What I like to think of as 'flopping', is technically known by the less snappy name of the caridoid escape reaction, sometimes called lobstering or tail-flipping. This is the process of lashing out with the tail, forcing the creature backwards through the water. It is a method of movement used by shrimps and lobsters, usually only to escape danger. More information on the caridoid escape reaction can be found here.

Other crustacean species were discovored fairly quickly after that, including squat lobsters, hairy crabs, chameleon prawns, and the velvet swimming crab. The latter was revealed in large numbers as the tide went out. In fact, by the end of the day, I'd seen enough of the species to last me a lifetime! They are quite attractive crabs, with large olive to brown bodies, bluish or even purple claws, and bright red eyes. Their hind legs are flattened and beautifully marked with blue and black stripes, and rimmed with hairs. These are used for swimming, hence the name of the species. However, these crabs may be pretty to look at, but never have I encountered such an aggresive wild animal. Normally a crab may try to pinch you when you pick it up - yet the velvet swimming crab seemed to go out of its way to hurt you. Several times a crab would dart out from under a rock, nip me, then scurry back again. I started looking carefully around the rock for crabs before lifting it up, after several times having angered a crab. Non of this would have been so bad, if it wasn't for the shear number of them: there were literally hundreds of crabs. Non of my fingers ecaped the day unscathed by the pincers, and even my ankles were nipped several times.

Moving on from crustaceans, we also found several fish. Our first find was a 5-bearded rockling, a fish that rather resembles a catfish, and after that there were the pipefish, and a butterfish. We also found a few unidentified gobies in one particularly large rockpool.
I was expecting to find beadlet sea anemones, but I found not one. However, I did discover several dahlia anemones, a fairly large, dumpy species with short tentacles. They have a somewhat warty appearance, and are variable in colour: they can be pink, brown, reddish, or cream. The individuals that I found were a sort of brownish-red, but one had a yellowy sort of body with attractive red streaks on it.

I think out of everything, my favourite find was a rather unexpected one: a bloody Henry starfish. This name actually refers to 2 species, Henricia oculata and H. sanguinolenta, which are difficult to identify, so all that we can say is that the starfish that I found was one of the 2. I was very excited about my find, because this species is my favourite British starfish. It is bright pinkish red, with a maximum diameter of around 20 centimetres. Most other starfish that we could have found are active predators, the bloody Henry, on the other hand, feeds mostly on plankton and organic particles in the water column, occaisonally eating sponges and hydroids. According to this website, the species is only present on the south, west, and north coasts of Britain and Ireland - but we found our specimen in the east!

After a morning rockpooling, we ate our lunch and rested a bit, then carried on to Danes Dike. On the beach there we spent the afternoon doing a beach clean, collecting a large amount of plastic, but also rope, aluminium cans, fishing line, and strips of rubber from the underneath of lobster pots.

Overall, what a great day! We got to see some great marine wildlife, then help our native coastline by participating in a beach clean. Sounds like a day well spent to me.

Until next time, keep on the wild side!

My Trip to Jersey

I have not written any blog posts for a few weeks now, because first I was at my friend's house, and then, my mum and I went on holiday - and the latter is the subject of today's post. We went to Jersey for a week, staying in a hostel on the grounds of the Durrel Wildlife Park (an absolutely amazing place), and as well as visiting the wildlife park a few times, we also visited some of Jersey's famously beautiful beaches, and encountered some interesting creatures there.

Each morning we would wake up in our room to the sound of the animals in the park. My favourite was the pair of gibbons singing, a beautiful musical sound which is one of my favourite animal vocalisations. These duets would serve 2 purposes in the wild: first of all, it is a signal that tells other individuals that this is their territory, as gibbons are very territorial. Secondly, singing together at dawn and dusk helps to strengthen the bond between the male and female. The male gibbon at Durrel was previously part of a circus until the park took him in, and during that time he was trained to sing for the crowds. Sadly, even in the more natural habitat of the park he still sometimes reverts to this behaviour: when the zoo gets particularly crowded, he is prone to bouts of singing, because he still remembers when he had to sing for the crowds. Normally he would only sing at dawn and dusk with his mate.
Another noise that we could hear in the morning was made by the ruffed lemurs, which make loud, throaty noises which sound rather as if they come from a large, dangerous predator. Once I was helping out at Yorkshire Wildlife Park and was feeding the ring-tailed lemurs, when a black-and-white ruffed lemur started up this call behind me. It was so loud and shocking from an animal such as a lemur that it made me jump into the air with surprise.

Before we went to Jersey, I had heard that red squirrels were present on the island. I was excited about this, because I've never seen one before, so I did some research and wrote down some likely places where we might get a sighting of a red squirrel. I was expecting travelling to some distant woodland, then sitting silently for a while, and getting a fleeting glimpse of a red blur.
On the contrary, on our first day in Jersey, as we visited the wildlife park, a red squirrel suddenly ran out in front of us, about 2 metres away, stared at us for a little while, then ran off again! After this we had several more sightings in and around the zoo. Sometimes we would even see the squirrels running across the lawn while we ate our breakfast!

On the nighttime, we would often find speckled bush crickets on our windows, or even in our room. Several times I had to catch them and let them out of the house, in case they didn't find the way out themselves, but once we found a dead individual which I had not managed to rescue in the lounge area. In Hull, I have often gone out and searched for hours for the elusive speckled bush crickets - here I could see them without even leaving our room!
We saw a variety of grasshoppers in Jersey, and on our first day we heard the loud song of a field cricket from a nearby road verge. On a night, we could hear the cicada-like chirping of the great green bush crickets, which along with hearing gibbons calling in the morning, gave the impression of being in some far-flung rainforest, admittedly with the temperature turned down a few notches!

Plemont Bay

The first beach that we visited was Plemont Bay, which is a very beautiful place, with an excellent cafe. It was perfect for us because we needed only to catch 2 buses to get there from our lodge, and the beach was sandy instead of stony, as the latter is difficult and a bit dangerous for my mum to walk on, since she has a bad ankle. However, there were also rockpools, which was exactly what we had came for. I was surprised when we first arrived at Plemont Bay by how many fish there were. I must have seen hundreds of small shannies that day, and I caught a glimpse of a pair of beautifully coloured fish which I think may have been young dragonets. My mum also briefly saw a much larger fish with some blue colouration, which may have been a larger dragonet.
As some of the rockpools were quite large and deep, it was great fun to go swimming in them, as the marine life is even more fascinating underwater.

 Me swimming in a large rockpool. The water was nowhere near as warm as it looks!

 A view from the clifftops of Plemont Bay

We didn't see many crabs, as we would at beaches close to Hull, such as Filey and Bridlington, but I did see several shrimps, and hundreds of beadlet anemones. I also found some snakelock anemones, breadcrumb sponge, and a sea lemon. The sea lemon is a lovely little yellow sea slug which is covered in dimples and exudes a strong citrus smell when handled, making it resemble a miniature lemon. It feeds entirely on the breadcrumb sponge, and so its peculiar colouration makes it blend in well against the yellowy colouration of the sponge.

I also discovered that as well as being interesting, marine life can also be painful! Slipping on barnacle-encrusted rocks is not exactly my idea of good fun, and my leg's now covered in painful cuts.

 One of the sheltered areas at Green Island. The keen eyed may notice that this is in fact a rare sighting of a Lesser Spotted Jacob, which can be seen in the background searching for marine life

We also visited another beach, called Green Island. When the sea goes out here, it leaves loads of rockpools and large, sheltered areas of sea which are great for swimming in. In one of the larger rockpools at Green Island I found a shoal of fish which I think were sand smelt, which were good fun to swim with. This was also a good spot for collecting shells, and we found many seashells which are yet to be identified, as well as cuttlefish bone (which later had to be thrown away, as it smelt bad and was making our whole room similarly bad-smelling).

We went to Plemont Bay a second time, but because the tide went out quite late and the wind was rather cold that day, we didn't stay as long as our first time. When we weren't rockpooling, we visited the Durrel Wildlife Park, learning about the conservation work it does and having some close-up encounters with the animals they have there. We watched a baby orangutan playing - which was rather amusing, as its idea of fun consisted of hiding itself under some straw, jumping out, then flopping down upon the ground as too exhausted to stand, then repeating the process. We also got very close to the baby's mother, who seemed rather interested in the piece of cake that I had, and another female orangutan, which appeared to be doing the hoovering up, as she walked around the enclosure with her mouth clamped to the floor, sucking up food as she went.

Overall, it was a great trip, and given the opportunity I would most certainly visit Jersey again. We looked only briefly at the wildlife and beautiful coastline of the island, because we wanted to spend several days in Durrel, but in our short amount of time, we encountered a great deal of species which were new and exciting to me.

Until next time, keep on the wild side!