• Home
  • About
  • Email List
  • Past Speakers
  • SFNHS Coordinator
  • Upcoming Speakers

SF Natural History Series

A lecture series exploring nature in the San Francisco Bay Area

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« Next Lecture: January 19th – The Golden Age of Mesopredators
Next Lecture: February 16th – The Sturgeon in SF Bay »

Predators Amongst Us

January 31, 2012 by Adrian Cotter

Glen Martin started off his talk with an anecdote: coming into his garage one night to find an opossum. He poked it with a broomstick to test the notion of “playing possum,” but the opossum did not play dead, but threatened him, opening up a mouthful of the biggest looking teeth he’d ever seen.

Opossums (and introduced species) and their “cousins” skunks, raccoons and others are doing well with those teeth, living in amongst us, and living off of us. Skunks love our lawns for their grubs and worms, raccoons love our garbage cans, and opossums seem to like to eat anything. With restoration efforts some of the less human adapted meso predators are doing well, ringtail cats in riparian environments, mink in the delta, and river otters.

Meso predators are defined by a certain mass and a certain function — they are not the top tier predator, but if the top is eliminated they can actually do quite well as the apex predator. This is what has happened to the coyote where wolves have been eliminated. The apex predators are often extremely unforgiving of the mesopredators: wolves will kill coyotes, lions will kill cheetahs and hyenas.

Of course meso predators can also have devastating effects. A guest of Mr Martin’s: Dr Frank talked about his experience studying (as a FWS tech) the Aleutian Goose in the Aleutian Islands, and how a fox introduced for their fur (in 1750), wiped clean of birds island after island. The foxes managed to survive after this decimation by living off of the abundance of isopods on the beach. More details of the Foxes here.

Glen Martin discussed feral cats as being a significant cohort of this type of predator, and their potential as a force for habitat discussion.

This most interesting part of the evening was the talk around the interrelation of predators and how changing those relationships adding or removing predators can have profound impacts on the local environment. The most famous example is that of Yellowstone where the re-introduction of wolves has  kept elk moving and out of the plains, which has allowed things like river side Willows to grow, which has provided fodder for beaver who also had been gone from the park.

But if you want to find out more about the meso-predators we live with, you can get an intro to the subject through his Bay Nature article from July 1st of 2011, the Middle Way.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in Lecture Notes | Tagged apex, meso, mesopredators, opossums, predators, raccoons, skunks | 1 Comment

One Response

  1. on February 25, 2012 at 10:50 pm Carolyn Pankow

    Can you send my email: carolynjunepankow@yahoo.com to Glen Martin, the speaker on mesopredators, the former columnest for the SF Chronicle, and tell him he can get up to $75 for speaking to Pacificans.
    Thanks,
    Carolyn Pankow
    Program Chari of Friends of San Pedro Valley Park.
    PS. We will exchange speaker info with you.



Comments are closed.

  • SFNHS

    Our lecture series explores all aspects of nature in the Bay Area, and seeks to understand our impact both past and present on those natural systems, and their impact on us.
  • Find Us Elsewhere

    • Facebook
    • Google+
    • Twitter
  • Local Science & History

    • Ask a Scientist SF
    • California Center for Natural History
    • California Naturalist Program
    • Friends of Five Creeks
    • Nature in the City
    • Shaping SF
    • The Long Now Seminars
    • Think Walks
    • Urban Adventures for Kids
  • Our Hosts

    • Exploratorium Bay Observatory Gallery
    • Green Apple Books
    • Rotary Nature Center
    • SF Public Library
    • The Randall Museum
  • Science in Other Cities

    • Bay to Beach Life
    • NYC Wildlife
  • Speaker

    • Cartographer's Notebook
    • Keith Hansen
    • Marin Carbon Project
    • Nowtopians
  • SF Naturalist

    • RT @Sierra_Jobs: Are you interested in developing web applications, and shaping technical solutions for complex use cases at a mission-cent… 6 months ago
    • @Longreads @jkehe @WIRED This does just essentially seem like a reboot of intelligent design. Why is it easier to b… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 11 months ago
    • My couple minutes of Corvid fame on @kalw's @CrosscurrentsFM this week -- shoutout to friends who clued me in to th… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 year ago
  • Archives

    • July 2018
    • January 2017
    • June 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • November 2014
    • October 2014
    • September 2014
    • July 2014
    • June 2014
    • May 2014
    • April 2014
    • March 2014
    • February 2014
    • January 2014
    • October 2013
    • September 2013
    • August 2013
    • July 2013
    • June 2013
    • May 2013
    • April 2013
    • March 2013
    • February 2013
    • January 2013
    • December 2012
    • October 2012
    • August 2012
    • July 2012
    • May 2012
    • April 2012
    • February 2012
    • January 2012
    • November 2011
    • October 2011
    • August 2011
    • July 2011
    • June 2011
    • May 2011
    • April 2011
    • March 2011
    • February 2011
    • January 2011
    • December 2010
    • November 2010
    • October 2010
    • September 2010
    • August 2010
    • July 2010
    • June 2010
    • May 2010
    • April 2010
    • February 2010
    • January 2010
    • November 2009
    • October 2009
    • September 2009
    • August 2009
    • July 2009
    • June 2009
    • May 2009
    • March 2009

Blog at WordPress.com.

WPThemes.


  • Follow Following
    • SF Natural History Series
    • Join 35 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • SF Natural History Series
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: