Mammals, Beetles and Bees-University of Washington campus- 5/31

Mammals:

For the last class period we talked about the different mammals found on UW campus, which is only one species. The Eastern Gray Squirrel is not native to this region but has out competed the Western Gray for resources because it is more urbanized and thrives in a city setting like Seattle. The Western Gray was put on the endangered species list in 1993 and can only be found in three sites in all of WA state. It is easy to spot where the E. Gray is on campus because it will chew off pieces of bark and excrete salvia on the branch to mark its territory. This squirrel has a very good sense of smell that they use to locate berries and nuts that have fallen to the ground. They are considered scatter-hoarding mammals because they will fill their cheeks with food and then dig a little hole and fill it with just one berry or nut, bury it and then repeat the process. Squirrels can remember up to thousands of these holes in a season and they build so many in order to reduce the risk of loss to another squirrel. They nest in trees and will make a chirp noise.

There is a graduate student on campus that is studying the social behavior of squirrels and trying to discover a reason for the aggressive reaction the Eastern Gray has towards the Western Gray. He first developed robotic squirrels that he will place in the habitat and then twitch its tail while simultaneously playing its sound. The reactions from the E. Gray to the W. Gray squirrel were exactly what happened on our campus and explains why it is hard to find any W Gray squirrels anywhere.

Bees:
There are about 20-30,000 species of bees in the world and over 100 are found on campus. About 95% of bee species are solitary and all the females in the species are fertile with no worker bees. Honeybees and bumble bees are communal species and live on campus in bee boxes. The services bees give humans are pollinating all plants for food and help plants put oxygen into the atmosphere.

Posted on June 2, 2012 05:13 PM by karavanslyck