“Shhh,” I inform my 5-year-old son, “there are animals sleeping, proper underneath our ft.”
He presses his ear in opposition to the frozen floor, hoping to listen to the gradual, sleepy breath of a snoozing mammal. I inform him that if he may pull again the earth like a blanket and peek in, he would possibly see a small, mousey ball of white, black, and yellowy-orange fur curled tightly inside a nest of dried grasses and useless leaves. An extended, sparsely-furred tail can be coiled like a skinny ribbon round this little package deal: a woodland leaping mouse, whose pre-hibernation weight loss plan consists largely of truffles.
Woodland leaping mice (in contrast to the intently associated, field-dwelling meadow leaping mice) stay within the coarse woody particles of hemlock-hardwood and spruce-fir forests all through New England. Their white-tipped tails, which might measure 6 inches or extra, are two-thirds the overall size of their our bodies. When startled or pursued by predators, these mice use their highly effective, kangaroo-like hind legs and enormous again ft to leap as excessive as 2 ft and so far as 8 ft ahead. They may leap a number of occasions, then abruptly cease, turning into utterly nonetheless. These erratic actions and a coat of fur effectively fitted to camouflage assist woodland leaping mice evade the talons and enamel of predators resembling nice horned owls, red-tailed hawks, bobcats, weasels, and foxes.
The woodland leaping mouse is likely one of the smallest true hibernators in North America, and it is determined by its retailer of specialised fats to outlive the winter. The shortened daylight and cooler temperatures of fall set off a hormonal response, inflicting leaping mice to spend their waking moments consuming as a lot as potential. Not like many different rodents, the woodland leaping mouse doesn’t horde or retailer meals; all the things it finds to eat goes instantly into its physique. By the point they head into their underground nests for a protracted winter’s sleep, these often lean mice may have elevated their weight by greater than 25 %.
In essence, a leaping mouse’s physique turns into its winter larder, because it converts nearly all of consumed meals into brown fats, which is reworked on to physique warmth all through the winter. Throughout hibernation, the brown fats acts like a slow-burning log in a woodstove, conserving the woodland leaping mouse’s physique temperature from dropping beneath freezing.
To construct up this fats reserve, woodland leaping mice eat grass seeds, berries, and bugs, resembling caterpillar larva. However greater than 30 % of the mouse’s weight loss plan contains underground fungi, generally often called truffles. The truffles woodland leaping mice devour in New England forests aren’t the identical alternative varieties sniffed out by extremely skilled pigs or canines in Italy or France. Nevertheless, the pivotal position of those specialised subterranean fungi within the forest ecosystem is price greater than their weight in gold.
In response to Ryan Stephens, a small mammal and fungi researcher from the College of New Hampshire, underground fungi are important to the well being of forests “These fungi colonize the roots of timber and assist them take up vitamins and water,” he mentioned. “In change, the timber present the fungi with sugars.”
These mycorrhizal fungi, as they’re referred to by scientists like Stephens, are related to most vascular vegetation and timber, and their position reaches past nutrient biking. These fungi have been proven to assist timber and vegetation reply to pathogens and poor environmental situations, and to regenerate after forests are altered by things like fireplace and logging.
Latest analysis carried out by Stephens and a crew of UNH researchers in New Hampshire’s White Mountains reveals that woodland leaping mice and different small rodents, resembling voles, chipmunks, mice, and shrews, play an important position in dispersing the spores of underground fungi. In a manner, these animals are like underground pollinators. By consuming subterranean fungi after which defecating in new areas, they assist unfold the spores, enabling new fungal networks to kind with tree roots.
“Small mammals assist keep a various neighborhood of mycorrhizal fungi in forested techniques,” mentioned Stephens. “That is necessary as a result of having a various fungal neighborhood may also help buffer forests from disturbances, resembling drought.”
I consider these hidden connections as I watch my son, holding his breath as he listens to the bottom, imagining what’s beneath. There’s a lot of our world we by no means see, and but these underground interactions make our world above the bottom potential.
Susie Spikol is the neighborhood program director for the Harris Middle for Conservation Training in Hancock, New Hampshire. Illustration by Adelaide Murphy Tyrol. The Exterior Story is assigned and edited by Northern Woodlands journal and sponsored by the Wellborn Ecology Fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Basis: www.nhcf.org.