{"id":15302,"date":"2015-10-24T15:04:24","date_gmt":"2015-10-24T22:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=15302"},"modified":"2015-10-28T20:34:12","modified_gmt":"2015-10-29T03:34:12","slug":"snowberry-eaters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=15302","title":{"rendered":"Snowberry eaters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>What eats snowberries?<\/p>\n<p>Most types of berries are colourful, sweet and juicy, a persuasive combination that prompts\u00a0birds to eat them and consequently to\u00a0spread the seeds. In stark contrast, snowberries (waxberries) are white, tasteless and dry. As snowberries are both widespread and common, they have clearly evolved an effective strategy for propagation, but what is it? What eats snowberries and disperses their\u00a0seeds?<\/p>\n<p>A web search for <i>snowberry eaters<\/i> produces a list of frugivorous (fruit-eating) birds. There were also suggestions, such as that of <a href=\"http:\/\/mailman1.u.washington.edu\/pipermail\/tweeters\/2006-December\/052939.html\" target=\"_blank\">Wayne Weber<\/a>, that snowberries aren&#8217;t the preferred food of birds and that most of them probably fall to the ground before they get eaten.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bcnature.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/BC-Nature-Winter-web-version.pdf#page=15\" target=\"_blank\">Terry Taylor<\/a> takes this idea further and argues that: by not being juicy, they\u00a0avoid the competition of the fall berry season; by not being sweet, they resist mould and so extend seed dispersal into the\u00a0hungry time of winter; by being white, they are more readily visible on the ground at night where they can be eaten by mammals. He suspects that the seeds are spread primarily by rodents.<\/p>\n<p>Taken together, these nice bits of biological detection suggest that, while birds occasionally eat them, snowberries evolved to\u00a0appeal primarily to mammals.<\/p>\n<p>In the fall, most berries compete for the attention of birds by being colourful, sweet and juicy. These rowan berries (mountain ash) have attracted Bohemian Waxwings (November 18, 2014).<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-15312\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/bohemianwaxwings141118es.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Snowberries avoid the fall competition\u00a0by being white, tasteless and dry, but they last into the hungry season when they have the stage to themselves (October 18, 2012). Although occasionally birds eat them, I have yet to see this.<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-15305\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/snowberry121018s.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>However, I have seen mammals eat them. This is a White-tailed Deer\u00a0(November 11, 2011).<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-15304\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/whitetaileddeer111128cs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"719\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And, here is yestermorn&#8217;s observation of a Red Squirrel.<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-15303\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/squirrel151023s.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; What eats snowberries? Most types of berries are colourful, sweet and juicy, a persuasive combination that prompts\u00a0birds to eat them and consequently to\u00a0spread the seeds. In stark contrast, snowberries (waxberries) are white, tasteless and dry. As snowberries are both &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=15302\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,11,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-mammals","category-wildflowers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15302"}],"version-history":[{"count":41,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15375,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15302\/revisions\/15375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}