The northern pocket gopher (Thomomys talpoides) brings sudden ecosystem advantages
All Canada Pictures/Alamy
Two years after Mount St Helens erupted in 1980, a workforce of researchers helicoptered in a gopher to the ash-covered panorama. Many years later, the exercise of that single gopher burrowing for a single day might have helped the decimated ecosystem regrow by boosting the range of soil fungi.
“There’s one thing to be stated about studying classes from the gophers,” says Mia Maltz on the College of Connecticut, who has used the eruption to know how forests would possibly recuperate from different stresses – together with wildfires and…
