Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A beaver dam or beaver impoundment is a dam built by beavers; it creates a pond which protects against predators such as coyotes, wolves and bears, and holds their food during winter. These structures modify the natural environment in such a way that the overall ecosystem builds upon the change, making beavers a keystone species and ecosystem ...
The surface of beaver ponds is typically at or near bank-full, so even small increases in stream flows cause the pond to overflow its banks. Thus, high stream flows spread water and nutrients beyond the stream banks to wide riparian zones when beaver dams are present. Finally, beaver ponds may serve as critical firebreaks in fire-prone areas. [59]
Fish-eating birds use beaver ponds for foraging, and in some areas, certain species appear more frequently at sites where beavers were active than at sites with no beaver activity. [ 64 ] [ 87 ] [ 88 ] In a study of Wyoming streams and rivers, watercourses with beavers had 75 times as many ducks as those without. [ 89 ]
With other species in the Nymphaeales order, Nuphar lutea provides habitat for fish and a wide range of aquatic invertebrates, insects, snails, birds, turtles, crayfish, moose, deer, muskrats, porcupine, and beaver in shallow waters along lake, pond, and stream margins across the multiple continents where it is found. [23]
Early ecologists believed that this dam-building was an amazing feat of architectural planning, indicative of the beaver's high intellect. This theory was tested when a recording of running water was played in a field near a beaver pond. Although it was on dry land, the beaver covered the tape player with branches and mud. [61]
The Beaver Pond site was first noted by John Fyles of the Geological Survey of Canada in 1961. In 1988 he found the first vertebrate remains there. In 1992 vertebrate paleontologist, Richard Harington of the Canadian Museum of Nature , began ten summers of excavations at the site.
Marstonia castor, common name the beaver pond marstonia, is a species of very small freshwater snail with a gill and an operculum, an aquatic operculate gastropod mollusc in the family Hydrobiidae. This species was endemic to a very limited area of the US state of Georgia , mostly to streams and creeks around Lake Blackshear .
Yearling beaver in Alhambra Creek. The Martinez beavers are a family of North American beavers living in Alhambra Creek in downtown Martinez, California.Best known as the longtime home of famed 19th/20th-century naturalist John Muir, Martinez has become a national example of urban stream restoration utilizing beavers as ecosystem engineers.