The northern pocket gopher (Thomomys talpoides) brings surprising ecosystem advantages
All Canada Images/Alamy
Two years after Mount St Helens erupted in 1980, a crew 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 could have helped the decimated ecosystem regrow by boosting the variety 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 grasp how forests may get well from different stresses – together with wildfires and…
