Relicts of a Beautiful Sea

Survival, Extinction, and Conservation in a Desert World

Christopher Norment

• Editore: The University of North Carolina Press
• Anno: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781469618678
• Argomento: Biological Sciences
• Categoria: Zoology

Along a tiny spring in a narrow canyon near Death Valley, seemingly against all odds, an Inyo Mountain slender salamander makes its home. "The desert, " writes conservation biologist Christopher Norment, "is defined by the absence of water, and yet in the desert there is water enough, if you live properly." Relicts of a Beautiful Sea explores the existence of rare, unexpected, and sublime desert creatures such as the black toad and four pupfishes unique to the desert West. All are anomalies: amphibians and fish, dependent upon aquatic habitats, yet living in one of the driest places on earth, where precipitation averages less than four inches per year. In this climate of extremes, beset by conflicts over water rights, each species illustrates the work of natural selection and the importance of conservation. This is also a story of persistence--for as much as ten million years--amid the changing landscape of western North America. By telling the story of these creatures, Norment illustrates the beauty of evolution and explores ethical and practical issues of conservation: what is a four-inch-long salamander worth, hidden away in the heat-blasted canyons of the Inyo Mountains, and what would the cost of its extinction be? What is any lonely and besieged species worth, and why should we care?

Notes

INTRODUCTION

“God is in the details”: attributed to Mies van der Rohe. http://architecture.about.com/od/20thcenturytrends/a/Mies-Van-Der-Rohe-Quotes.htm (July 2, 2012)

“It is storming in the White Mountains”: Rexroth, “Toward an Organic Philosophy,” 103.

“To consider what is appropriate”: Illich, “The Wisdom of Leopold Kohr,” n.p.

“No ideas but in things”: W. C. Williams, “A Sort of a Song.”

“Thus,” says Tyndall: Rexroth, “Toward an Organic Philosophy,” 104.

COLLECTING THE DEAD

Do you ever find yourself: Abraham Lincoln as quoted in Burlingame, Lincoln, 300.

This tiny gill-breathing snail: Sada, Recovery Plan.

part of the area’s rich fauna: Hershler and Sada, “Springsnails of Ash Meadows.”

Pyrgulopsis is an old genus: Hershler and Liu, “Ancient Vicariance.”

when groundwater pumping dried Longstreet Spring: Sada and Vinyard, “Anthropogenic Changes.”

The Tecopa pupfish . . . occurred: Miller, Cyprinodont Fishes.

“white, barren alkali flat”: ibid., 37.

The Tecopa pupfish was last seen: Miller et al., “Extinctions of Fishes.”

Adult Tecopa pupfish: Miller, Cyprinodont Fishes.

104°F was “the second highest recorded temperature”: ibid., 39.

Miller did not describe this species until 1984: Miller, “Rhinichthys deaconi.”

The last known collection: Miller et al., “Extinctions of Fishes.”

“two narrow streams of clear water”: Frémont, Report of the Exploring Expedition, 266.

The Las Vegas dace probably persisted: Miller, “Rhinichthys deaconi.”

Miller differentiated Las Vegas dace from: ibid.

“a delightful bathing place”: Frémont, Report of the Exploring Expedition, 266.

The last Ash Meadows poolfish: Miller et al., “Extinctions of Fishes.”

“Over the 6-year . . . greater numbers”: Miller, Cyprinodont Fishes, 101.

Habitat alteration may have played: Miller et al., “Extinctions of Fishes.”

Ash Meadows poolfish were small: Miller, Cyprinodont Fishes.

Empetrichthys once ranged more widely: Uyeno and Miller, “Relationships of Empetrichthys erdisi”; Smith et al., “Biogeography and Timing.”

Empetrichthys latos pahrump and Empetrichthys latos concavus: Miller et al., “Extinctions of Fishes,” 32–33.

groundwater withdrawals exceeded recharge: Comartin, “Development of a Flow Model,” 1–2.

in the late 1960s biologists recognized: Deacon and Williams, “Retrospective Evaluation.”

The extinct Pahrump poolfish subspecies: Miller, Cyprinodont Fishes.

The largest patch of habitat: Miller, Cyprinodont Fishes.

This species occurred: Gong, “Rana fisheri.”

“Our R. fisheri may go with the old springs gone”: Wright and Wright, “Nevada Frog,” 457.

These short-legged frogs: Gong, “Rana fisheri.”

northwestern populations of the Chiricahua leopard frog: Hekkala et al., “Resurrecting an Extinct Species.”

a combination of groundwater pumping: Gong, “Rana fisheri.”

“a few semicroaks, which reminded me”: Wright and Wright, “Nevada Frog,” 456.

wet alkaline meadows: Bailey, “Revision of Microtus.”

“the big salt marsh below Watkins Ranch”: ibid., 423.

“blackish, but with a few overhairs tipped with reddish”: Hall, “Nevadan Races,” 423.

Last located by W. C. Russell: ibid.; Sada, Recovery Plan.”

A CULTIVATION OF SLOWNESS
The Inyo Mountains Slender Salamander

almost no barrier: Spight, “Water Economy.”

was not discovered until 1973: Marlow et al., “A New Salamander.”

Its distribution, as far as is known: Yanev and Wake, “Genic Differentiation.”

the family arose in eastern North America: Zheng and Wake, “Higher-Level Salamander Relationships.”

some 80 million years ago: ibid., 502.

Within the genus Batrachoseps: material on Batrachoseps evolution is from Jockusch and Wake, “Falling Apart and Merging”; Elizabeth Jockusch, personal communication, April 10, 2012.

two finer divisions: Wake et al., “New Species of Salamander.”

Species in the larger lineage: Jockusch and Wake, “Falling Apart and Merging.”

a web-toed salamander in the genus Hydromantes: Ron Marlow, interview, December 5, 2010.

Mutational differences in the mitochondrial DNA: material from Jockusch and Wake, “Falling Apart and Merging”; Elizabeth Jockusch, interview, December 10, 2010; Elizabeth Jockusch, personal communication, April 10, 2012.

“has inherited California’s complex geologic history”: Elizabeth Jockusch, interview, December 10, 2010.

Large-scale uplift of the modern Sierra Nevada: Stock et al., “Pace of Landscape Evolution”; Wakabayashi and Sawyer, “Stream Incision.” There is some debate about the timing and rate of Sierra Nevada uplift; for dissenting views, see Wernicke et al., “Origin of the High Mountains”; Mulch et al., “Hydrogen Isotopes.”

Fossil trackways and skeletal material: Clark, “Fossil Plethodontid.”

It wasn’t until 3 to 4 million years ago: Phillips, “Geological and Hydrological History,” 139; Bachman, “Pliocene-Pleistocene Break-up.”

a complex series of glacial advances and retreats: Hill, “Geologic Story”; Elliot-Fisk, “Glacial Geomorphology.”

ancient packrat middens, composed mostly of plant material: Grayson, Desert’s Past, 115–53.

“resembl[ing] blocks of asphalt”: Spaulding et al., “Packrat Middens,” 60.

Members of the Manly Party: Grayson, Desert’s Past, 115–16.

Packrat middens in the Panamint Mountains: Woodcock, “Late Pleistocene.”

The most impressive of the recent eruptions occurred about 760,000 years ago: Phillips, “Geological and Hydrological History,” 130; Hill, “Geologic Story,” 52–58.

The early Holocene generally was cooler and moister: for information on Holocene climates in the Death Valley region see Grayson, Desert’s Past, 92–153; LaMarche, “Holocene Climatic Variations”; Lowenstein, “Pleistocene Lakes.”

thirty-five genera of mammals: Grayson, Desert’s Past, 63.

Among the vanished species: ibid., 155–90.

aboriginal humans who arrived in the region: ibid., 235.

“just screwing around”: Ron Marlow, interview, December 5, 2010.

a new species of slender salamander: Brame, “A New Species of Batrachoseps.”

“It’s just what they do”: Robert Hansen, personal communica...