Wolves and cougars and bears, oh my!

For most of my career I have studied prairie plants, mainly because prairies are among the rarest ecosystems in Canada owing to the fact that they’ve been almost completely converted into cropland. As a result, I have never had to worry about encountering grizzlies or wolves or cougars while doing my field work. This year in contrast, I will have to be much more vigilant than I am used to. During a reconnaissance trip in May to set up my field plots I was informed that I should be on the lookout for wolves AND cougars AND bears! Not to mention ornery moose and elk! Oh yeah, and ticks and mosquitoes too! Oh my!

Why am I anticipating these wildlife encounters? This year I decided to study pollination in the fescue prairie and my research plots are located just south of Riding Mountain National Park, on land owned by the Nature Conservancy of Canada and the Province of Manitoba. As you may know national parks are wildlife hot spots and Riding Mountain is no exception. After tall-grass prairie, the fescue prairies are among the rarest ecosystems in North America and we don’t know much about the pollinators that live in them.

Shortly after arriving, one of the park staff told me that he thinks wolves are denning nearby. To be honest though, I think the wolves are the least of my worries as I’ve never heard of wolves attacking a human in Canada. Bears on the other hand are common, and have been known to attack people. I decided to make myself as conspicuous as possible by using a bear bell, blowing a whistle once in a while and loudly singing walking songs from “The Lord of the Rings” in a manner resembling a cat being strangled (I have a terrible singing voice so never ask me to do karaoke).

However, while I am actually surveying my plots, I don’t like to make too much noise as that disturbs the pollinators. I figured that if I was ever going to see a wild animal it would happen while I was doing my surveying. And that is exactly what happened. While quietly surveying one of my plots I saw a bear about 30 m away from me. Later on that week, I saw a deer in the valley above one of my plots. My funniest encounter happened in the evening at the research station. I was sitting on the couch playing solitaire when I saw that the neighbours had let their big black dog run loose. Then I shook my head-I had forgotten that I wasn’t in Winnipeg anymore. It was a bear wandering through the yard and I managed to get quite a few photos before it ran off.

Bogs are fascinating habitats that contain many bizarre species of plants. In the Manitoba Museum’s Boreal Forest Gallery, we have a lovely diorama that depicts what a typical bog looks like. Recently an intern at the Museum, Jon Makar, prepared a report on some of the unusual plants depicted in this diorama. Here’s what he found out!

First off, what exactly is a bog? Bogs are formed when sedges, rushes, and Sphagnum mosses completely cover wetlands, eventually forming a floating mat of vegetation. Bogs are fed only by rainwater and are thus poor in nutrients. Bogs are also very acidic because Sphagnum produces acids as waste products; this makes the bog less suitable for other plants. The acidity of the water in bogs decreases the rate of decomposition, which results in a build up of “peat moss” over time.

A common woody species found in bogs is black spruce (Picea mariana). One reason black spruce can survive in bogs is due its symbioses with special mycorrhizal fungi. These fungi wrap around the tree roots and provide it with nutrients in exchange for carbohydrates. Minerals like magnesium, potassium, and calcium as well as phosphates and nitrates are some of the important nutrients that fungi obtain and share with the tree.

Orchids are another group of plants that can be found in the bog diorama; round-leaved orchid (Amerorchis rotundifolia), showy lady’s-slipper (Cypripedium reginae), yellow lady’s-slipper (Cypripedium parviflorum), and grass pink (Calopogon tuberosus) models were created by the Museum’s diorama artist. All orchids depend on insects for pollination. Lady’s-slipper orchids trap pollinators inside the “slipper” as the walls are-you guessed it-slippery, meaning the pollinator can’t climb out the way it came. A hairy strip at the back of the slipper gives the pollinator footing and allows it to escape through a back entrance, but only once it has brushed past the stigma, pollinating the flower if it had any pollen sacs attached to it. As the insect moves past the stigma it brushes past the anthers, causing new pollen sacs to stick to it and be taken to the next lady’s slipper.

This small round-leaved orchid (Amerorchis rotundifolia) model was made by the Museum’s diorama artist.

The dioramas at the Museum contain hundreds of fascinating plant species that are usually over shadowed by the large mammals. The bog diorama is an exception to this, focusing instead on the plants and tiny animals that are part of our boreal forests.