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Eye on Nature
Sun lets natural economy blossom
While our dollar-based economy stumbles, the business of nature continues. The jobs, or niches, fill with migrants from the south and the economies of production, commerce, and service thrive. The engine of this economy, the sun, powers up and the original green factories work overtime producing goods and services vital to residents miniature and grand.
Unions of all sorts, guilds in the jargon of both economists and ecologists, toil from dawn to dusk, and dusk to dawn. The law of supply and demand gives way to the dictum that “no two niches may overlap completely.” The competition that results has led to specializations in both substance and style. The insect eating birds, already adapted by the demands of their food choice, specialize further into gleaners and aerial flycatchers, and those that search on the ground or under bark. Eastern Warblers subdivide further, dividing even the location of their search. In the conifers in which they forage, Yellow-rumped Warblers feed in the understory, Black-throated Greens in the middle and Blackburnians at the top. Cape Mays join the Black-throated Greens, but rather than search the needles, they hunt for insects caught in sap. All told, at least five species partition the niche, carving their own space in tree and time, passing these preferences on to their offspring and ensuring their own species’ job security.
Others have fared less well, failing to adapt and change, their careers no longer viable, retraining ended by the dispassionate hand of nature. Lost to time. But, the survivors remain, busy at work, earning their keep, driving the markets of earth and the economy of nature. And all around us, life goes on.
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Wally Shriner, MHCC instructor of ecology, evolution and wildlife biology, writes a monthly column on the connections between mere mortals and the wonders of nature.