MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Spring 2018

SPRING 2018 ML BLUE 61 BIO PHILIAC words :: Leslie Anthony It’s spring, and as snow retreats from the land, we hedonistic Canadians begin to think about our next outdoor adventures—most of which will involve “trails” of some kind. Whether it’s hiking, trail running, mountain biking, climbing, or even a canoe trip, our endeavours will likely follow lines on the map drawn by our species. Of course, humans have been creating trails since before recorded time, and in some parts of the world these are employed not for frivolous play, but for the age-old purposes of reaching water, finding food, or moving from one place to another as part of a seasonal migration. Which, no surprise, sounds very much like what other animals do. The movements of animals (and once upon a time, all humans), in fact, is the primary behavioural adaptation to variability in time and space of available resources. Depending on their scale, animal movements have been categorized into functional groups (e.g. foraging, dispersal, migration, etc.), and are now studied by biologists and ecologists using a range of methodologies. Since the advent of radio telemetry, satellite tracking, and remote-triggered digital cams that can function unaided for up to a year, we’ve learned much more about animals’ use of trails. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that wildlife trails can be superhighways for a range of terrestrial—and even aerial—species from insects to megafauna. A recent study in Finland found that certain hawks can see rodent urine—which fluoresces in the ultraviolet spectrum—and thus hunt by following trails from the air. HAPPY TRAILS WHEN HUMAN AND NON- HUMAN TRAILS CONVERGE "Because trails allow light to penetrate where it often wouldn’t, plants use trails to disperse, co-opting animal travellers as vectors for their seeds..." PAUL JARVIS/UNSPLASH