Supplemental Text for Sagebrush to Sandstone
Mountains
An orogeny is a mountain building event in geologic history. At the end of the Devonian, a mountain building event occurred in western North America, and the strongest evidence of this event is found around Antler Peak in the Battle Mountains of Nevada. How would this vast, open space feel filled with water higher than the mountains? The mountains of Nevada continued to rise through the Triassic period, which spans 200 to 50 million years ago. The water level continued to fall during this time so that eastern Nevada had shallow lagoons and even beaches. During this time is when the ichthyosaurs, large marine reptiles, would have thrived. Imagine or draw a valley in its transition with rising mountains and draining seas. The last part of the state to dry up was the northwestern region around what is now Washoe county. Today, alkali flats and salt desert scrub are found across Nevada that are the final remnants of these vast oceans. Different organisms thrive here now like Snowy Plover who eats brine flies during their visits to our playas. - Danielle Miles
Pika
One of the animals similar to both Nevada and China is the pika. Pika have small, rounded bodies less than 10 inches in length and weighing less than a pound. They are mammals related to rabbits, but they have short, rounded ears and no external tail. Pika live in rocky slopes of mountains and collect grasses to cache in hay piles for the winter. Pika are very sensitive to temperature changes and must behaviorally thermoregulate, meaning that they move in and out of the depths of the rock during the day to warm up or cool down. Though the American Pika in Nevada and the Ili Pika in China are different species on opposite sides of the globe, 2014 was a special year for both of them. The Ili pika was discovered in 1983, but wasn’t seen again until 2014. American Pika live throughout the Rocky Mountains and were not thought to exist more than a few patches in northwestern Nevada (Washoe and Humboldt counties). In 2014, a more extensive study of their use of lower-elevation sites in northwestern Nevada began with yearly monitoring ongoing today. We now know that there are hundreds of pika territories in northwestern Nevada, but their populations are dwindling. Both the pika in Nevada and China are threatened by global rising temperatures because of their heat sensitivity and limited ranges where they can move. What memories will be lost if we lose these populations? Try drawing the ideal habitat if you were a pika. Make sure there are high rocks to stand on and look for predators, diverse grasses and vegetation to collect, and dense scree to live in. - Danielle Miles
Butterflies
Butterflies are among the great wanderers of the natural world, sometimes following the same paths for millennia and sometimes finding new paths with each generation. Although less commonly seen in recent years, the monarch butterfly is a familiar migrant in the West as it travels from the Pacific Coast to the inland deserts and back each year. We have many other butterflies with equally fascinating habits, and one of the smallest butterflies in the world travels across Nevada each year in a journey that is worth watching. The western pygmy blue butterfly (Brephidium exilis) has a permanent home in the warmer deserts of the Southwest, flying and mating all year long. In most years, individuals expand out from that home range at the height of summer, usually making it as far as northern Nevada. But the winters in the north are too cold, and they die back to their home in the south each year. In the meantime, the pygmy blues can be seen in salt flats and weed lots and anywhere in between, often associated with tumbleweeds, which the caterpillars eat. Although they fly great distances, they hover close to the ground and (especially given their small size) are sometimes mistaken for flies. Prompt: wherever you are in summer, look for tumbleweeds (or native plants in the goosefoot family) and look close to the plants to see if you can find this very small butterfly (as small as the fingernail on your little finger). You will be rewarded with an intricate pattern of brown spots and silver flashes (despite the name, they’re not blue). If you don’t find the butterfly, make a sketch of any insect life you can find. Even the smallest among them might have travelled a long road! -Matthew Forister
Vultures
As humans, our sense of smell can be tied to memory, bringing up the specificity of a kitchen, or the feeling of sitting under a pine tree. For animals, a keen sense of smell can be an important survival strategy. Animals have adaptations that allow them to be specifically suited to the challenges of their environment, and animals in Nevada are no exception. One animal common in Nevada that uses a strong sense of smell is a Turkey vulture. Turkey vultures can often be seen in Nevada in the warmer months, March-October, circling overhead and riding warm jets of air to new vantage points. They may look as if they are using their sense of sight to observe the landscape, but they’re actually exploring the air for the scent of food! Turkey vultures have a very strong sense of smell, and this is the primary sense that they use to find their food, contrasting them from the strategies that other meat-eating birds, or raptors, will use. These birds are primarily scavengers, meaning they eat animals that have already been killed by environmental factors or predators. Because of this, they play a key role in an ecosystem; cleaning up after other animals in an environment where decomposition might be slow. Vultures have stomachs that are adapted to their diet and can tolerate consuming pathogens that would be dangerous to other animals, so they also can limit the spread of some wildlife diseases. All of this, in spite of how strange they might look. In fact, their featherless heads are actually another adaptation and allow for the birds to keep their heads clean as they are burrowing into carcasses. -Morgan Long
Creative Prompt: In many people’s minds, vultures are thought of as ugly. But they are actually very cool animals that look a specific way for a very specific reason! Can you think of other animals or plants that use their less beautiful features in a specific way? What about living things that we do think of as beautiful, why do you think they might look the way they look?
Habitat
In the last decade, the landscape of Nevada has seen many changes beyond that of roads. For example, cheatgrass is a nonnative species that thrives in degraded areas and outcompetes native grassesa and shrubs to create monocultures that very few other organisms are able to use. Conifer trees also have a dynamic history of competition with other plants. Single-leaf Pinyon-pine and Western Juniper are two native conifer species that have been expanding their habitat compared to 100 years ago. Pinyon-pine and juniper live together to make dense woodlands and at the last glacial maximum these conifer woodlands would have covered all of Nevada. Now, there is some concern that the expansion of these species is contributing to the ‘great squeeze’ of the vast sagebrush sea with sagebrush being outcompeted by cheatgrass and invasives on one side and conifer trees on the other. If you are in sagebrush habitat near a woodland, look in at the base of the sagebrush to see if you see tiny trees growing inside. The stability and shelter of a sagebrush plant is a great nursery for a growing tree and it can take ten years for the tree to grow taller than the sagebrush. What habitat conditions do you think that the pinyon-pine and juniper trees pray for? Are there changes that animals living in the sagebrush want to see? What circumstances or atmosphere do you wish to see for your surroundings? - Danielle Miles
Calliope Hummingbird
The Calliope hummingbird is the smallest breeding bird in North America, coming in right below 3 grams and right above 3 inches long. To put that into perspective, this tiny bird weighs a feather over the weight of a single penny! Not only do they streak across the sky at high speeds, but males display a gorgeously streaked gorget, or throat patch, that they use to attract potential mates. Arriving to northern Nevada around mid-April every year, males find mountain homes situated among the flowers which they ferociously defend. Calliopes are well known pollinators of one very unique plant species colloquially called the snow plant! This completely red plant can’t photosynthesize, so it is parasitic, deriving all of its nutrients by stealing from fungal associations in local tree roots. The next time you are hiking through the Sierra Nevada mountains in early spring, take a minute to look for blooming snow plants. If you’re near an open meadow, it is likely that a Calliope hummingbird is also nearby! Sit, watch, and listen. Male Calliopes defend an area by perching atop the twigs of the tallest nearby bush. They use these vantage points to watch for potential rivals or mates as well as to launch themselves after either an intruder or into an elaborate courtship dive. -Benjamin Sonnenberg
Creative Prompt: While visiting a high elevation coniferous forest, look for openings in the forest that contain snow plants and other wildflower species. Sit and contemplate the number of connections between the flora and fauna that all work together to create a supportive community. Sketch a connection web between the members of your observed community.
Other Nevadan Points of Interest
The Mount Charleston dark blue butterfly is found only in the high elevations of the Spring Mountain National Recreation Area and depends upon the Sulphur Buckwheat’s flower throughout its life cycle from birth to when new eggs are laid for the next season’s bloom.
The Mojave poppy bee once thrived across much of the Mojave Desert, but the quarter-inch long, yellow and black poppy bee is now only found in seven locations in Clark County. The bee relies on two rare desert poppy flowers.
Stansbury Cliffrose is one of the first spring plants to bloom in the Spring Mountains. Cliffrose has fragrant yellow-white flowers and is a popular browse for mule deer, bighorn sheep, and elk. Natives used the fibrous bark for clothing and rope, and the branches were used for arrows. Look for cliffrose around the rocky washes and hillsides near Fletcher Canyon and the Visitor Gateway.
Ponderosa pines are known to smell like vanilla and butterscotch. Scientists believe that this sweet scent comes from a chemical in the sap, that when heated by the sun releases the aroma.
Growing only a few centimeters tall, the Charleston violet is a true belly flower, meaning you may have to get down on the ground to see and enjoy it! The only yellow violet in the area, look for this vibrant plant in rocky soils within the pinyon-juniper and mixed conifer woodlands of the Spring Mountains.
Did you know that the Spring Mountains are considered a Sky Island? The term “sky island” is used to describe an isolated mountain range with drastic elevation changes and diverse life zones, which is surrounded by a lowland environment “sea.”