Tag: forest ecology
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Box Turtles and “Rebel Love”
by Nicolette L. Cagle, Ph.D., September 19, 2026, Durham, North Carolina. I am exhausted, having just returned from Duke Forest, where my students and I were searching for and radio-tracking Eastern Box Turtles (Terrapene carolina carolina). The effort, persistence, and perspiration are worth it: a chance to give back to the Box Turtles that have…
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Rain Crows: Yellow- and Black-billed Cuckoos in American Culture
by Nicolette L. Cagle, August 24, 2026 In the last post, we investigated two North American cuckoos: The Black-billed and Yellow-billed Cuckoos. We followed them between continents and through forests whose resources pulse, including leaves bursting forth after monsoon rains, caterpillars swarming during outbreaks, and cicadas rising from the soil. Both cuckoo species respond strongly…
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Following the Green Wave: How Cuckoos Track Rain, Caterpillars, and Cicadas
by Nicolette L. Cagle, August 14, 2026 In the last post, we followed the cuckoo family through deep time, from the early Cenozoic fossil record to the remarkable diversity of modern cuckoos. We also noted that the modern Cuckoo family extends beyond the notorious brood parasite, the Common Cuckoo, and embraces roadrunners, coucals, anis, koels,…
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Three Amanitas
by Nicolette L. Cagle, Ph.D., August 5, 2026 Location: Durham, NC, along the Eno River The woods were warm, wet, and thick with humidity this morning. Dark and close, the trees released large, gentle drops of rain that sat patiently until a breeze brushed the canopy, releasing them to the forest floor of dense brown…
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Looking into the Box: Individuality and Variation in Eastern Box Turtles
by Nicolette L. Cagle, June 1, 2026 In the last post, we opened the box by looking at the Eastern Box Turtle’s participation in the forest-floor food web. We considered the turtle not as an ecosystem service, but as a participant in the exchanges that make the forest floor come alive. Now we look more…
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Unwrapping the Box: Seeds, Spores, and the Forest Inside the Turtle
by Nicolette L. Cagle, Ph.D., May 26, 2026 In the last post, we began a new part of this Eastern Box Turtle series by considering the turtle’s gifts. In Western science, many of these gifts are described as ecosystem services, or the useful work a species does in a larger ecological system. That language can…
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Wrapped in a Box: The Gifts of the Eastern Box Turtle
by Nicolette L. Cagle, Ph.D., May 25, 2026 In the previous posts in this Eastern Box Turtle series, we followed the turtle from deep evolutionary time into the present: through its ancient shell, its contested names, its once broad but now shrinking range, its remembered routes, its habitat mosaics, and the broken landscapes that threaten…
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Within the Box: Habitat Mosaics, Moisture, and the Seasonal Lives of Eastern Box Turtles
Eastern Box Turtles are often described as woodland turtles, but the scientific literature reveals a more complex story. In this post, I explore how Eastern, or Woodland, Box Turtles use habitat mosaics of forest, wetland, edge, leaf litter, logs, brambles, moisture, shade, and overwintering sites. Their home is not a single habitat type, but a…
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What Happens to a Nut on the Forest Floor?
by Nicolette L. Cagle, June 1, 2026 What happens to a hickory nut or walnut after it falls to the forest floor? At first, it can seem like a simple thing, a stored future released from the canopy and left beneath the tree that made it. Imagine a hickory nut resting inside its husk, a…
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European Hornbeam: Knitting the Broadleaf Forest Across Moisture Regimes and Canopy Layers
by Nicolette L. Cagle, Ph.D., April 4, 2026 In the last two posts, I introduced two species that anchor the mesic and upland Broadleaf Forests of Central Europe: Pedunculate Oak and Sessile Oak. Here, I turn to a species that helps knit those forest stands together across moisture regimes and canopy layers: European Hornbeam. If…
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