Yellowstone yields 1,200 species in 1-day study
HELENA, Mont. - Scientists searching for Yellowstone National Park’s lesser-known life forms - beyond its famed bison, bears, and wolves - found more than 1,200 species, including several never known before to exist in the park.
A one-day study in late August found microscopic worms, mushrooms, a bluish-green lichen, a slender grass, and a colorful tiger beetle, among other creatures, in about 2 square miles of Yellowstone, according to initial results released this week.
About 125 scientists and volunteers spent 24 hours canvassing an area in northern Yellowstone during the “bioblitz.’’
The park’s wolves, bears, bison, and elk are a popular topic for study, but rarely do scientists turn their attention to insects and other smaller creatures that provide the ecological building blocks for those larger mammals to survive, said Kayhan Ostovar, an assistant professor of environmental science at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Mont.
“There are a lot of them, and we don’t even know which ones are there,’’ said Ostovar, who helped organize the one-.
It could be months or longer before the inventory is finished. But the initial report showed a rich biodiversity, including 46 kinds of bees, 373 plant species, 86 mushroom types, five kinds of bats, 24 butterflies, and more than 300 kinds of insects.
Such brief and intensive inventories of species have been held in at least 40 national parks.
