Alligator 'Commuters' Connect Salty, Freshwater Habitats

Biologists have determined that alligators play an important role in connecting habitats that would otherwise not interact at well. The creatures have been found to move from freshwater to the salty waters of estuaries and the open sea.

After such a commute, the animals always return to their freshwater home, but their expeditions help connect food webs and species that cannot possible survive in the same environment. When they go out to see, alligators do not stray away from coastal areas.

Florida International University (FIU) scientist Adam Rosenblatt says that alligators do not have the salt excreting glands that crocodiles do. This prevents them from spending too much time in salty waters, but it doesn't stop them from venturing out every once in a while.

Working together with FIU colleague Michael Heithaus, the researcher decided to conduct a study of alligator movements in South Florida, where these creatures abound. The focus of the research was seeing how they shuttle between freshwater and saltwater habitats .

In the research paper that accompanies the study – which is published in a recent issue of the Journal of Animal Ecology – the team indicates that the research was conducted in the Shark River estuary of the Florida Coastal Everglades.

The area is a Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) site, as classified by the US National Science Foundation (NSF). It is one of only 26 such sites around the world.

“Alligators are 'ecosystem engineers' because their burrows, nests, and trails create unique local habitats,” explains NSF Division of Environmental Biology program director Nancy Huntly.

The DEB funds the LTER Network together with the NSF Directorate for Geosciences. “This research tells us that alligators also may regularly 'engineer' nutrient transfers over large distances between habitats in coastal wetland ecosystems,” Huntly goes on to say.

One of the most important findings in the study was that the large size of American alligators tended to protect them from the stress that such travels would normally impose on their bodies.

“Mobile large-bodied species like American alligators are buffered against short-term stress by their size. They have the staying power to remain in different habitats for longer periods of time,” Rosenblatt concludes.