Music This is how nature works.

Theme Music Music Putting on a play takes a whole cast and crew.

A diverse community of people, with each person playing a very important role.

Goodness!

Oh, I knew nothing of this - In theater productions, hopefully people find the role they get the most out of.

The thing they do best.

I’m sure it’s got to be done.

If someone is especially well-suited to a particular job, we say it's their niche.

Niche is a French word meaning nest .

It's the same in nature, too.

Among a group of creatures living in a particular place, each organism has its own role or niche.

The natural association of all living things interacting in the same area is called a community.

Each creature's niche is the role it plays in keeping the whole community functioning.

That role may have to do with what the creature eats, what eats it, or even what it does to the soil or water.

For example, an animal that eats insects has the role of helping to control insect populations in the community.

Insect population control is part of its niche.

Different kinds of animals that eat insects may find them in different places and catch them in different ways.

Each of these animal’s niches is slightly different.

Tree swallows catch gnats in the air.

Pileated woodpeckers chisel insects out of trees.

Toads use their tongues to catch insects near the ground and skunks dig to find insect larva.

The role of spreading seeds can be part of a creature's niche.

Blue jays, gray squirrels, and white- footed mice gather and store seeds for food.

In the process, they drop, lose, and forget seeds.

The lost seeds sprout away from the parent plants, spreading the plant population through the community.

Other animals share in the seed spreading role by distributing them in other ways.

For example, black bears and robins eat blackberries and spread the seeds through their droppings.

An animal may play several roles in its community.

Groundhogs eat plants and dig burrows.

The burrows shelter them and other animals.

Also, a chamber in the burrow where they put their droppings fertilizes the soil and helps plants grow.

Plants may also play several roles in a community.

A plant that is food for animals has roots that hold down soil and reduce erosion.

The same plant may shelter birds and other animals and provide nesting places.

All these roles and more are part of the plant's niche.

Music Animals and plants all fill niches by playing roles that help keep their communities healthy and diverse.

Music It would be neat to see how some animals and plants around the Nature Center play roles in their communities.

Music Hi Dave!

Do you need some help?

Oh, that would be great, Patrice.

I’m just getting back from an outreach program with the pileated woodpeckers.

Being an insect eater is part of the pileated’s niche, right?

It sure is.

But just part of it, really.

But it's an important part because pileated woodpeckers, even though they have that reputation of using that big beak to chop open the trees, actually eat insects in a variety of ways.

Sometimes they glean them off the outside of the tree.

Sometimes they get it just underneath the bark, or sometimes they'll get those deep, wood-born insects way in the heartwood.

But they'll also eat fruits and berries and nuts on occasion as well.

And of course, when they're chopping on the trees, they create cavities for animals.

It seems to me like they could do a lot of damage with their beaks.

Is this bad for the tree?

Well, sometimes you see the trees that they start chewing holes in and they look like they're pretty well riddled.

But most of the damage to the tree has already been done by the insects that have been in there.

And when you think about it, they of course are impacting that tree, but in doing so, they are creating homes and cavities for other creatures as well as themselves.

And you know, when you think of those insects, if they weren't eaten by something like the woodpeckers, other trees would also be damaged too.

So when we look at the whole health of the forest, they're actually doing a very beneficial thing.

So insects and other animals use the holes that woodpeckers make in trees?

Well, insects live in the holes.

But a lot of other creatures will use them too.

You know, the cavities that are in trees are so hard to find, and there are so many animals that are looking for cavities.

Everything from birds that can't create cavities like the woodpeckers, like tree swallows or even chickadees and nuthatches.

But even other animals like rodents, mice, squirrels will come along.

They may use the cavities as they exist, or they may use their gnawing teeth and chew out the cavity or create a larger hole or opening.

Once that opening is enlarged, then other animals can move in.

If it gets big enough, you know, raccoons and possums can move in there, or even birds like, well, waterfowl, the wood duck, the hooded merganser, they use those as nesting cavities.

There's other creatures, though, that create homes for other animals.

In fact, the coral is a great example.

Music Coral reefs are sometimes called the rainforest of the ocean because of all the different species of organisms that live in them.

In fact, a third of all the ocean life depend on them for survival.

Coral reefs have an important niche in the ocean as home to lots of different organisms, providing shelter for marine plants and animals.

They also protect shorelines from storms, damaging waves, and erosion.

You can find coral reefs thriving all around the world in the tropical and subtropical waters of the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans.

Corals are really tiny animals related to jellyfish and sea anemones.

They live in colonies made up of lots of individual corals or polyps.

Polyps secrete calcium carbonate, forming a hard skeleton that attaches to their neighbor.

The skeletons help protect them from predators.

Over time, the skeletons of thes As long as coral is healthy, it produces calcium carbonate and the reef continues to grow.

Reef building coral have a special relationship with zooxanthellae.

Zooxanthellae are a species of algae.

They live inside polyps of coral and produce most of the food and oxygen the coral needs.

In turn, the coral protects the algae from predators and provides it with carbon dioxide.

Because the algae need sunlight to produce food, coral reefs are found in clear, shallow water.

One of the most important parts of the corals’ niche is providing hiding places for marine animals living near.

Angelfish, hogfish, triggerfish, snappers, butterfly fish, and barracudas live in and around coral reefs.

Their leftover food scraps are eaten by other reef dwellers like crabs and lobsters.

They use the crevices in coral reefs to hide from predators, like octopus and eels, that are drawn to coral reefs because of the variety of prey and the protection that the reef offers them.

One fish that has an important niche in the reef and shore communities is a parrotfish.

Parrotfish are herbivores.

They eat algae living in the coral.

To get the algae, they dig into the coral with their sharp front teeth.

The coral skeleton is then excreted as sand.

One parrotfish can produce a ton of sand every year.

The sand they produce ends up on beaches near coral reefs.

Pollution, coral harvesting, and development are damaging reefs all around the world.

One third of the world's reefs have already been seriously damaged or destroyed.

People are working hard to preserve these areas for the future health of the ecosystem.

The niche any plant or animal fills in its community is important.

And if that plant or animal were to disappear, other living things would be affected.

You know, humans often impact the natural community, but sometimes animals can impact the human community.

A good example is the beaver.

Von and Marshall are going to spend the day with conservation officer Joe Giarrusso.

He is trying to control the impact of beaver in more urban areas.

Music Today, what we're going to do is you guys are going to give me a hand cleaning out this beaver pipe that we have here.

Okay.

Before we then go upstream and breach beaver dam.

Why did you put the beaver pipe there?

Okay.

The reason we put the beaver pipe here was to try to control the water level in a manner that would allow us to control the water level, but also not open up the dam.

And when I originally put this beaver pipe in, there was about 3 to 4 feet of water underneath it.

Now, you can see we’re standing on mud so the beaver have actually pushed all this mud in here.

What we're going to do now, before we open up the dam upstream, is we're going to make sure that this is operating properly so that this will flow nice and easy.

Music Okay, guys, I would say that should do the trick.

Now we head upstream and we'll breach the dam.

Where are we going to breach this dam?

Right up ahead here.

I chose this location because it's where the original creek used to be.

And it allows for a nice flow.

But you can see how it bulged out, because the every time I breach it, they repair it.

How long does it take the beaver to build this dam?

Well, overall probably took about a month, but when they first started, within a couple nights, there was some type of dam here holding back the brook.

Why don't you get on top of the dam and you can start removing sticks and throwing them aside?

And Marshall and I, what we're going to do is make a, a two foot wide by one foot deep hole in the dam, and we'll start getting the water running.

Gotta remember, you know how you guys go to school and work hard at school, and I work hard at my job?

Beaver work hard at their job.

And this is it.

Building dams.

Flooding areas.

Taking down trees.

There you go.

How long does it take for them to mend this again?

Tomorrow morning, this’ll look like we never did anything to it.

Getting close to having water come through.

All right.

One of the things we try to do is when we do this, we do it nice and slow.

So we, so we don't - Yup, see, there’s something moving in there.

So we don't cause a lot of silt to go downstream because we don't want to make this stream any muddier than it already is.

Even though the beaver will have repaired this, this level will be a lot lower.

So these people that live adjacent to this beaver pond won't get flooded out the way they might have.

So in that way, we kind of hopefully making it so that the beaver and the people that live in this area both get what they want.

Beaver get their water and people get dry homes.

Okay, I guess we're almost done here.

Once we just take out a few more sticks and we'll head out of the marsh and call it a day.

Music What have we learned today?

All the organisms in the community have a unique niche.

A niche is a role an organism plays in keeping a natural community healthy.

And the organism’s niche can include lots of different things, including what it eats or what eats it, the shelter it provides for other organisms, and how it interacts with the soil, plants, or water.

Now you know how nature works!

Theme Music Major funding for Nature Works was provided by American Honda Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by Alice Freeman Muchnic, Alice J. Reen Charitable Trust, Cogswell Benevolent Trust, the Finisterre Fund, Greater Piscataqua Community Foundation, Morgridge Family Trust, the Natural Areas Wildlife Fund, Rawson L. Wood.

(animal sounds)