You can find an updated picture gallery of the Canary Islands on the right of the blog, with a lot of cool animals, landscapes, mountains and plants. Definitely worth the visit!
For now I just have a short picture-oriented post without too many words, before I return to some more ecology-oriented posts in the next weeks. For now, just enjoy the nice images from a fantastic island.
Rocks. It does not seem an ideal location for plants to grow. However, as I have to emphasize a lot, plants will never cease to amaze.
I already wrote about some real bad boys called ‘ruderals’ in a previous post. But most of the rockstars of the volcano of Tenerife are examples of plants with a totally different strategy: they are stress-tolerators.
These species are adapted to deal with high amounts of stress, but cope very badly with disturbance. They have slow growth rates, possess leaves that can live for years and years and they are masters in collecting and holding nutrients. Perfectly suited for a live in the hostile environment of the moon landscape of southern Tenerife.
In fact, they follow the same survival strategy as some of the typical alpine and subarctic species (for example). This group of species with similar strategies to deal with stress contains very few alien species, which is remarkable. But, even more remarkable, the kind of landscapes they are adapted for, are not at all alien-free. And that brings us back to the main point of my research: it is not only the stress-tolerators that survive stress, some plants with other strategies seem to adapt surprisingly well.
– A picture gallery with a first part of the highlights from my trip to Tenerife can be found on the right on my blog. –
The ocean is a monster. Even on the quietest of days, the surf zone on the shore of Tenerife is immensely powerful.
A tireless coming and going of waves, back and forth over the rocky shore. It is a miracle the rocks even manage to survive these destructive forces.
Sitting on the rocks at the shore is an unequaled experience. Just to close your eyes and focus on the smashing sound of another breaking wave…
These rocks provide a very stressful environments for plants and animals to survive in. It is a constant adjustment: water that comes and goes, the power of breaking waves, the terrible burden of the salt… As an ecosystem built on constantly changing conditions, the surf zone produces one of the most harsh environments around. It even beats the world of the mountain tops, where plants ‘only’ have to struggle to survive the bitter cold.
Animals seem to do a little better than plants, here, maybe because they are able to move back and forth with the tides. The large crabs hiding behind every rock did not seem to care at all. Plant life however is limited to some green and slimy algae, the diehards of the plant world.
Somewhere offshore from the coast of Tenerife lives a large family of pilot whales.
They stay the whole year in the same part of the ocean, peacefully plowing through the water and spurting water.
Pilot whales are funny animals, with their stumpy heads and curvy dorsal fin. But they have a nice serenity around them, as they enjoy day after day in the wide ocean.
It makes you wonder how they deal with the immense amount of space all around them.
But they seem to do fine as they get support from each other to make the big ocean that little bit less overwhelming.
The pilots are real stars. They provide all on their own one of the main touristic attractions of Tenerife, and that means a thing. They see a lot of cameras every day, which could make you wonder if this ecotourism is that healthy for wild animals. On the other hand, the economical value of the pilot whales is huge, which is the reason why they are probably among the better protected animals in the world. If you are worth more alive than dead, they hopefully keep you in that state as long as possible…
A huge volcano in the ocean. The highest peak a stunning 3700 meters, excluding another 3000 meters of mountain hidden beneath the surface of the ocean. That is Tenerife.
A cat overlooking the world from a pole in volcanic rock. The volcano itself looms on the horizon. This view perfectly summarizes the magical atmosphere on this huge rock in the sea.
A volcano in the middle of the ocean creates a world of volcanic stones crumbling down under the combined power of winds, ocean and time. One day raised from the ocean, some day in the future doomed to disappear again.
It makes you wonder about our continuously changing natural world. Thousands of years ago, a hot, steaming, lifeless mountain arose from the sea. Every one of the animal and plant species now living there had to colonize that rock from the mainland. The whole vegetation, all of it arrived slowly over time from over kilometers of ocean. Species gathered from everywhere, ultimately creating a unique ecosystem totally different from the mainland.
This unique system is the main reason why such an island is a fascinating place for an ecologist. Over the next days, I will share my pictures and stories from this beautiful and amazing place.
Roadsides are wonderful. Over only a span of a few meters, the vegetation changes completely. A line-shaped ecosystems that differs in all imaginable conditions from the natural, undisturbed vegetation next to it.
Over the pace of only a few footsteps, you can find a completely altered microclimate, messed-up hydrology and a changed nutrient composition. Roadsides get often a lot more sun because they are less shaded by a plant canopy. Disturbance by cars and road building often provides a reasonable amount of bare soil. And that is very important: that exhausting competition for resources with other species is finely reduced!
Let this be exactly the kind of ecosystem loved by our aliens. This particular combination of factors results in a nice and clear correlation: where you have roadsides, you find aliens. Only a few meters away from the road, they disappear.
The extent of these road effects, although not always visible, can sometimes be felt even far away from the road. Even more important in our story, roadsides can become a source of alien species, releasing their aliens in the undisturbed nature away from the roads. If the aliens manage to escape from the roadsides – where their damage is limited to these few already ruined meters, they can become a real problem.
What happens with these roadsides and their associated aliens in the mountains is one of the main questions from my research. So I promise you to reveal more about this line-shaped ecosystems as soon as my paper is published.
The 3D lab 
