NATURAL 

 HISTORY 



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Or, the limits of professional ecology 



by J. Whitfield Gibbons 



Several years ago, I had the opportunity 

 to conduct ecological research and, at the 

 same time, make what I thought would be 

 a modest personal contribution to environ- 

 mental preservation. All I needed to do 

 was catch a mother alligator and her 

 young. The management of a South Car- 

 ohna coastal resort had told me that a large 

 alligator had been pestering golfers, and 

 that they intended to notify the state, 

 which meant the animal could be legally 

 killed as a nuisance. I asked if, instead, we 

 could catch it and remove it to the Savan- 

 nah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL) for 

 behavioral study. Both the resort owners 

 and wildlife officials agreed. 



But why did we want a large, pesky fe- 

 male alhgator at the lab? My research in- 

 terest in alligators had begun twenty-six 

 years ago when I caught my first one while 

 doing a project on freshwater turtles. Be- 

 cause they are coldblooded, alligators re- 

 flect environmental conditions more di- 

 rectly than mammals and birds, whose 

 body temperatures are regulated inter- 

 nally. But crocodilians are linked closely 

 to birds — indeed, they are possibly the 

 avians' closest living relatives. I wanted to 

 continue investigating the evolutionary 

 and ecological mysteries of these reptiles. 



Nest building and protection of the 

 young are distinctive behaviors of the 

 American alhgator. All crocodilians lay 

 eggs on land near the fresh to slightly 

 brackish water of coastal marshes, 

 swamps, rivers, and lakes. In early sum- 

 mer, the female alligator builds a large 

 nest — about three and a half feet high and 

 up to seven feet in diameter — of mud and 

 vegetation along the shore and deposits 

 twenty to sixty white eggs before sealing 

 the nest with more mud and vegetation. 

 (The decomposition of the nesting mater- 

 ial produces heat, which incubates the 



eggs at a relatively constant temperature.) 



Because of a powerful protective in- 

 stinct, however, the mother often remains 

 in the vicinity of the nest until the late 

 summer when the young hatch. Thus any- 

 body inadvertently approaching the nest 

 area may suddenly find an enormous, hiss- 

 ing reptile charging overland. If one stands 

 one's ground and does not molest the nest 

 or pick up a baby, the mother alligator usu- 

 ally retreats. Or she may not. If the mother 

 hears the babies hatching, she may remove 

 the vegetation and even help the eight- 

 inch-long hatchlings to the water by carry- 

 ing them in her mouth. 



Indeed, this strong parental care in alli- 

 gators indeed seems more closely allied to 

 birds than to other groups of reptiles. A fe- 

 male turtle, for example, digs a nest, de- 

 posits her eggs, and returns to the water, 

 leaving the eggs behind. Prior to egg lay- 

 ing, she stores energy and nutrients in her 

 fatty tissues. These resources are allocated 

 to each egg in the form of a large yolk re- 

 serve and provide all of the nourishment 

 needed both for embryonic growth in the 

 egg and for early growth and maintenance 

 of the hatchling turtle. 



Some years ago, Justin Congdon, my 

 colleague at SREL, and I discovered that 

 in alligator eggs the proportion of original 

 egg Upids that remained in the hatchling 

 was actually higher than that in turtles. 

 Thus, the newborn alhgator entered the 

 aquatic habitat with more fat reserves than 

 any species of turtle we had studied. In 

 capturing the alligator and her babies, I 

 hoped to find out more about alhgators 

 and their young. 



This particular mother alligator didn't 

 intend to be a pest, but people kept hitting 

 Uttle white balls close to the lake where 

 she and her babies lived. She would 

 emerge firom the lake, chase the golfers 



4 Natural History 3/94 



