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The North Carolina Coastal Plains
Building Dams:
North American Beaver (Castor Canadensis)
The North American Beaver is considered a keystone species among the Floodplain Forests of North Carolina mainly because of their ability to build dams. The dams they build provide many benefits to the ecosystem around it. Since the floodplain forests are subjected to pollution and other sediment build up, beaver dams often act as a filter and trap sediment and other pollutants. In addition to controlling water quality, beavers also have a remarkable impact on the amount of water in the Floodplain Forest. The dams that the beavers create are placed strategically in areas where they help control the input and output of water within the ecosystem, keeping everything balanced.
The North American beaver (Castor canadensis) is a native species to North America, explaining the origin of its name. The beaver is the largest rodent in the United States and is competing for the largest rodent in the world.The fundamental niche of the beaver is rather simple. A North American Beaver thrives on the leaves, shoots, and grasses within an ecosystem. Their diet consists of mainly branches and trees, and they build their dams out of mud, sticks, stones and branches. Their dams provide protection for them, but they also protect the ecosystem around them and support many species living in or around water. Beavers are the only common animal capable of cutting down whole trees with just their teeth.
Beaver dams are key to preventing flooding among the floodplain forests as well. Beavers often live in and promote an environment in which rare or local species, such as moths and amphibians, thrive. As well as animals, beaver dams also promote species of marh and sedge-mire in the area they inhabit. Since so many species of plants and animals rely on the beaver and their dams for survival, the beaver is considered the keystone species of the Floodplain Forests.
Beavers are also considered a K-selected species. This is because they have a low mortality and low birth rate. They care for their young for a long time and typically have a stable population without growing rapidly. A North American has an average of 1 litter consisting of 1-6 beaver babies a year, between May and June. Although the food availability within the area it occupies does affect birth rates.
Beavers are often prey for predators such as wolves, owls, hawks, and most mammalian carnivores within the ecosystem it occupies. Most beavers seek protection in their dams or underwater from these predators. Beavers have a neutralism relationship with muskrats. They often live within the same territory with neither benefits or drawbacks from each other. As beavers eat any foliage available as a resource and use trees for their habitat, beavers have little-to-no competition within the Floodplain Forests. A beaver’s most likely competition is humans themselves cutting down trees, destroying their habitats and depleting their food sources.Beavers often provide habitat and shelter for many species of amphibians, including some rare and diverse species in the Floodplain Forests, resulting in a commensalism relationship with most of its ecosystem’s inhabitants. Beavers also maintain an indirect commensalism relationship with beetles. North American Beavers do so by cutting down cottonwood trees, which then grow sprouts, which then feed leaf beetles.
