One afternoon in 1978, two government workers in the southeastern state of Victoria put out 40 or 50 cage traps in a patch of rain forest by a creek. Because they had started late, there was no time to go far out into the forest. They were looking for a mysterious creature they knew about from dead specimens; they thought it might be a type of potoroo--a small, ground-dwelling macropod that inhabits dense undergrowth.
The next morning, they found in their trap a male and a female of a completely new species, the long-footed potoroo. Their find turned out to be restricted to the wetter forests of eastern Victoria and southeastern New South Wales, where it feeds almost exclusively on underground fungi, helping to spread the fungi's spores.
Recent studies have found the fungi provide nutrients that stimulate the growth and establishment of forest trees. That has made the long-footed potoroo into a symbol for conservationists in their battle against the logging industry in southeastern Australia. The activists even call their newsletter Potoroo Review.
Posted by Madfish Willie at January 19, 2004 12:02 AM | TrackBack