Reproductive goldilocks: The Florida apple snail reproduction across water depths
Blog by: Nathan Barrus Check out Contributing Bloggers for Bio In the classic children’s story, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Goldilocks walks into a house owned by a family of bears and eats the bears’ porridge, uses the bears’ chairs, and sleeps in the bears’ beds. But when trying out each of the bear’s possessions, the condition of each possession - whether the heat of the porridge, or softness of the chairs and beds – starts at one extreme and goes to the other. In the end, Goldilocks chooses the intermediate condition that is “just right”. Historically, the Everglades was a flowing system; water flowed from Lake Okeechobee south to Florida Bay. In the early 1900s, the Everglades were divided and impounded by levees, and then drained by canals to create space for people to live and farm. Impoundments resulted in “ponding” in some areas while drainage reduced water levels and flooding duration in others. Overall, the current Everglades has altered hydrologic conditions