This project is for you as students and as people sharing a world with the animals and plants around you to learn a little about the different species that you may see in this area of Indiana. What are their roles in the local environment? Are they native, naturalized, or invasive? What is interesting about them? Understanding the plants and animals in the local ecosystems and how they interact with each other and with people can tell you a lot about the importance of biodiversity.
In this project, you will either choose a photograph from a collection or photograph a species of plant or animal yourself, and then do some general research to learn a little more about them. Because this guide is open access, the information you provide will be available for everyone to see, and you will be able to share your species with others while learning about the species of your classmates. This guide is intended to be an ongoing project, so each new group of students will contribute a little more every year. Every entry should have the following elements or answer the following questions:
Sources and photos should be cited briefly and a guide on citation along with a list of sources you can use to get information is on the Sources tab. Please refer to this information as needed.
Here is a sample entry.
Photo credit: Cassaundra Bash
Scientific name: Equus caballus
Common name: horse
Non-native to Indiana--generally modern horses considered native to central Asia; cosmopolitan; domesticated
Conservation status: common
As an herbivore and primary consumer, the horse eats and excretes plant matter; horse manure is good fertilizer for plants and undigested seeds can be spread in this manner, but horses require a lot of space and may overgraze small areas. Wild horses can help maintain large grasslands by grazing on plants that may encroach on open areas such as saplings and small shrubs. Domestic horses in captivity are occasionally preyed upon by large carnivores such as wolves, coyotes, and cougars in certain areas of North America where human-wildlife interactions may be common, but generally in Indiana horses are not prone to the role of prey. While there are some areas out in the western U.S. where wild horses (mustangs) may be seen as invasive, in Indiana there are no free-range horse herds and therefore the populations are controlled by humans. While certain breeds of horses may be considered rare or endangered, the horse as a species is not threatened unless humans should at some point stop valuing them and decide to stop breeding them, which seems unlikely. As long as humans responsibly monitor the breeding of these animals so that there are no unwanted young (as sometimes happens with other domestic animals such as cats and dogs), the horse population should not be an issue.
The precursors to modern horses developed in North America millions of years ago, but allegedly died off on the continent around 10,000 years ago, when scientists no longer found fossil evidence of their continued existence on the continent. Modern horses supposedly evolved from individuals who had crossed into what would become Central Asia, and horses supposedly were reintroduced to the Americas when the Europeans, particularly the Spanish, began their explorations. However, members of many of the Indigenous peoples of the American West, including the Pawnee, Pueblo, and Comanche tribes, claimed to have had horses before Europeans came. By studying the bones of horses from archaelogical discoveries in areas once inhabited by Indigenous peoples, scientists have found that a few of those individual horses pre-dated European-Indigenous interactions and that some even showed evidence of having halters and bridles used on them. While horses may not have ever been native to the Indiana region, questions about their native status to other areas of the United States are being raised.
Source: Sullivan, Will. "New Research Rewrites the History of American Horses: Native Americans Spread the Animals Across the West before Europeans Arrived in the Region, Archaeological Evidence and Indigenous Knowledge Show." Smithsonian Magazine, April 3, 2023.