When Jack Putz and his student decided to study root growth in southeastern pocket gopher (Geomys pinetis) tunnels, they didn’t realize how difficult it would be to isolate sections of the underground structures. First, they tried to block two ends off with aluminum plates. “And then we got outsmarted by a pocket gopher,” Putz, a biologist at University of Florida, tells The Scientist.
The pocket gopher, immortalized as Carl Spackler’s fossorial nemesis in the movie Caddyshack, dug around the researcher’s barricades, filled in the section isolated for study, blocked it off from surrounding tunnel connections, and proceeded to burrow elsewhere. In the end, to isolate short tunnel segments for study, Putz and his student Veronica Selden had to carefully dig in rings and bury hollowed-out cylindrical barrels that served as 360-degree blockades around 57 cm-long sections of tunnel.
Their hard work paid off, leading to the insight that significant root ...
