Ecological Importance
As with many other small mammal species, M. pennsylvanicus plays important ecological roles. The meadow vole is an important food source for many predators, and disperses mycorrhizal fungi. It is a major consumer of grass and disperses grass nutrients in its feces. After disruptive site disturbances such as forest or meadow fires, the meadow vole's activities contribute to habitat restoration. It prefers open, nonforest habitats and colonizes such open areas created by fire or other clearing disturbances. Very few meadow voles are found in forest or woodland areas. In newly opened areas, it is quite abundant. In these new open areas, the vole quickly becomes a food source for predators.
Read more about this topic: Meadow Vole
Famous quotes containing the words ecological and/or importance:
“The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)
“Kitsch is the daily art of our time, as the vase or the hymn was for earlier generations. For the sensibility it has that arbitrariness and importance which works take on when they are no longer noticeable elements of the environment. In America kitsch is Nature. The Rocky Mountains have resembled fake art for a century.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)