Gopher tortoise — the environmental engineer and homemaker

Deep in the middle of a now-rare longleaf pine forest in northeast Florida, a gopher tortoise looks for a place to build a home. She is surrounded by saw palmettos, wildflowers, towering and graceful longleaf pines and a meadow. Nearby, a small circular wetland bubbles over a springhead lined with bald cypress trees. Clusters of lavender thistle attract swarms of swallowtail butterflies and other pollinators in an ancient symphony of life.

She searches a high sandy ridge, dry and warm, with deep deposits of white quartz sand, pure as snow. She picks a suitable area with just a little relief on the side of a small ancient sandbar, now many miles from any ocean. She uses her powerful front legs to dig a large, spacious burrow deep underground, and she shares her space with the other organisms that live in her ecosystem. This way of living is termed commensalism.

The gopher tortoise begins her work. She is not fast, but she is efficient. She is not flashy but she is steady. She will dig a burrow approximately 40 feet long and eight feet deep, at a 20- to 45-degree angle. With her powerful claws, she clears the sandy soil away easily. It spreads out in a semicircle around the mouth of the burrow like an apron. The newly excavated sand is clean, fresh and aerated. As the gopher tortoise digs, she spreads vital nutrients in the surrounding area.

She is a mother figure, a guardian and a protector. She creates a space so precious it is hard to put into perspective. When fire rips through her environment, she provides an underground bunker system, and all are welcome. An entire group of organisms living in a fire-dependent ecosystem has evolved around this one safety feature, saving countless lives over a millennium — a burrow. The gopher tortoise's passive nature keeps so many other organisms safe. Inside her burrow, predators and prey put aside conflicts for survival and wait out the flames together.

When no fire is present, birds take dust baths on the wide, soft apron on the burrow’s doorstep, removing their parasites. The apron makes a fertile space for seeds to sprout, attracting small insects, followed by larger insects that prey on them. The burrow's construction improves soil quality, supporting native plant communities; pioneer species move in, starting the local food chain.

Environmental engineers are organisms that significantly modify and maintain a physical habitat that directly provides space for other species to live. Beavers do this by creating ponds, which eventually become meadows. They create places others call home or use opportunistically. The gopher tortoise is similar; she provides a controlled microclimate within her burrow, a shelter from wildfire, resting spaces, food and nesting zones. 

The gopher tortoise welcomes diversity and commensalism in her home. Approximately 30 to 40 of the more than 300-plus species that use her burrow are obligate commensals living exclusively in gopher tortoise burrows. The rest are facultative commensals, using the burrow opportunistically. These freeloaders do not help or hurt the host organism.

Amphibians like the gopher frog and the striped newt use the burrow for shelter, preferring its cool temperatures and high humidity. The eastern indigo snake is just one of many snakes in the Southeast slithering down a burrow for a winter den or nesting site. Both amphibians and reptiles also use the sand apron to sunbathe, absorbing warmth.

Mammals that frequent gopher tortoise burrows include the Florida mouse, the nine-banded armadillo, the eastern cottontail, the striped  skunk, the fox and the bobcat. Birds such as the bobwhite quail shelter in the burrow from raptors and extreme weather. The apron of the burrow also attracts burrowing owls, sparrows and doves. But the vast majority of species that cohabit gopher tortoise burrows are invertebrates, including insects like beetles.

Mythology speaks of the tortoise or turtle as carrying the weight of the world on the back of its shell. In Native American culture, the turtle is the oldest symbol for planet Earth, the ultimate provider, the personification of the mother spirit. The gopher tortoise embraces these ideals in real time, demonstrating that diverse organisms benefit from coming together, pooling resources and sharing space peacefully.

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