Newsletter Vol 11.No. 2

Jocassee Journal Information and News about the Jocassee Gorges www.dnr.sc.gov Fall/Winter 2010 Volume 11, Number 2 The new Jocassee Gorges Map and Driving Tour was funded by the Harry Hampton Memorial Wildlife Fund, a nonprofit conservation organization that supports many education and outreach programs. (Photo by Dave Fletcher) Jocassee Gorges map, driving tour published by DNR, Harry Hampton Publication features sections on botanical areas, access and overlooks, educational opportunities and resource management. numerous recreational activities Funding for publication of the map A long-awaited map and driving tour and driving tour was provided by the Harry of Jocassee Gorges has been published by the Hampton Memorial Wildlife Fund, a private, S.C. Department of Natural Resources, with non-profit corporation that partners with the funding provided by the Harry Hampton S.C. Department of Natural Resources for the Memorial Wildlife Fund. promotion of education, research, management The 38-inch-by-27-inch map is the and the administration of game and fish laws, to most comprehensive map available for the benefit conservation of wildlife, marine and other natural 33,500-acre Jim Timmerman Natural Resources Area resources in South Carolina. Funding for exhibits at the at Jocassee Gorges in northern Pickens and Oconee Jocassee Gorges Visitor Center at Keowee-Toxaway State counties. The map also shows portions or all of Table Natural Area was provided by the Hampton Fund, as Rock, Devils Fork and Keowee-Toxaway state parks in well as publication and mailing of the Jocassee Journal South Carolina, and game lands and Gorges State Park newsletter for the last 11 years. For more information on in North Carolina. the Hampton Fund, visit www.hamptonfund.org. On the flip side of the map is “Driving the Copies of the new Jocassee Gorges map and Jocassee Gorges,” an 18-stop driving tour beginning at driving tour are available at the Clemson DNR office, the Jocassee Gorges Visitor Center at Keowee-Toxaway Jocassee Gorges Visitor Center, Table Rock State Park, State Natural Area on SC 11 in Pickens County. Also Devils Fork State Park, at DNR’s Columbia headquarters featured in the publication are sections on fishing, at the Rembert Dennis Building, 1000 Assembly St., and hunting, hiking, bird-watching, wildlife, camping, at Gorges State Park in Sapphire, N.C. Living fossil located in Jocassee Gorges: Rare harvestman last collected in 1967 included what is now North America and the on Sassafras Mountain rediscovered by African continent. When (over millions of years) Harvard scientists the continental plates drifted apart, it separated the animals into widely disjunct populations, thousands By Dennis Chastain of miles and an ocean apart. A sister species in West Just when it seemed that all the rare natural Africa is nearly identical to the one last seen here and cultural treasures of the Jocassee Gorges property in the Jocassee Gorges in 1967. Since the mite had been identified, along came a spider—an itsy- harvestman is pretty much a homebody (home bitsy spider, so rare that it has been collected at range is typically about 50 miles) and is not capable only three locations in North of crossing large bodies of America, a spider whose water, the two species must ancestors have been living in have originally occurred as these Southern Appalachian one population on Pangea. woods since the Jurassic Period, The big question, the reason a spider so small that it is not Ron Clouse needed to easily seen with the naked eye, collect living specimens, was but one that has a big, big story to find through morphologic to tell. and DNA analysis whether Back in the late winter the North American of 2009, I received a phone populations had evolved call from Ron Clouse, a into separate species, or had doctoral candidate at Harvard retained enough diversity University’s Giribet Laboratory. in their genetic toolkit to Clouse said he was looking survive as a single species in for a little creature known as a Jocassee Gorges, Sassafras Mt., Pickens Co. Savannah National Wildlife Refuge, Jasper Co. profoundly diverse habitats. mite harvestman that had been The other two known collected in 1967 at a site on locations for the species are Sassafras Mountain, the state’s These photos compare the mite harvestmen the Savannah River Wildlife highest peak. He explained that collected near Sassafras Mountain in Jocassee Refuge in the lowcounty while the tiny mite harvestman Gorges and the ones collected from Savannah of South Carolina and the was related to the familiar River National Wildlife Refuge in Jasper panhandle region of Florida. daddy longlegs “spider,” County. Showers of big fluffy (also known as harvestman), they are actually not snowflakes were drifting around on the top of spiders at all. In fact, harvestmen have their own Sassafras when I arrived several weeks later to meet taxonomic classification, the order Opiliones. This Clouse and Prashant Sharma, a fellow Harvard species of mite harvestman, he explained, was only graduate student in the Giribet Lab. The pair had about the size of a flea and only lives in deep, moist, already found a likely looking site along the Foothills undisturbed leaf litter. Locating the rare insect, he Trail and were sifting through the leaf litter when I said, was important to his department’s worldwide found them. After several quick attempts to find the search for populations of this and other relict species tiny insect had turned up nothing, I remembered that of mite harvestman, and he only had three days Clouse had said in our original conversation that the during his spring break to find this biological needle 1967 collection had been at or near the 2,500 foot in the proverbial haystack. He wanted to know if I elevation. That would be somewhere down around could help locate the site of the original collection, Chimneytop Gap where the Foothills Trail crosses F. or perhaps find another likely spot to check. I replied Van Clayton road. We packed up and headed down that while it would be a challenge to find a spot the mountain. anywhere in the Jocassee Gorges property that had Our initial survey of the woods around not been disturbed in modern times, I would give it Chimneytop Gap was not promising. There were the old college try. monocultural stands of yellow poplar everywhere we This particular species of mite harvestman looked, and large even-aged stands of yellow poplar (Metasiro americanus) is thought to have originally mean that the area has been logged. As luck would evolved in the eastern United States at a time in prehistory when the mega-continent, Pangea, Continued on page 3 2 An intriguing tale of scientific discovery Continued from page 2 Antartica, don’t disperse very well, and date back to have it, I recalled that the year before, (while trailing the earliest beginnings of terrestrial life, they would a wounded deer), I had run across an extremely steep be ideal organisms by which to study how animals slope nearby that was dominated by older age-class have become dispersed and evolved in response oaks and appeared relatively undisturbed. The pair to the changing conditions brought about by the settled on a likely site, but after nearly a half-hour of drifting continents. Professor Giribet’s quest is to carefully sifting through the leaf litter, they came up eventually construct an evolutionary tree of life dating empty handed. So I left them to their work. back 450 million years, a taxonomic tool that would The next day I returned to Chimneytop help scientists literally trace the history of life on the Gap with Greg Lucas of the planet. S.C. Department of Natural The theory is that when Resources and Jocassee Pangea began to break apart Journal editor. We found that and form the various continents the intrepid graduate students around the world, the plants had moved to another and animals had to evolve to location on the other side of meet the changing conditions, the steep ridge. It was here and that phenomenon accounts that they found the mother- for much of the incredible lode. There in the deep leaf diversity we see today all litter on the upslope side across the spectrum of living of an old rotting log, they organisms. It also accounts for collected more than enough the fact that we have plants of the rare mite harvestman here in South Carolina— plants for both their morphologic such as Oconee bells, native analyses and their DNA azaleas, hemlocks, poplars and studies (16 specimens to a grand total of 60 genera of be exact). Clouse recently other plants that all have their reported that the preliminary near relative counterparts in gene sequencing data indicate Asia. For example, we have that all three populations one species of Shortia (S. in the Southeast are nearly galactifolia, Oconee bells) here identical and almost certainly in North America, while eight the same species. species of Shortia are found in So, where does all this Asia. fit into the large scheme of Granted this whole Ron Clouse of Harvard University sifts things? Let me see if I can put concept of continent drift seems through forest duff near Chimneytop Gap it into perspective. Without a bit surreal. Nevertheless, the and Sassafras Mountain looking for the rare getting too heavy into plate evidence is mounting. It is one mite harvestman spider. (DNR photo by tectonics, continental drift thing to watch a show on the Greg Lucas) and the whole subject of History Channel that features biogeography, suffice it to say that there was a time computer graphics of the proto-continents drifting in the big blue planet’s history when all the world’s around the globe like globs of goo in a lava lamp.

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