Is Vostok Island a black gap within the Pacific Ocean? No, however for some migratory birds, it’d as nicely be — there isn’t any escape.
One Redditor instigated a partial web breakage when he posted a Google Earth screenshot of the island in 2021. The 22-hectare speck, which is a part of the property of Kiribati, seems on Google Maps as just about black.
But it’s not an underworld portal or a secret army base. The black look has been extensively reported as an optical phantasm, attributable to Vostok’s dense forest when photographed from low orbit.
Still, the uninhabited outcrop isn’t your on a regular basis coral dot within the south Pacific. That’s as a result of it’s home to a sure sort of forest that may fatally entice birds like an enormous, sticky internet.
Black noddy terns nesting in pisonia bushes on Australia’s Lady Musgrove Island. Photo: Shutterstock
The pisonia tree grows in shut copses at heights as much as 30 meters. According to JSTOR, it’s not unusual for groves of pisonias to outcompete every little thing else attempting to develop round and below it.
Canopy of pisonias. Photo: USFWS through Flickr
None of this might be a specific downside for tree-dwelling birds if pisonias didn’t additionally produce lengthy, velcro-like seeds that secrete a gooey membrane.
For nesting colonies of seabirds like white terns, lesser noddies, and red-footed boobies, outcomes may be grim. If even just a few pisonia seeds follow a hen, they’ll floor it. Restricted from flight, the hen can starve to dying. Birds may even get “mummified” within the cover in the event that they run into an particularly thick spot.
A pisonia seed. Photo: Scott Zona through Flickr
Researchers look at the grisly situation as a zero-sum evolutionary sport. The pisonias must unfold to different islands to develop their vary. The birds want someplace to nest. Birds don’t eat pisonia seeds, and seeds connected to carcasses in research didn’t germinate any higher than normally-planted ones.
At the identical time, the bushes apparently don’t kill the birds at a excessive sufficient price to set off an adaptation.
Vostok Island might not be a black gap — nevertheless it actually is a standoff.
