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Natural History

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Of the animals tied to the sandhill community, the gopher tortoise, Gopherus polyphemus, may be most crucial.

Gopher tortoises can live 40 to 60 years in the wild and average 9 to 11 inches in length. They reach reproductive maturity at 9 to 21 years of age and the breeding season is generally March-December, although males may attempt to mate throughout the activity season (April-December). Incubation period for gopher tortoise eggs is 80-110 days, depending on latitude.

During winter, tortoises are much less active; although on warm afternoons some individuals trudge to the earth's surface to bask on the sandy aprons of their burrows.   A superb earth-mover, it lives in long burrows that offer refuge from cold, heat, drought, forest fires and predators.  The record length for a burrow is over 47 feet long, however, the burrows average 15 feet long and 6.5 feet deep.  The burrows maintain a fairly constant temperature and humidity throughout the year and protect the gopher tortoise and other species from temperature extremes, drying out, and predators. Burrows also act as a refuge from the periodic, regenerative fires that are required to maintain the quality of their habitat.

These reptiles feed on low-growing plants like wiregrass, broadleaf grasses, and legumes (bean family plants). They also eat prickly pear cactus, blackberries, paw-paws, and other seasonal fruits. In addition to needing open areas with abundant food, gopher tortoises require relatively deep, sandy soils for burrowing and sunny spots for laying eggs.

Gopher tortoises are ancient: their ancestors are a species of land tortoise that originated in western North America some 60 million years ago. They are the only tortoise that occurs east of the Mississippi River, in habitats that some refer to as the "southeastern desert."

The absence of natural cycles of burning in pine forests spells hardship for tortoises. The dense vegetation (shrubs, brambles, small trees) that grows in a forest in the absence of fire shades out the tender herbs tortoises like to eat, and limits their food supplies. Fire is vital in maintaining many native ecosystems, like longleaf pine sandhills, where gophers live.

Keystone species

An amazing trait of the gopher tortoise is that it shares its burrow with more than 350 other species, including burrowing owls, Florida mice, indigo snakes opossums, rabbits, gopher frogs, Florida mice, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes and gopher crickets. For this reason it is called a keystone species, so named because the upper stone in an arch, the keystone, supports the other stones to hold them in place.  Animals which utilize the gopher tortoise burrows are known as commensal species. Since many commensal species depend on the burrows for survival, decreases in gopher tortoise populations result in a decline of other species.