Category: Pollinators, Molluscs and Other Invertebrates

Categories
Miscellany Pollinators, Molluscs and Other Invertebrates

Oddities

To complete the roundup of eye-candy, oddities and miscellany for this month, let’s look at the oddities. A lot of the weirdest stories I’ve seen recently are about animals. It turns out that, as populations of wild animals plummet, more and more humans have taken to adopting exotic pets, and that’s not a good thing.

Miss Mango the Magnificent (not an oddity) is the “exotic animal” who lives in our house. Illustration by Carol English.

Exotic Animals in Strange Places

Writing in the New Yorker, Rachel Monroe explores the recent rash of exotic animal thefts from the Dallas Zoo, linking it to wildlife trafficking and perhaps also to the enduring frontier mentality of the state. Texas’s laws governing exotic-animal ownership are notably permissive. The state is home to enough privately owned (and poorly secured) big cats that Texas Monthly once ran a column with the title “A Brief History of Tigers on the Loose in Texas, 2021 Edition,” which detailed numerous cases of escaped, seized, and rescued pet tigers in the first five months of that year alone. Recently, there’s been a spate of escaped pet kangaroos. In the past few decades, as drought and rising temperatures have made cattle ranching less feasible, thousands of landowners have stocked their ranches with antelope, sheep, and goat species native to Africa and Asia. While hunting native animals is restricted to certain months, no law limits when you can shoot, say, an impala or a Cape buffalo. So, hunting operations can run year-round.

According to the Texas-based Exotic Wildlife Association, this industry contributes a billion dollars to the state’s economy, and Texas’s exotic-hunting ranches have increasingly positioned themselves as conservationists who are also capitalists. WildLife Partners, an exotic-species breeder and broker, touts the animals as an investment whose growth “continues to out produce many traditional investment vehicles such as stocks, bonds and mutual funds.” And because hunters will pay a premium to bag a rare species—tens of thousands of dollars, in some cases—ranchers are incentivized to cultivate animals that are, in their native habitats, endangered by poaching and habitat loss. Certain species, such as the addax and the mountain bongo, both critically endangered, are more plentiful in Texas than in Africa.

A fennec fox. Right: A wallaby. Photo by Michael Elliott | Dreamstime, Ondřej Novotný | Dreamstime. From Sofia Misenheimer’ s article “9 Exotic Animals You Can Legally Own In Canada (But Good Luck With That Upkeep)” on MTLBlog.

After reading Ms. Monroe’s article, I was curious about the Canadian situation. Back in January, Parks Canada issued a plea or people to stop abandoning their pets and exotic animals after a three-fold increase at Rouge National Urban Park in recent years. Sofia Misenheimer’ s article “9 Exotic Animals You Can Legally Own In Canada (But Good Luck With That Upkeep)” on MTLBlog provides details of the care challenges of some of the exotic animals it is legal to own in Canada. Back in 2016, writing in The Toronto Star, Liam Casey noted that owning exotics is a growing trend in Canada thanks to outdated and inconsistent laws and bylaws. Owning exotics — wild animals taken from their natural habitat or bred in captivity and not native to the country — is a growing trend in Canada, according to animal welfare activists, who blame a patchwork of outdated and inconsistent laws and bylaws. Rob Laidlaw of Zoocheck, a wildlife protection charity based in Toronto, has been fighting for animals’ rights for decades. Reliable data on the number of exotic animals in Canada is difficult to come by, he says. Based on his research, Laidlaw believes there are hundreds of thousands of exotic animals in the country, the vast majority being reptiles. Among the patchwork of provincial and municipal laws and regulations, “Ontario is probably the worst jurisdiction in the country for exotic animal laws and has been for quite a long time,” Laidlaw says. Ontario leaves this regulation up to municipalities.

Part of the problem is laws based on “negative lists,” he says, which must be constantly updated. Instead, he says, Canada should adopt a “positive list” approach used in several European countries that allows ownership of only listed animals.

Problems with exotic pet ownership include:

  • Wild capture and illegal trading,
  • Poor welfare for the animals, and
  • Potential harm to humans, such as the tragic death of two young brothers who were killed by an escaped African rock python in Campbellton, N.B.
Illustration by John P. Dessereau from the New York Times.

Cocaine Bear, Meet Cannabis Raccoon and McFlurry Skunk

Writing in the New York Times last month, Emily Anthes details the strange but true origins that inspired the new movie “Cocaine Bear”. She also addresses a few other weird stories about animals getting into human things they shouldn’t. Some of their stories are amusing, even relatable. “I received a call of a skunk out behind a hotel, running around in the parking lot with a McFlurry cup on its head,” said Jeff Hull, an environmental conservation officer for New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation. But animals’ taste for human goods — licit and illicit — can also bring trouble for them and for us.

Anyone who has gone wilderness camping in Canada will identify with the need to keep food out of the reach of bears. Bears are notorious for getting into human provisions, especially as winter approaches and they need to pack on the pounds. “Essentially, they’re an eating machine,” said Dave Wattles, a black-bear and fur-bearer biologist for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. Sometimes, they even break into homes. In the Berkshire Mountains, one bear burglar routinely sought out frozen treats.

The article goes on to details other animal misadventures with food and drugs, but not all of these are human’s fault. Many gardeners who own fruit trees, for example, have probably seen squirrels, racoons or birds get drunk on late-season fermented fruit.

Researchers of the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University have been investigating dogs’ reactions to wolf howls. Credit: Gáti Oszkár Dániel

Wolves of the wilderness are calling. Will your dog answer?

Are there dogs that are more prone to reply with howling? Are these dogs genetically closer to wolves? To answer these questions, the effects of the dogs’ breed, age and sex on their behavior were tested in this study. Results of this extraordinary research were published in Communications Biology.

Geoffroy’s horseshoe bats hanging from cables in an abandoned bunker. Photo by Dr. Eran Levin.

Endangered Bats Find Refuge in Abandoned Army Bunkers

Thanks to reader Desre Kramer for alerting me to this story by Abigail Klein Leichman. In 2006, Eran Levin entered an abandoned bunker on the Israel-Jordan border and saw a colony of bats hanging from cables and from metal shelves full of old cigarette packs. Levin had found his missing link. Then a PhD student, he was studying bats in the Judean Desert. He knew that after mating in April, greater mouse-tailed bats begin migrating north to the Sea of Galilee and Hula Valley. But where did they stop on the way? He and Aviam Atar from the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) decided to look for roosts in the Jordan Rift Valley.

Bats hanging from structures added to the metal ceilings for them to grasp. Photo by Dr. Eran Levin.

Abandoned after Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994, these underground army bunkers have become a haven for thousands of diverse bats in a model of peaceful coexistence. After gaining permission from IDF, Levin and colleagues were able to transform the bunkers into more bat-friendly habitat. The bat population in the bunkers has been rising steadily. The first counting in 2014 totaled 2,311. By 2021, the bats numbered 7,380. Levin goes on to note: “A whole ecological system has developed around them. Snakes feed on the bats and many invertebrates feed on the bat feces.”

This Polystoechotes punctata or giant lacewing was collected in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 2012 by Michael Skvarla, director of Penn State’s Insect Identification Lab. Credit: Michael Skvarla / Penn State.

Rare insect found at Walmart sets record

A giant insect plucked from the façade of an Arkansas Walmart has set historic records. The Polystoechotes punctata (giant lacewing) is the first of its kind recorded in eastern North America in over 50 years—and the first record of the species ever in the state. The giant lacewing was formerly widespread across North America, but was mysteriously extirpated from eastern North America by the 1950s. This discovery suggests there may be relic populations of this large, Jurassic-Era insect yet to be discovered, explained Michael Skvarla, director of Penn State’s Insect Identification Lab. Skvarla found the specimen in 2012, but misidentified it and only discovered its true identity after teaching an online course based on his personal insect collection in 2020. He recently co-authored a paper about the discovery in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington.

(See also: A Jurassic-Era Insect Rediscovered and Rare insect found at Arkansas Walmart sets historic record, points to deeper ecological questions)

This tiny sharpshooter insect urinates and forms a droplet of pee on its anal stylus (aka ‘butt flicker’), before flicking it off. (Image credit: Georgia Institute of Technology)

Butt catapults on glassy-winged sharpshooters

Writing in LiveScience Charles Q. Choi shares recent research about the amazing speed with which some tiny insects can dispose of their waste. Relatives of cicadas known as sharpshooter insects can catapult pee droplets at superfast speeds, revealing the first known example of “superpropulsion” in nature, a new study finds.This newly discovered effect helps the bugs save energy during peeing and may inspire better self-cleaning devices and soft robotic engines, scientists noted.

In the new study, researchers examined relatives of cicadas known as glassy-winged sharpshooters (Homalodisca vitripennis). These insects, which are about half an inch (1.2 centimeters) long, feed on sap from xylem, the woody part of a plant that brings water and dissolved nutrients up from the roots, as opposed to the phloem, which brings sugar down from the leaves. The sharpshooter’s diet is 95% water, and poor in nutrients. So the bugs constantly drink xylem sap to get enough to eat, and pee up to 300 times their body weight per day. (For comparison, humans pee about one-fortieth of their body weight per day.) The scientists detailed their findings online in the journal Nature Communications.

Micromelo undatus, colloquially known as the Wavy Bubble Snail, eats bristly ringworms.

Their time to slime

The annual Mollusc of the Year competition is underway. Will you choose beauty? The carnivorous Wavy Bubble Snail, perhaps, with its billowing skirts shimmering under UV light. Or will it be age? Like the venerable 500-year-old Methuselah oyster. Or will you be seduced by the leopard slug with its gymnastic mating ritual? The list of finalists for Mollusc of the Year has something for everyone. In a public vote ending Sunday, five species of soft-bodied invertebrates are vying to follow in the illustrious trail of previous winners, dubbed the “world’s most beautiful snail” and “weirdest octopus”. The grand prize? The triumphant species will have its genome decoded to better understand its evolution and potential benefits to humanity. The International Mollusc of the Year competition, which kicked off this month, is run by the LOEWE Center for Translational Biodiversity Genomics, based in Germany.

The real Keanu Reeves from IMBD.

Keanu Reeves, the molecule: New active ingredient from bacteria could protect plants

Ok, so the actor is a hottie, but the bacteria named in his honor has some pretty nifty properties too. Bacteria of the genus Pseudomonas produce a strong antimicrobial natural product, as researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI) have discovered. They proved that the substance is effective against both plant fungal diseases and human-pathogenic fungi. The study was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and highlighted in an editorial in Nature.

Carlos Magdalena, scientific and botanical research horticulturist, and Lucy Smith, botanical illustrator, holding the Guinness World Records title for Victoria boliviana, the world’s largest species of giant waterlily, in the Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens in West London. Credit: Adam Millward, Guinness World Records.

It’s official: World’s largest giant waterlily recognized by Guinness World Records

At an event hosted at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in West London, an official from Guinness World Records has presented Mr. Juan Carlos Crespo Montalvo, the Bolivian Charge d’Affaires to the UK, with an official Guinness World Records title for the world’s largest giant waterlily, the recently-named Victoria boliviana. The species, which was named new to science in July 2022, has been described as one of the ‘botanical wonders’ of the world following years of investigation that culminated in the publication of a paper in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.

Categories
Climate Change Conservation Food & Agriculture Pollinators, Molluscs and Other Invertebrates

Ecological Agriculture

This is the second in a series of three blog posts where I explore the implications of two threats to our food supply – climate change and peak oil. Sometimes called ecological agriculture, eco-agriculture or regenerative agriculture, the idea is to grow food by working with, not against, nature. This type of agriculture typically uses more human resources and less technology while also sequestering more carbon in the soil.

Rodale Institute Farming Systems Trial

Perhaps one of the most significant studies on organic farming techniques was published over a decade ago by the Rodale Institute. The Farming Systems Trial was launched in 1981 with a clear goal: Address the barriers to the adoption of organic farming by farmers. For more than 40 years, the Farming Systems Trial (FST) at Rodale Institute has applied real-world practices and rigorous scientific analysis to document the different impacts of organic and conventional grain cropping systems. The scientific data gathered from this research has established that organic management matches or outperforms conventional agriculture in ways that benefit farmers and lays a strong foundation for designing and refining agricultural systems that can improve the health of people and the planet.

A bumblebee feeding from the flower of a faba bean. Credit: Nicole Beyer

Mixed crops provide ecological benefits

A recent experiment by researchers at the University of Göttingen investigated how a mixture of crops of fava beans (broad beans) and wheat would affect the number of pollinating insects. Somewhat surprisingly, they found that areas of mixed crops compared with areas of single crops are visited equally often by foraging bees. Their results were published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment. This could be due to several reasons. However, the researchers noted, “Mixed cultivation of wheat and fava bean has also other advantages for crop production,” says Professor Catrin Westphal, Head of Functional Agrobiodiversity. For instance, yields per bean plant were higher in mixed crops than in pure cultures. “Cereal crops can be ecologically enhanced by adding legumes such as beans or lentils. This can make a valuable contribution to increasing the abundance of flowers on the arable land and thus counteracting pollinator decline,” concludes Haß.

The researchers mapped the geographical distribution of Berlin’s potential areas for urban gardening. Credit: Marion De Simone, Prajal Pradhan, Jürgen P. Kropp & Diego Rybski.

Berlin could produce more than 80% of its fresh vegetables locally

Berlin has enough space for urban gardening, and up to 82% of Berlin’s vegetable consumption could be produced locally, a new study finds. “The amount of vegetables represents a significant share of the annual consumption,” highlights Diego Rybski, an external faculty member from the Complexity Science Hub and a co-author of the paper that will appear in the April issue of Sustainable Cities and Society journal.

Image from USDA “Agriculture and Forestry: 5 Ways Agroforestry Can Work for You and Your Land” by Jocelyn Benjamin, USDA.

European farms mix things up to guard against food-supply shocks

An article by Ethan Bilby in Horizon, the EU Research and Innovation Magazine, reports that researchers are discovering the benefits of combining forestry and agricultural activities. The COVID-19 pandemic led to bare shelves in supermarkets as shipping routes were cut off. The war in Ukraine has affected the supply of essential grains. But increased climate change stands to cause even greater disruption. Researchers say part of the solution to mitigating that risk is for farms to become more mixed through some combination of crop cultivation, livestock production and forestry, a move that would also make agriculture more sustainable. For Dr Sara Burbi, assistant professor at Coventry University in the UK until December 2022 and now an independent researcher, COVID-19 was a wake-up call.

“Suddenly, we experienced first-hand what happens when value chains are not resilient to shocks and what happens when globalisation, with all its intricacies, does not work anymore,” she said. “We saw highly specialised farming systems fail when they over-relied on external inputs that they had no access to.”

Pilot farms across Europe are experimenting with combining crop and livestock production in one farm (mixed farming) and with pairing farming and forestry activities (agroforestry). Poultry grazing in orchards is an example of a mixed-farming approach. The results reveal interesting synergies and promising effects, including improvements in soil health. A combined system can increase the cycling of nutrients needed in the soil for crops to grow. It can also help to regulate air and water quality, prevent land degradation and even provide biomass and food on-site for livestock.

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Veganism may not save the planet

Vegans and vegetarians have long argued their approach to eating is the kindest—to animals and to our planet but new research from the University of Georgia suggests that might not actually be the case. The paper published in the Journal of Political Ecology (2022) found that a diet of mostly plants with local and humanely raised meat is likely the most ethical way to eat if we want to save the environment and protect human rights. “There’s nothing sustainable about this plant-based model,” said Amy Trauger, author of the study and a professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. For example, soybeans used in U.S. tofu and tempeh products aren’t grown in the U.S. They were largely imported from India, where soybean production contributes to widespread deforestation and habitat loss. Soybean plantations also take up valuable land space that could be used to ease food insecurity in the country instead. Then there’s the pollution and environmental impact from transporting soybeans all the way from India to the U.S. Similarly, palm oil, which is a vegan substitute for butter or lard, is mostly imported from countries where local ecosystems aren devastated by deforestation and loss of biodiversity as millions of hectares of forests are razed for palm oil production.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash.

In contrast, animals raised in humane and natural systems can contribute to climate change mitigation. For instance, one pig can produce over 150 pounds of meat and 20 pounds of bacon. Raised on a pasture, outside in a forest with a diet of tree nuts, surplus milk and vegetable waste from nearby farms, that pig can also contribute to soil, forest and ecosystem health. When the time comes to harvest the animal, a small-scale processing plant that avoids plastics and employs well paid staff could be used to keep the supply chain short and transparent. That one pig could feed a family for months, Trauger argues.

A queen bee enjoys an agricultural pollinator habitat. Credit: Hannah Levenson.

Effort to help pollinators shows successes, limitations

Although not quite the bee’s knees, a three-year effort to conserve bee populations by introducing pollinator habitat in North Carolina agricultural areas showed some positive effects, as bee abundance and diversity increased in the studied areas. But results of a study examining the program’s effectiveness also showed that the quality of the habitat played a key role in these positive effects, and that habitat quality could be impacted by the way the areas are maintained over time. The research is published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Researchers visited 16 sites four times each year and caught bees in nets and in cups—called bee bowls—that were painted to mimic the UV reflection of flowers. In all, the researchers collected more than 16,000 bees from 128 different bee species. Results showed bee abundance increased over time, with more bees collected in 2018 than in 2016. Meanwhile, the diversity of species increased in 2017 and then dropped slightly in 2018, although both years showed large improvement over 2016. The study also showed, though, that the quality of flowers was a key driver of bee abundance and diversity, with areas of higher flower quality attracting more bees and more bee species. Poorly maintained areas with degraded flowers, weeds and grasses lagged behind in bee collection.

Male Bombus pensylvanicus on Rough blazingstar. Ellison Creek Sand Prairie Natural Area, Illinois USA. Photo by Angella Moorehouse.

The study turned up a few surprises. Although there were no squash plants, the areas attracted squash bees – an important specialist pollinator. “We also found a particular bumble bee—Bombus pensylvanicus—that is under review for potential addition to the endangered species list,” she added. “We found a high abundance of them, so it’s possible that they’re attracted to agricultural areas more than other areas. We submitted the data to Fish and Wildlife so it can be used to help make the decision on whether it should be listed as endangered or not.”

The researchers hope that further studies like this one can be performed in different types of habitats, like forests or urban areas, to capture a wider sense of bee populations in North Carolina.

Companies are eager to improve their measurement of carbon emissions captured in soil ahead of coming mandatory climate disclosure rules as they still largely rely on imperfect estimates. Photo: Phill Magakoe/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.

Big food companies encourage regenerative agriculture

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Dieter Holger notes that soil holds the promise of capturing greenhouse-gas emissions to help slow global warming. Companies are now working to measure how soil stores carbon as they encourage farming techniques that reduce emissions across their sprawling supply chains. Improving soil health is a goal of so-called regenerative agriculture, which typically involves tilling less, growing more than one crop on the same land and using less synthetic fertilizer. Many farmers are hesitant to shift from established farming methods, but companies and governments are investing to educate them on the benefits. Regenerative practices can increase soil nutrients and yields while also absorbing carbon dioxide from the air, scientific studies say. Healthier soil could offset up to 15% of global fossil-fuel emissions, according to a 2004 study published in the journal Science. 

Many of the world’s biggest food companies, including General Mills Inc. and Nestlé SA, are working with farmers to promote the practices. However, determining the emissions captured in the soil still largely relies on imperfect estimates. Companies are eager to improve the measurement ahead of coming mandatory climate disclosure rules that are expected to require them to publish reliable information about their emissions and climate plans. The entire food-and-agriculture value chain—including processing, packaging, transport, waste and household cooking and refrigeration—contributed 31% of human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions in 2020, according to the United Nations.

Categories
Biodiversity Climate Change Conservation Gardening Pollinators, Molluscs and Other Invertebrates Sustainable Living

2023 February Conservation Update

In this post, a fascinating DNA sampling technique; conflicting news about human impact on animal populations; and a cute story about newt rescues in California. We also look at how rising temperatures due to climate change may damage animals; and a study that shows protected areas aren’t designed to protect invertebrates. It turns out we’ve been putting those anti-bird-strike decals on the wrong side of the window; and we look at where your plants come from.

Postcard-sized poo sample collection cards offer an affordable alternative to more cumbersome methods of collecting and storing the genetic information in dung. The cards do not need to be refrigerated and maintain viable DNA for months after collection. Credit: Fred Zwicky

Streamlined DNA for wildlife conservation

A team from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has come up with a new way of sampling DNA that allows scientists to capture genetic information from wildlife without disturbing the animals or putting their own safety in jeopardy. The protocol, tested on elephant dung, yielded enough DNA to sequence whole genomes not only of the elephants but also of the associated microbes, plants, parasites and other organisms—at a fraction of the cost of current approaches. The researchers report their findings in the journal Frontiers in Genetics.

A family of urban raccoons. Photo by Jon Last.

Can urban neighborhoods be both dense and green?

The British Ecological Society reports on a new study from The Nature Conservancy (TNC) that explores how we can make our cities work better for people and wildlife.  By analyzing existing approaches, as well as highlighting cities already creating the right balance of people and wildlife, the study pioneers an alternative method of city design that allows for the accommodation of both denser populations as well as wildlife. “This needn’t be a zero-sum game,” explains senior author and TNC lead scientist for nature-based solutions, Rob Mcdonald. “Having denser cities doesn’t automatically mean less space for nature.”

But, while animals may be able to co-exist happily with humans in urban areas, another study highlights how human incursions into natural areas can disturb wildlife.

Researchers placed camera traps along hiking trails in Glacier National Park during and after a COVID-19 closure. They found that 16 out of 22 mammal species changed the way they accessed areas when humans were present. Credit: Mammal Spatial Ecology and Conservation Lab, Washington State University

Human recreation changes wildlife behavior

Even without hunting rifles, humans appear to have a strong negative influence on the movement of wildlife. A study of Glacier National Park hiking trails during and after a COVID-19 closure adds evidence to the theory that humans can create a “landscape of fear” like other apex predators, changing how species use an area simply with their presence. Researchers found that when human hikers were present, 16 out of 22 mammal species, including predators and prey alike, changed where and when they accessed areas. Some completely abandoned places they previously used, others used them less frequently, and some shifted to more nocturnal activities to avoid humans. The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports. The researchers had also expected to find an effect known as “human shielding,” when human presence causes large predators to avoid an area, providing opportunity for smaller predators and perhaps some prey species to use an area more frequently. In this case, they found this potential effect for only one species, red fox. The foxes were more present on and near trails when the park was open–perhaps because their competitors, coyotes, avoided those areas when humans were around. While the influence of low-impact recreation is concerning, the researchers emphasized that more research is needed to determine if it has negative effects on the species’ survival.

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Animals at risk from heat waves

More than 40% of all land vertebrates may be subjected to extreme heat events by 2099 under current maximum estimates of future global temperatures, according to a study published in Nature. Prolonged exposure to high temperatures could be dangerous for the future of many species across the globe. Extreme thermal events, a period in which the temperature greatly exceeds a historical threshold, have increased in frequency compared to historical records, exacerbated by climate change caused by human activity. Recurring periods of extreme heat affect wildlife and are associated with increased psychological stress, reduced reproductive output and decreased population sizes, meaning that the continuation of these temperature spikes would pose a substantial threat to future biodiversity.

A ‘Big Night’ for Newts

The New York Times has a heart-warming story about the heroic work of the northern California Chileno Valley Newt Brigade in rescuing amphibians that might otherwise become roadkill as they cross a road from their breeding grounds and their burrows. But newt rescue is just a short-term solution. The group is also fundraising for road modifications that will allow the newts to pass safely underneath.

Black swallowtail on thistle at New Life Retreat. Photo by Carol English.

Protected areas fail insect species

Insects play crucial roles in almost every ecosystem—they pollinate more than 80% of plants and are a major source of food for thousands of vertebrate species—but insect populations are collapsing around the globe, and they continue to be overlooked by conservation efforts. Protected areas can safeguard threatened species but only if these threatened species actually live within the areas we protect. A new study in the journal One Earth found that 76% of insect species are not adequately covered by protected areas.

Northern cardinal. Photo by Jon Last.

What we know about bird window strikes is inside-out

New research from William & Mary published in PeerJ reveals that decals intended to reduce incidents of bird window strikes—one of the largest human-made causes of bird mortality—are only effective if decals are placed on the outside of the window. Researchers found that the patterns on the films and decals placed on the internal surface of windows do not reduce collision because they may not be sufficiently visible to birds.

A fynbos bouquet from South Africa. Credit: Juan Pablo Moreiras/Fauna & Flora

Where do your plants come from?

Tim Knight of Fauna and Flora International asks if we ever ask ourselves where all our garden plants come from? The local garden center or superstore isn’t the answer. Take bulbs, for instance. There’s a common understanding that most bulbs come from The Netherlands. In fact, most wild tulips hail from the mountainous regions of Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan—countries not widely recognized as havens of biodiversity—harbor the lion’s share of species. Turkey is also one of the richest areas in the world for bulbs, including familiar garden favorites such as snowdrops, crocuses, cyclamens and, yes, tulips too. It’s easy to forget that these wild relatives are the original source of the endless varieties and hybrid forms that grace our gardens and fill our flower vases. And that they face a variety of threats, from overharvesting and habitat loss to climate change.

Houseplants come from all over, including the popular Monstera, which is an epiphyte, growing on trees in its native South America. With one notable exception, bromeliads are found only in Central and South America. A single species—endangered and known only from Guinea—occurs in West Africa. Most bromeliads are also epiphytes, but the one that we’re most familiar with—though you may not think of it as a bromeliad—grows on the ground and produces one of our most popular tropical fruits, the pineapple.

White Christmas cactus. Photo by R. Last.

Cacti may be famous for their tolerance of extreme heat and drought—and plummeting temperatures at night—but they’re not confined to hotspots like the American Midwest and Mexico. Of the roughly 2,500 species of cactus in the world, quite a few thrive in rainforests or cooler climes. The Christmas cactus is native to damp forest in the coastal mountains of Brazil.

The article goes on to detail the origins of orchids (pretty much from every continent, except Antarctica); where cut flowers come from; and what makes the fynbos in South Africa so special. Mr. Knight concludes by urging gardeners to pay attention to the origins of plants they purchase and avoid those that come from unsustainable sources.

Categories
Citizen Science Pollinators, Molluscs and Other Invertebrates Uncategorized Weeds

2023 February Citizen Science

If there’s one thing I hope to accomplish with this blog, it’s that folks reading it will be inspired to become their own citizen scientists. Increasingly, the data collected by ordinary people, including gardeners like us is being used to inform science and policy. Here are some examples of how powerful citizen science can be.

Óðinn / CC BY-SA 2.5 CA (Wikimedia Commons photo). Image from The Historical Society of Ottawa.

Urban forest-mapping in Montreal

A Concordia project cataloging the diversity of the urban forest in a Montreal residential neighborhood is now complete, and the researchers behind it say the results highlight the importance of a diverse city tree population. The project found that private residences and institutions such as schools and places of worship usually had different tree populations from those planted by municipal authorities in city parks and roadways or sidewalks. While the city-planted trees tended to be bigger and more resilient to stressors like drought or salt, the often-smaller private trees served other functions such as providing fruit, flowers or aesthetic beauty. The full findings are published in the journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. The researchers solicited residents and institutions such as schools and churches around Concordia’s Loyola Campus in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighborhood. They asked them to measure the circumference of the trees on their property, photograph their bark and leaves and submit their data to the Montreal Tree Project website for analysis. Private residences were found to have the highest richness in species diversity while institutional lands—mostly schools and churches—were found to have the lowest. “From an ecological standpoint, having a diverse tree population leads to a more multifunctional landscape,” says Hutt-Taylor, now the project coordinator of nature-based solutions at Concordia’s Loyola Campus. “It can also provide a more resilient forest to events like climate change, changes in the environmental fabric of the city as well as to pests and disease.”

Drosera koikyennuruff. Credit: Thilo Krueger

Everyday Aussies help find missing plant species

Scientists have identified six new or rediscovered Western Australian plant species from photos taken and uploaded to the internet by members of the public, including a nature photographer from Jurien Bay, a pair of wildflower enthusiasts from Dongara and a farmer from near the Stirling Range National Park. Lead researcher, Ph.D. student Thilo Krueger from Curtin’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences said the newly described species were carnivorous sundews and were identified through images shared on Facebook and to the iNaturalist website, highlighting the value of such platforms for contributing to advances in taxonomic research. The work was published in Biology.

Image from EU Observer article What Europe still needs to do to save its bees. Photo: Dearbhlaith Larkin & Felipe Guapo, Carolan Lab Research Group, Maynooth University, Ireland

Citizen science initiatives increase pollinator activity in private gardens

Have you made adjustments to your garden to make it more welcoming for pollinators? If so, you have probably made a valuable contribution, according to a new study from Lund University. The researchers evaluated the national “Operation: Save the Bees” campaign, and their results indicate that what private individuals do in their gardens really can make a positive difference. In 2018, The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation launched a campaign to save bees and other pollinators, aiming to get the public involved by creating more favorable environments in private gardens. The actions that were encouraged were to create a meadow, plant flowers or set up a bee hotel. Around 11,000 Swedes responded to the call, and now researchers from Lund University have evaluated the measures. The result show that the greatest positive effect on the number of pollinating insects was if you had a meadow with a higher number of flowering species in your garden. As for flower plantings, it was favorable if they were older and also covered a larger area. Bee hotels, in turn, were more often inhabited if they were located in flower-rich gardens, if they were older, and if the nest holes were a maximum of one centimeter in diameter. Since the researchers collected the data via peoples’ own estimates, there is a great deal of uncertainty in each individual data point, says Anna Persson, but adds that one can still be confident in the results given that so many responses were received. The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Cities.

Canada Thistle (Credit: iStock/Getty Images)

RHS asks gardeners to find interesting ‘weeds’

Helena Horton writes in The Guardian about a citizen science initiative by the Royal Horticultural Society. Private gardens in the UK may be an untapped source of scientific discovery, according to the RHS’s new ecologist, because “scientists can’t just go into people’s gardens”. Instead, Gemma Golding, who started working for the charity late last year, wants gardeners to look for interesting species and submit them to the iNaturalist app for scientists to analyse. What may be viewed as a weed could be a rare plant, or growing in an unusual place where it has not been recorded before. The quid pro quo is that gardeners will get feedback on the mystery plants they find. Armed with more knowledge, they will be better able to manage problems that crop up in their gardens.

Categories
Biodiversity Citizen Science Conservation Miscellany Pollinators, Molluscs and Other Invertebrates

December 2022: Pollinator & Invertebrate Round-up

Image courtesy of Empress of Dirt

‘Bees get all the credit’: slugs and snails among 2023 Chelsea flower show stars: Stag beetles and hornets will be among the stars of Chelsea flower show next year as horticulturalists encourage people to welcome invertebrates into the garden. Bumblebees and butterflies tend to get a lot of press, but in a 2023 garden sponsored by the Royal Entomological Society, less glamorous creepy-crawlies will take centre stage. The garden may startle those used to more pristine spaces, as it will feature rotting wood and leaves as habitat for beetles and other insects, but it will still include a vast array of native and non-native flowering plants, which will be there to encourage pollinators. It will highlight how pollination, food security and preventing vector-borne diseases are critical to our survival in a changing world and that insect conservation is often undervalued compared with mammal and bird conservation. [Editor’s note: this article includes tips on insect-friendly gardening.]

(A) Overall view of the experimental setup during training. The wooden box was covered by a transparent cover, which allowed observing the behavior of the bees accessing the inner compartments. After passing the first inner compartment, the focal bee faced a training stimulus placed in the middle of the back wall. An Eppendorf tip delivered sucrose solution in the middle of the image. (B) Overall view of the experimental setup during a test. After passing the first inner compartment, the focal bee faced two lateral walls displaying the same test alternative on each side. The test stimuli were novel to the trained bee, i.e. they were never experienced during the training. No reward was provided during the test. The first choice and the cumulative choices performed during 40 s were recorded. (C) Examples of stimuli used in the first and second experiment. (D) Stimuli used in the third experiment. (E) Examples of stimuli used in the fourth experiment. Credit: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2203584119

Honeybees use a ‘mental number line’ to keep track of things: A small team of researchers with members from the University of Toulouse, the University of Lausanne and the University of Padova has found evidence that honeybees have a mental number line in their tiny brains. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes experiments they conducted with captive honeybees. Prior research has suggested that in to addition humans, baby chickens possess what scientists call a mental number line. Numbers of things are represented in the brain and are processed in a left-to-right direction. For example, when most people are asked to sort piles of grapes by the number, most do so from left to right, with the smallest pile on the left. In this new effort, the researchers wondered whether honeybees might also use a mental number line to keep track of things. To find out, they conducted a two-stage experiment.

Credit: N. Gamonal, Didde Sørensen

Following insect ‘footprints’ to improve crop resilience and monitor pollinator biodiversity: Bees and other insects leave behind tiny “footprints” of environmental DNA on plants each time they visit, giving researchers a way of tracking where insects have been, and offering clues on how to help them flourish. A team of researchers, including the Wellcome Sanger Institute and led by the University of Copenhagen, have used these DNA footprints as a non-invasive way to collect information on insect biodiversity, giving new insight into how to boost pollination and protect insect biodiversity and crops against threats such as climate change. The new study, published in Environmental DNA, is the first time DNA footprints have been used alongside visual observations to track the kind of insect visitors to crops, helping to see if there are any pests and informing new ways to encourage beneficial insects. Didde Hedegaard Sørensen, laboratory technician and an author from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark says, “The exciting thing about this study is that it can have an immediate, real-world impact on agricultural systems. Our results can assist farmers in managing their crops against the rising threats of reduced pollinators. Environmental DNA can be used to investigate the biodiversity in agricultural landscapes beyond apple orchards, making it a fast and non-invasive way to gain more knowledge about the world around us.”

AI rendering bees and electricity. Credit: Ellard Hunting

Insects contribute to atmospheric electricity: By measuring the electrical fields near swarming honeybees, researchers have discovered that insects can produce as much atmospheric electric charge as a thunderstorm cloud. This type of electricity helps shape weather events, aids insects in finding food, and lifts spiders up in the air to migrate over large distances. The research, appearing in the journal iScience, demonstrates that living things can have an impact on atmospheric electricity.

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

California county sees highest number of monarch butterflies in more than 20 years: There’s some hope fluttering around San Luis Obispo County this holiday season. It comes in the form of an iconic orange-and-black striped butterfly that makes tall eucalyptus or Monterey cypress trees its home up and down the coast. More than 129,000 western monarch butterflies were counted in the county by Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation employees and volunteers in November, according to preliminary data shared by local volunteer coordinator Jessica Griffiths. That’s the most counted in San Luis Obispo County in more than 20 years—in 1998 there were about 182,000 counted, according to the Xerces Society’s data. The numbers are giving some researchers hope that the western monarch butterfly population could be rebounding from devastatingly low numbers a few years ago that left some worrying the insect was on the verge of extinction.

Arizona’s state butterfly, the two-tailed swallowtail butterfly, can be found at Tucson-area botanical gardens. Credit: Jeff Oliver/University Libraries

Botanical gardens are ‘hot spots’ for butterflies amid climate change: Despite their relatively small footprint in urban areas, botanical gardens are important hotspots for butterfly biodiversity in the arid Southwest, according to a new study by University of Arizona scientists published in the journal Insects. Using more than 10,500 community science observations spanning roughly 20 years, researchers compared butterfly species richness and diversity in botanical gardens versus in the gardens’ surrounding metropolitan areas. The study focused on five large, urban cities in the Southwest, including Tucson and Phoenix in Arizona; Palm Desert, California; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and El Paso, Texas. Each city averages less than 11 inches of precipitation annually and, with the exception of Palm Desert, each has a population over 500,000 residents. While botanical gardens represent less than 1% of metropolitan landscapes—between 0.002–0.22% on average—these urban green areas have disproportionately high butterfly species richness and diversity compared to the much larger surrounding city areas. In fact, species richness in these gardens scored in the 86th percentile or above, according to the study.

Screen grab from YouTube video.

These bumblebees like playing and it’s the sweetest thing: Playing is an important behavior in humans — it helps us learn new skills, improve control over our bodies, and also helps with bonding. In other mammals, play has also been documented as an important behavior — but in insects, playing has been far less studied. For Lars Chittka, a behavioral ecologist at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), peering into the minds of bees has been a long-term interest. Chittka recently published a book called the Mind of a Bee, where he highlights many of the remarkable findings about the intellect and behavior of bees. But this new study came almost by accident. Chittka and his team were looking at how bumblebees learn complex behaviors. In a scientific setup, bees had to move wooden balls, and if they moved them to the right place, they got a sweet reward. But the researchers started noticing how some bees would just push the balls around even without any reward. This was puzzling, so the researchers started looking at this in more detail. The study followed 45 bumblebees in an arena who chose between walking through an unobstructed, clear path and reaching a feeding area and deviating from this path to fiddle with wooden balls. There was no advantage to rolling the balls, and there is no analogue behavior in the wild that would prompt bees to roll the balls. Still, all individual bees rolled the balls between 1 and 117 times — a strikingly large number that strongly suggests the bees found pleasure in this activity. Note article includes 1:30 video from the BBC that shows the bees playing with wooden balls. (See also: First-ever study shows bumble bees ‘play’)

Screen grab from YouTube video showing leafhopper baby “Mildred” in her new dress.

True Facts: Leafhoppers and Friends

This 5-minute video features stunning macro shots of tiny leafhopper  babies with scientifically accurate and hysterically funny commentary. You’ll never look at leafhoppers quite the same way again! Thanks to reader Carol English for sharing.

Categories
Biodiversity Pollinators, Molluscs and Other Invertebrates

Flowers

Barranquilla, III Región de Atacama, Chile. Credit: Joselyn Anfossi Mardones from Chiguayante, Chile/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

The secret behind spectacular blooms in world’s driest desert: The Atacama desert, which stretches for approximately 1,600 km along the western coast of the cone of South America, is the driest place on Earth. Some weather stations there have never recorded rainfall throughout their existence. But it’s far from barren: many species live here that occur nowhere else, adapted to its extreme conditions. Every 5 to 10 years, from September to mid-November, the Atacama hosts one of the most spectacular sights of the natural world: the “desierto florido” (literally “blooming desert”). These mass blooms, one of which is currently going on in the northern Atacama after abundant rainfall earlier this year, often attract media attention from around the globe.

But what mechanisms enable the great diversity of flower colors and shapes? And how do pollinators—in the Atacama, mainly solitary wasps and bees—for whose benefit this visual extravaganza evolved, perceive all this variation? That’s the subject of a new study in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. “Our aim was to shed light on the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that cause biological diversity in extreme environments like the Atacama desert,” said first author Dr. Jaime Martínez-Harms, a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Research in La Cruz, Chile. “Here we show that flowers of the pussypaw Cistanthe longiscapa, a representative species for desiertos floridos in the Atacama desert, are highly variable in the color and patterns they present to pollinators. This variability probably results from different so-called ‘betalain’ pigments in the flower petals.” Martínez-Harms and colleagues studied a desierto floridoevent in late 2021 near the city of Caldera in northern Chile. Despite being smaller in size than the event currently going on, it was clearly visible to satellites.

Using cameras sensitive to both visible and UV light, and spectrometers to measure the reflection, absorption, and transmission of different wavelengths by different colours of flowers, the scientists determined that the colour variation visible to local pollinators is much more diverse than what we humans see.

Photographs by Pari Dukovic from the New Yorker article “Fragrant Harvest”

Fragrant Harvest: In late spring, the bees arrive at Joseph Mul’s fields near Pégomas, France, at around nine-thirty each morning. The unmarked fifty acres border a gravel path, which veers off a country road that cuts through a sheltered valley. To the northeast, one can make out the dark-blue mounds of the pre-Alps. A tickly breeze blows in from the Mediterranean, a few miles to the east. For non-pollinators, the site is almost impossible to find. This is intentional, as, since the mid-nineteen-eighties, the Mul family has had an exclusive partnership to grow jasmine and roses for Chanel. The company uses the flowers to make Chanel No. 5—a perfume that, in the way of a Cavaillon melon or a piece of Sèvres porcelain, comes from a specific place. The species is prized for its clear, sweet, honeyed scent. If it were a musical instrument, it might be a flute. It is so distinctive that Joseph Mul, whose great-grandfather started the farm in the early nineteen-hundreds, can identify a rose grown in Pégomas with his eyes closed. “You can compare it to wine,” he said recently. “A Burgundy from anywhere else isn’t a Burgundy.” When the roses bloom, the entire fifty acres must be harvested in two weeks. Mul works with his son-in-law, Fabrice Bianchi, to supervise a crew that comprises seventy pickers (mainly Turkish women, many of them related) and four videurs (mainly French men, into whose burlap sacks the women empty their aprons). They were expecting to haul in thirty-seven tons of flowers. This gorgeously illustrated article answers the question: How many roses go into a bottle of Chanel No. 5?