Celebrating Plants and People
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To Save Monarch Butterflies From Climate Change, Scientists Plant A New Forest Higher On A Mountain
The region is warming at such an accelerated pace that the trees won’t be able to adapt, scientists say, and will need help migrating to areas where the climate is predicted to be suitable for them in future years. (Click on title for full story.)
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Giant Pandas Need Old Growth Forests To Raise Cubs
“Pandas are found in different kinds of forests in China,” said the study’s lead author, Wei Wei, an associate professor at China West Normal University. “Old growth forests provide large tree cavities for den sites, but pandas living in forests without these large old trees must use cave dens instead. We studied the microclimates inside these den habitats, and found that tree dens were better at buffering against extremes of temperature and humidity than cave dens—indicating that tree dens provide a more stable microclimate for rearing cubs.” (Click on title for full story.)
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Researchers Astounded When They Finally Discover What Pollinates The “Hidden Flower”
“We had strong, preconceived ideas about what we were going to find, to the extent that, based on the expectation that most pollinator activity would be between dusk and dawn (when rodents and shrews are most active), we even initially set most of the motion-trigger cameras to record only during the night, to save battery power and storage space on memory cards which are often major limitations on data collection when working with motion trigger cameras in inaccessible sites. We won’t do that again!” (Click on title for full story.)
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Your Landscape Design Will Affect Your Energy Bills
By strategically placing trees, shrubs, and vines to block blustery winter winds or create shade, you can slash the amount of fossil fuels required to heat and cool your house and dramatically reduce your climate footprint. As a bonus, you’ll put a dent in your utility bills. (Click on title for full story.)
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Good News For Plants: Introduced Bird Species Can Do The Job Of Extinct Native Birds
“Oahu in particular is the extreme example of the loss and gain of species; all native dispersers have gone extinct and all that is left to disperse these endemic and threatened plants are a suite of introduced dispersers,” (Click on title for full story.)
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You Want A Bee-Friendly Landscape: Here Are Scientifically Researched Suggestions
Public awareness of declining bee populations has increased interest in growing “bee-friendly” plants. Various groups have published bee-friendly plant lists, but these lists often lack experimental data and rarely emphasize flowering trees and shrubs—major components of urban landscapes. This webcast presents research detailing the flowering trees and shrubs that attract diverse bee visitors and provides tips on building a bee-friendly landscape. (Click on title for full story.)
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Sorghum’s Natural Pest-Fighting Chemicals May Yield New Safe Insecticide
Compounds produced by sorghum plants to defend against insect feeding could be isolated, synthesized and used as a targeted, nontoxic insect deterrent, according to researchers who studied plant-insect interactions that included field, greenhouse and laboratory components. (Click on title for full story.)
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The Trees Speak: Charting Human History Using Tree Ring Study
Here, we use tree-ring analyses to look at changes in growing conditions over the past 400 years in a Brazil nut tree population in Central Amazonia. We identify changes in tree recruitment and growth rates associated not only with regional climatic variability, but also major political and socio-economic activities recorded by historical documents in the vicinity of Manaus. (Click on title for full story.)
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Hops, Not Just For Beer Anymore. (It Produces Cancer-Fighting Chemicals too!)
The plant that adds flavor, color and bitterness to beer also produces a primary compound that thwarts cancer cells, and two important derivatives of the compound do as well, new research shows. (Click on title for full story.)
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The Bats That Could Save African Forests. If Someone Would Only Save The Bats
With the aid of the data on flight movements and seed excretion periods, the researchers were able to calculate the potential of an entire colony to disseminate seeds over long distances and to transport them to deforested areas. By this means, they discovered that a colony of 150,000 straw-coloured fruit bats can disseminate more than 300,000 seeds in a single night. (Click on title for full story.)