Celebrating Plants and People
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Frankincense Harvesting Threatens Rare And Endangered Arabian Leopards
A small community that harvests frankincense trees has recently established some semi-permanent camps in the Jabal Samhan area, especially near water resources, People disturb the leopards, but also hunt and scare away its natural prey, the gazelle and the ibex. (Click on title for full story.)
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Apparently You CAN Teach An Old Slime Mold New Tricks
Slime mold, a unicellular organism at the bottom of the food chain, can learn, a finding that has important implications for understanding the evolution of learning, as well as how many creatures can be “smart” and successful without a brain. Learning likely even predates the emergence of nervous systems, much less brains, according to a…
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Birds Select Best Trees To Use As Refrigerators For Winter Food Storage
Another interesting element to note is that grey jays cache perishable food items into cracks in tree bark during the summer and autumn months. In fact, grey jays are the only bird species that we know about that routinely cache large amounts of perishable food items for long periods of time. How do these food…
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Why Would A Perfectly Nice Carnivorous Plant Subsist On Feces Instead Of Meat?
Pitcher plants grow on nutrient-poor soils, but whereas N. rafflesiana copes with this lack of nutrients by using fluid-filled pitchers to catch insect prey, N. hemsleyana has abandoned carnivory in favour of a unique and intimate relationship with the woolly bat. To provide the bat with an ideal roost, the pitchers of N. hemsleyana have…
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The Unsung Seed Disperser: The Galápagos Land Iguana
We knew that female iguanas on this island cover large distances, around 10 kilometres, and climb up to 1,500 metres of altitude to lay their eggs at the island’s volcanic crater. The researchers were able to collect 160 iguana faeces samples. They were able to identify 5,705 seeds from 32 plant species. (Click on title…
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Good Intentions Gone Bad: Pollinator Seed Mixes Spread Invasive Weeds
We don’t have any issues at all with the concept behind the pollinator habitat program; it’s a good program. But as a result of this program, we’ve now introduced Palmer amaranth to potentially thousands of acres of land, and we need to know what we are going to be allowed to do to try to…
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Flowers Use Physics As Well As Color And Shape To Lure Pollinators
Research has traditionally explored the role of chemical pigments and volatile organic compounds as cues for pollinators, but recent reports have demonstrated the importance of physical and structural means of pollinator attraction. Here we explore the role of petal microstructure in influencing floral light capture and optics, analysing colour, gloss and polarization effects. We discuss…
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Puny Mammals: Tallest Trees Bigger Than 5 Sperm Whales
Tallest tree aside, this work really highlights the value of protecting primary forests, These ancient trees are really only found in primary forests, many of which are not properly protected. A detailed map like this will be useful for establishing conservation priorities.” (Click on title for full story.)
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African Farmers Tend Cacao Planted By Wild Chimpanzees
This research has highlighted the possibility that the dispersal of crops by animals at other sites has the potential to positively impact the ability of wildlife to coexist in human-impacted habitats, especially if farmers gain economic benefits through the wildlife’s dispersal of crops. (Click on title for full story.)
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Climate Change Demands A New Understanding Of Endangered Plant Species
Few studies have incorporated palaeoecological data into projections of future distributions. Here we project changes in abundance and conservation status under a climate warming scenario for 187 European and North American plant taxa using niche-based models calibrated against taxa–climate relationships for the past 21,000 years. We find that incorporating long-term data into niche-based models increases…