Celebrating Plants and People
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The Fungal Connection: Self-Medicating Butterflies, Milkweed And Soil
Monarchs sick with a debilitating protozoan parasite are pickier still. Butterflies infected with Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE) flit from plant to plant, searching for those with enough cardenolides—a toxic steroid—to reduce infection in their offspring. Now, researchers have found that how much cardenolide a plant stores may depend on an unlikely ally: soil fungi. (Click on image or title for full story)
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Bark Beetles, Forest Fires And Political Shenanigans
We’ve all seen the sensational headlines: according to the U.S. Forest Service, bark beetles, spurred on by the drought, have killed 25 million trees in California’s forests this year, greatly increasing the spread and intensity of recent fires. What we haven’t seen is a critical assessment of these claims. Are bark beetles really increasing fire intensity? Are they really threatening the ecological health of our forests?
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Trees Grown In Contaminated Sites Reveal A New Biological World
The ability of these fast-growing willow trees to tolerate contamination and rejuvenate degraded land is well established, but how they can manage such feats is poorly understood. This research suggests the response of each willow tree involves potentially hundreds of other organisms including bacteria, fungi and insects (termed the “meta-organism”.)
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New Giant Orange Banana Discovered.
The new species is about 11 metres high, whereas as the usual banana species is about three to four metres high. The fruit lux of the new species is about one metres, which is thrice the size of regular species
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Desert Ants Carry Huge Seeds Amazing Distances (for An Ant)
“To put it mildly, we were flabbergasted when we saw this,”
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Plant Uses Raindrops To Trigger Ant Capture
A carnivorous pitcher plant uses power from falling raindrops to fling ants to their doom, biologists have discovered.
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The Dung Beetle, The Plant and Fecal Mimicry
The plant produces large, round nuts that are strikingly similar in appearance, smell, and chemical composition to antelope droppings (in particular those of the eland and the bontebok), which the dung beetles accordingly roll away and bury, effectively sowing a new generation
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Cacti More Endangered Than Birds or Mammals Due To Poaching
These findings are disturbing,. They confirm that the scale of the illegal wildlife trade — including trade in plants — is much greater than we had previously thought, and that wildlife trafficking concerns many more species than the charismatic rhinos and elephants which tend to receive global attention.
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Secret Behind Rare Seed Dispersal By Raindrops
The plant world has evolved numerous ingenious ways to distribute seeds. But one of the least known and least celebrated is raindrop dispersal.
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Poaching For Bonsai Trees Is Endangering Rare Monkey
We are just a few kilometres from the protected home of one of the world’s rarest primates, the Cat Ba langur, or white-headed langur. Only 70 are known to survive on the island of the same name, off the coast of north Vietnam, following decades of hunting. But conservationists have warned that there is another threat: intruders taking the trees themselves. (Click image or title for full story.)