Today, first along the railroad.
Blackberries, and common blue and meadow brown butterflies still there.
Then, the botanical gardens.
A biologist explains on, mainly small, animals, there.
First, many small snails: common door snail. They eat lichen, so they don’t harm flowers.
There are also sowbugs, isopods, with some new born young. They lay their eggs in fluid similar to sea water: they are crustsaceans, whose ancestors lived in the sea.
Then, a bigger snail species: brown garden snail.
And a centipede: Lithobius forficatus, garden centipede. It eats isopods, worms, etc. Later, another, bigger, centipede species.
Under stones, a small black ant nest. Winged males and many pupas among them.
We see a smooth newt: there are hundreds of them in the botanical gardens. Also many young toads, just one centimetre in size, jumping.
In the chestnut trees live many horse chestnut leaf-miners; small moths.
Then we go to the hothouses.
Ten tropical ant species live there, which came along with tropical plants; as did jumping spiders.
In the Victoria amazonica hothouse waters live many small tropical fish. And also a metre long South American catfish.
African cichlids also usaed to live there. However, they had to be taken away, as they ate the Victoria amazonica plants.
For ants, one playbook fits many situations:
Scientists are interested in the “algorithms,” or
step-by-step rules, by which organisms make
decisions.
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/061009_ants.htm
Comment by Administrator — October 12, 2006 @ 7:17 pm