It was by Kars Veling, about Butterflies and dragonflies in cities: more than food for birds.
There are quite some butterfly species in Dutch cities and towns. For one category of butterflies, that is not surprising. These are the species who are not so selective about environments. Caterpillars of species like red admiral, peacock, and small tortoiseshell are dependent on stinging nettles, plants which grow even in city centres.
With some luck, one may also see more selective butterfly species in urban environments, like the comma, and meadow brown.
There are also some really specialized species in Dutch cities. As far as we know, the white-letter hairstreak in the Netherlands lives only in Heerlen city. The brown hairstreak numbers are going down in the countryside, but are stable in cities like Wageningen and Zwolle.
Kars Veling once saw 700 common blue butterflies in the ancient town Naarden. He had never seen so many together. Their caterpillars eat bird’s-foot trefoil, abundant in Naarden.
Essex skipper butterflies may also flourish in urban environments. Provided that lawns are not mown, destroying the eggs.
Brown argus butterflies also thrive in cities sometimes, especially on temporarily fallow land.
In an oak tree, there may be 50-70 butterfly or moth caterpillar species.
Dragonflies and damselflies in cities, like elsewhere, are dependent on clear water. In muddy water, their larvae will not be able to see far enough, and will die. If you want willow emerald damselflies in your city, you need trees as well as clear water: because the adults deposit their eggs in autumn in trees standing close to water. If the larvae hatch in spring, they drop straight into the water. So, don’t cut down all trees near the water. But also don’t let big trees grow all along the water, for then the water becomes too shady. Try to find a balance.
What’s a city-dweller to do — you want to help fight climate change, but does planting trees in the city really make a difference? Can urban forests help sequester carbon and offset emissions? Here.
Scorpionflies may have aided plant reproduction long before blossoms evolved
By Sid Perkins
An obscure group of scorpionflies with specialized mouthparts may have pollinated ancient plants millions of years before flowers evolved, a new study suggests.
Fossils indicate that before flowers evolved about 130 million years ago, most plants with seeds were wind-pollinated. Yet the pollen grains of some plants that lived in the prefloral era were too big to be wind-dispersed, say Conrad Labandeira, a paleoentomologist at Smithsonian Institution’s
National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Also, he notes, pollen receptors were hidden deep within some of those plants and wouldn’t have been readily exposed to windborne pollen.
Now, in the Nov. 6 Science, Labandeira and his colleagues propose that an ancient group of scorpionflies might be counted among the missing pollinators of such plants.
The researchers analyzed 21 specimens of scorpionflies representing 11 long-extinct species, with body lengths ranging from 3 to 28 millimeters. Most of these insects were preserved in rocks laid down as fine-grained sediments, but one had been preserved in amber, says Labandeira. The fossil record suggests that these creatures were rare but present in Eurasia throughout a 62-million-year interval that began around 164 million years ago, well before flowers evolved, and stretched into the early evolution of blooms.
All of these scorpionfly specimens have long, siphon-like mouthparts capable of sucking liquids — in one case, the proboscis is about one-third the length of the insect’s body. Because pollen grains could be too large to fit through the slim siphons, the researchers suggest that the pollen stuck to ridges or hairlike structures on the creatures’ mouthparts or face as they fed on nutrient-rich fluids produced by the plants. Then, the insects carried the pollen from plant to plant as they foraged, just as modern-day pollinators do.
Labandeira and his colleagues didn’t find any pollen on or around the fossil insects they analyzed. “That was really disappointing,” Labandeira notes. But, he adds, the pollen may have decomposed or otherwise not been preserved in the sediments for any number of reasons. On the other hand, the amber that entombed one well-preserved scorpionfly didn’t contain any pollen, either — which probably reflects a true absence of pollen in that case, possibly due to entrapment of the insect at a pollen-poor time of year.
Grains of pollen preserved with such specimens would be the missing piece of evidence to definitively link these scorpionflies to the pollination of ancient plants, says Jeff Ollerton, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Northampton in England. But he’s not surprised that pollen hasn’t been found. “Evidence for species interactions rarely fossilizes,” he notes.
A team of British researchers have been rebuilding fossils of 300-million year old spiders using computer 3-D technology- they say they are providing a clearer picture of how some extinct species once lived on early Earth.
Professor Brasier, who is a palaeobiologist at the University of Oxford, said: “This amber is very rare. It comes from the very base of the Cretaceous, which makes it one of the oldest ambers anywhere to have inclusions in it.”
‘Sticky droplets’
He added: “These spiders are distinctive and leave little sticky droplets along the spider web threads to trap prey.
“We actually have the sticky droplets preserved within the amber. These turn out to be the earliest webs that have ever been incorporated in the fossil record to our knowledge.”
His studies revealed that the spider that spun the web is related to the modern day orb-web or garden spider.
Scientists think the web became trapped in conifer resin after a forest fire and then became fossilised inside the resulting amber.
Mr Hiscocks and his brother also found the fossilised remains of an Iguanodon jaw bone on the coastline.
A wattle species not seen since it was first collected more than 160 years ago has been rediscovered in Western Australia’s wheatbelt.
The WA Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) said Acacia leptoneura was previously only known from a specimen collected between 1837 and 1848 by botanist James Drummond.
Another wattle Acacia torticarpa was known from only a small handful of collections made by Charles Gardner between 1945 and 1949 has also been identified.
DEC flora conservation officer Joel Collins said the rare finds were made through ongoing survey work in the wheatbelt.
“The discoveries highlight the need for continuing surveys of poorly known flora species,” Mr Collins said.
“There are many road reserves that have not been thoroughly surveyed, with many more populations waiting to be rediscovered.”
Mr Collins found a single Acacia leptoneura plant on a heavily cleared road reserve, north of Dowerin, about 150km northeast of Perth.
“I discovered the plant from the cab of my vehicle as it had a distinctive spreading habit that is very similar to another rare acacia, so I stopped to take a closer look,” he said.
The Acacia torticarpa population was found in nearby Cunderdin and consists of 120 plants.
Both of the species rediscovered by Mr Collins are in the process of being ranked priority one, the category reserved for species with one or a few threatened populations.
They will also be considered for declaration as rare flora.
DEC staff are undertaking further surveys to try to locate additional populations and seed collection is also planned.
Endemics thrive on Timor-Leste’s “Lost World” mountain
27-10-2009
Surveys have confirmed that the finest montane forests in Timor-Leste, and possibly the whole island of Timor, are to be found on the inaccessible Mount Mundo Perdido – literally, “Lost World”. With 22 of the restricted-range species of the Timor and Wetar Endemic Bird Area found so far, Mount Mundo Perdido has been recognised as Timor-Leste’s seventeenth Important Bird Area (IBA).
The surveys were carried out by staff of Timor-Leste’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and Colin Trainor of Australia’s Charles Darwin University, supported by BirdLife and the UK Government’s Darwin Initiative.
The upper slopes of Mount Mundo Perdido, rising to 1,760 m, have been protected from agriculture by their steep, rocky terrain. The 16,100 ha site also includes the 1,390 m Mount Laritame, 5 km to the north.
The IBA almost certainly hosts the largest populations of a suite of hill and montane bird species on Timor Island. Of the 22 endemics, one is globally threatened - the Endangered Timor Imperial-pigeon Ducula cineracea- and eight are Near Threatened, including Slaty Cuckoo-dove Turacoena modesta and Chestnut-backed Thrush Zoothera dohertyi. Small numbers of Critically Endangered Yellow-crested Cockatoo Cacatua sulphurea are also present.
A total of 63 bird species have been recorded, including 61 presumed breeding residents, and two northern migrants. Eleven of the residents are montane forest specialists, and all appear to be abundant in the IBA.
Possibly the most exciting discovery was a population of Pygmy Blue-flycatcher Muscicapella hodgsoni on the upper slopes, 1,700 km or more from the nearest known populations in Kalimantan and Sumatra. The taxonomic status of this isolated population is being investigated.
Mount Mundo Perdido is also considered one of the three most important sites for conservation of orchids in Timor-Leste, and several new orchid species have been collected.
Although it has legal protected stratus dating back to the United Nations administration which preceded independence, the IBA is not managed as a Protected Area. But local people have responded positively to the idea of Protected Area management, which would, in line with the policy established in Timor Leste, be carried out in close consultation with the community.
Measures would include improved management of livestock, fairer and more sustainable access to forest products such as bamboo and rattan, reforestation of eroded areas, and a village forestry programme to supply timber from plantations, as an alternative to the current uncontrolled extraction of forest trees.
