… the intriguing title of a brief news item in the latest edition of Science. The story (anon, 2010) outlines some of the most serious plant & fungal threats to agricultural production. One of them is the potato blight fungus, Phytophthora infestans. The leaves & stems of an infected plant blacken & fall, & the tubers […]
Continue readingTag: ecology
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The family finally got its act together & went to see Avatar. In 3D 🙂 (Actually our act was arranged by friends, who also organised us into an al fresco meal of fish’n’chips beforehand.) I carefully didn’t read anything much about the movie before I went, so I’m aware that what I’ve got to say has probably been said before – but […]
Continue readingcauliflory (but not with cheese)
Plants have a fascinating array of adaptations that function to maximise the odds of successful reproduction. Flamboyantly shaped & coloured flowers spring to mind, not to mention nectar rewards & attractive scents (which are not necessarily pleasant to the human nose, but then, Rafflesia isn’t out to attract us!). One of the more unusual adaptations is […]
Continue readinga wide froggy mouth – but not on a frog
When I was an undergraduate a joke about wide-mouthed frogs went the rounds… Frog mouths are quite interesting, actually. Look into that gape & you’ll see a tongue (which is rooted at the front of the mouth, allowing it a greater forward reach). Back of the tongue is the glottis, opening into the trachea, & […]
Continue readingcassowaries: crucial to rainforest ecology
This is the only photo we got of a cassowary, on our recent jaunt to Australia. (I’ll stop rubbing it in soon, I promise!). She was sitting in the corner of an enclosure at the Habitat in Port Douglas. Like our own kiwi, cassowaries belong to the ancient flightless group of birds known as ratites. Cassowaries […]
Continue readinggreat balls of sand
We went for quite a few walks on the beach while we were in Port Douglas, usually in the early morning before things got too hot! We were surprised by the near-total lack of shells washed up on the sand (the copious cuttle-fish ‘bones’ didnt’ count). And fascinated by the way that the sand between […]
Continue readinga whale of a community
‘Community’ is one of those words that has different meanings in science & general use. Every time I set an essay that asks students to talk about biological communities, someone will tell me about ant communities, or monkey communities, or human communities. But a biological community is a group of populations from several different species, living & interacting […]
Continue readingof ant hotels and homicidal figs
One of several highlights of our holiday was a guided tour of part of the Daintree National Park. There was so much to see! But we’d probably have walked straight past some wonderful plants & animals if it wasn’t for our guide, Ross. For example, the first time we encountered a Boyd’s forest dragon, all […]
Continue readingspeciation in darwin’s finches
This afternoon the daughter sat Level 3 Biology (she seemed to quite like the paper). She said that one of the questions was about Darwin’s finches, based on some of the work of Peter & Rosemary Grant, who’ve been studying finches on the Galapagos Islands since 1973. During that time they’ve trapped, measured, banded & […]
Continue readingtopical 1080
A couple of years ago now, we held a Cafe Scientifique with the topic 1080 – friend or foe? Topical then (it drew a large crowd, wtih people from both sides of the debate) & just as topical now. On the one hand, 1080 is promoted as our current best option for the control of possums, […]
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