Pick & Mix 59 – countryside and colonialism, climate change, urban greening, native trees, natural history and public rights of way

Corinne Fowler on colonialism’s imprint on the British countryside.

I’m a climate scientist – here’s three key things I have learned over a year of COVID

Ancient leaves preserved under a mile of Greenland’s ice – and lost in a freezer for years – hold lessons about climate change

Why entomologists kill – understanding the need for collections

In case of emergency — break glass – Richard Jones on the trials and tribulations of trying to copy a bank note 🙂

Torino – showing the world how to make a green city

Perfectly explains why I prefer real books to e-books – The Multisensory Experience of Handling and Reading Books

Plant native, save insects – also in the UK it will benefit birds as well (if you want a copy email me)

Time to make nature studies a compulsory school subject – before it’s too late – and here is a blog post by me about the same subject from last year

Britain’s ancient footpaths could soon be lost forever, and here is a blog post by me about the same subject written a few weeks earlier – ahead of the curve that’s me 🙂

Pick & Mix 54 – lots do with food, invasive species, horror films, urban biodiversity, museum collections, corona virus spread and much more

The last post – been fun but nothing lasts forever

Why eating an invasive species won’t solve the problem

Freshwater horror films, but where are the ecosystems? 🙂

The state of Nature in the UK is not as good as it should be

Museum collections are really useful research tools

Encouraging urban insect life – great article by a former student

A soundscape of what Somerset might have sounded like 2000 years ago

What does organic food really mean?

Is liquorice safe for all of us? This sweet treat could kill some of us

The witches’ brew of frogs, snails and newts – perhaps not quite as advertised?

A really effective explanation of how corona virus is spread and the importance of masks and ventilation

Pick & Mix 50 – conservation, misogyny, media misinformation, citizen science, healthy gardens and insect-inspired eye make-up

“Conservation should indeed be a global priority. But understanding of the complexity and colonial roots of this problem and the shocking double standards that exist, is vital” Very important article by conservation scientist Tarsh Thakaekara

Adam Hart and colleagues on the harm that celebrities and media misinformation are doing to conservation

Misogyny alive and well in the world of shark conservation – time for a change of attitude

Top tips on keeping your plants and gardens healthy

Interesting Open Access article on urban conservation

Fantastic essay about Rosalind Franklin by Matthew Cobb (author of The Brain and Very Short Introduction to Smell)

Sophie Yeo asks ‘Does citizen science make you happier?”

Insect inspired eye make-up

The benefit of an insect collection, said Floyd Shockley, the insect collection manager at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, is that “a dead specimen, if properly preserved, can be there forever.” A 153-year-old insect collection is being used to solve modern problems.

Another insightful blog post from Manu Saunders about the insect apocalypse stories and the data  behind them

 

Pick and mix 4 – more links to ponder

I found these interesting, perhaps some of you will?

 

Interesting post on urban re-wilding

From a couple of years ago, but if you ever wondered how Drosophila became a model organism then read this

How the noise natural gas extraction machines make can affect insect abundance

A nice easy to read post to help make non-entomologists realise the importance of insects and how abundant they are

The Backwinter – A lyrical account of a cold snap in London and its effect on insect and plant emergence by Emma Maund

A timely reminder that there is a lot of genetic material in the wild that can help our domesticated crops taste better

If you wondered what they really ate in the middle ages wonder no longer

An interesting read about an early collector of curiosities Ole Worm’s Cabinet of Wonder: Natural Specimens and Wondrous Monsters

If you are a fan of spring flowers this post from Alice Hunter is a must read/see

Ray Cannon on the tale of a tail 🙂

 

Magic roundabouts – not just traffic calming devices

Roundabouts or traffic circles as they are known in some parts of the world, are a common feature of modern life.  They can range greatly in size; some are big enough to house small communities such as the Shepherd & Flock roundabout on the outskirts of Farnham, Surrey, which has it’s own pub,

whilst others are simple grass covered circles, such as the one shown below on the outskirts of Bracknell, Berkshire.  Others, even if lacking pubs, may have a mixture of different plants present, some even with mature trees on them, such as the Sports Centre roundabout also in Bracknell.

  

Traditionally, roundabouts have been thought of as simple devices to regulate the flow of traffic and were usually circular raised areas of tarmac, stone, concrete or brick.  More recently however, town and city councils began to add plants and/or artwork.   Some of my favourites in this latter category are found in southern France as shown below or in the title picture of my blog site.

Ecologically speaking however, roundabouts are even more interesting.  For almost fifteen years, I and a number of my students, from undergraduate to post-graduate, have been investigating the ecology of roundabouts and other green spaces in the town of Bracknell, Berkshire.  What started as a purely pedagogic exercise (Leather & Helden, 2005a), turned into a voyage of discovery and a realisation that roundabouts are, and can be, great sources of biodiversity (Helden & Leather, 2004), and in addition, could perhaps act as nature reserves (Leather & Helden, 2005b).  With close attention to mowing regimes (Helden & Leather, 2004) and increasing the proportion of native trees and other plants on them, it is not only insect diversity that is enhanced, but birds also (Helden et al., 2012).

We have found that roundabouts behave very similarly to biogeographical islands, i.e. the bigger they are and the more diverse the habitats present, the more diverse and interesting the fauna that can be found on them.  For example, we found the rare and endangered bug (Hemiptera) Gonocerus acuteangulatus, alive and well on one of the roundabouts and amusingly, another species, Athysanus argentarius, usually found in coastal locations.  Perhaps the salt from winter gritting operations fooled it.

Roundabouts may not be the equivalent of tropical forests but, they and other urban features such as suburban gardens, as demonstrated by Kevin Gaston and colleagues in a series of ground-breaking papers arising from the BUGS project http://www.bugs.group.shef.ac.uk/ in Sheffield and Jennifer Owen in her 30-year study of her Leicester garden (Owen, 2010), are immensely valuable tools for enhancing and conserving biodiversity in our increasingly impoverished world. We have much more to report, from bees, to butterflies and even woodlice.   Watch this space for future instalments.

Helden, A. J. & Leather, S. R. (2004). Biodiversity on urban roundabouts – Hemiptera, management and the species-area relationship. Basic and Applied Ecology 5: 367-377. https://www.harper-adams.ac.uk/staff/profile/files/uploaded/Helden & Leather2004.pdf

Helden, A. J., Stamp, G. C. & Leather, S. R. (2012). Urban biodiversity: comparison of insect assemblages on native and non-native trees.  Urban Ecosystems 15: 611-624. https://www.harper-adams.ac.uk/staff/profile/files/uploaded/Helden_et_al_2012.pdf

Leather, S. R. & Helden, A. J. (2005a). Magic roundabouts?  Teaching conservation in schools and universities. Journal of Biological Education 39: 102-107. http://www.harper-adams.ac.uk/staff/profile/files/uploaded/Leather_&_Helden_JBE_2005.pdf

Leather, S. R. & Helden, A. J. (2005). Roundabouts: our neglected nature reserves? Biologist 52: 102-106. http://www.harper-adams.ac.uk/staff/profile/files/uploaded/Leather_&_Helden_Biologist_2005.pdf

Owen, J. (2010 ) Wildlife of a Garden: A Thirty Year Study,  Royal Horticultural Society, London