Bar-headed geese, fox, harrier, grebe chicks

On 19 May 2013, like a described earlier, still in the Nieuwkoopse Plassen nature reserve.

A common tern flying. The light makes it look almost like a black tern.

A buzzard flying.

Marsh marigold still flowering, though the flowers are mostly finished.

A carrion crow.

Red campion flowers.

A fox sitting on a meadow.

About thirty meter to the right, a male pheasant. A buzzard flies above them both. The fox does not try to catch the pheasant, maybe knowing that the bird has seen it already. After a long time, the fox goes away, to the left.

A female marsh harrier flying.

And a swift.

A curlew on a dung heap.

Then, two bar-headed geese on a meadow between ponies.

More to the right on that meadow, two barnacle geese with a gosling.

A mute swan on its nest.

A great crested grebe swims with three chicks on its back.

Just before our boat arrives back in Noorden, a blue tit on a reed stem.

Related articles

• Cuckoo, linnet, and purple heron (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Savi’s warbler, willow warbler, wren and curlews (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Sedge warblers and curlews (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Egret, konik horses, great crested grebe (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Kestrel, willow warbler and eared grebes (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Grasshopper warbler and black-necked grebes again (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Tree pipit, Montagu’s harrier, skylark (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Three coot babies (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Nature reserves attract new species (bbc.co.uk)
• St Serfs swings into action! (lochlevennnr.wordpress.com)

Sedge warblers and curlews

On 19 May 2013, again to the Nieuwkoopse Plassen nature reserve.

Early in the morning, we arrive in Noorden village, where our boat trip will start.

Starlings. A cuckoo calls.

Collared doves. Greenfinch.

A great crested grebe swimming. Egyptian geese on the bank.

A curlew near a boat landing.

Sedge warblers. Chiffchaffs.

A common tern.

Tufted ducks swimming.

Great cormorants flying.

Black-headed gulls fly to their nesting colony, close to here.

A reed bunting.

Another curlew on the bank.

A marsh warbler singing.

A Savi’s warbler singing.

A blackcap singing.

A song thrush.

A gadwall male swimming.

A black-headed gull on a pole points out which way the boat should go.

A barn swallow.

An Egyptian goose with a gosling.

Another gadwall duck male.

Water lilies just emerging from their underwater wintering. Most leaves still red; no flowers yet.

A coypu swimming.

A curlew on an earth hillock.

First, sedge warblers on reed stems.

Then, a sedge warbler on a stump.

A black tern flying.

Two Canada geese swimming.

Stay tuned, as there will be more on this.

Related articles

• Savi’s warbler, willow warbler, wren and curlews (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Cuckoo, linnet, and purple heron (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• A morning on Exminster Marsh (parrotletsuk.typepad.com)
• Grasshopper warbler and black-necked grebes again (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Kestrel, willow warbler and eared grebes (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• A Couple of Prominent Visitors (blashfordlakes.wordpress.com)
• Turtle dove,cuckoo and sedge warbler. (radnorshirebirds.wordpress.com)
• Acrocephalus paludicola (animalsoftheworldblog.wordpress.com)
• Newts and Warblers (blashfordlakes.wordpress.com)
• 25 April 2013 (cotswoldwaterpark.wordpress.com)

Ocean wildlife in danger

From Surprising Science blog in the USA:

May 17, 2013

Endangered Ocean Creatures Beyond the Cute and Cuddly

Staghorn coral is listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. NOAA Fisheries has proposed it be reclassified as endangered. Photo by Albert Kok

Our oceans are taking a beating from overfishing, pollution, acidification and warming, putting at risk the many creatures who make their home in seawater. But when most people think of struggling ocean species, the first animals that come to mind are probably whales, seals or sea turtles.

Sure, many of these large (and adorable) animals play an important part in the marine ecosystem and are threatened with extinction due to human activities, but in fact, of the 94 marine species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), only 45 are marine mammals and sea turtles. As such, these don’t paint the whole picture of what happens under the sea. What about the remaining 49 that form a myriad of other important parts of the underwater web?

These less charismatic members of the list include corals, sea birds, mollusks and, of course, fish. They fall under two categories: endangered or threatened. According to NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (pdf), one of the groups responsible for implementing the ESA, a species is considered endangered if it faces imminent extinction, and and a species is considered threatened if it is likely to become endangered in the future. A cross section of these less-known members of the ESA’s list are described in detail below.

1. Staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis), pictured above, is one of two species of coral listed as threatened under the ESA, although both are under review for reclassification to endangered. A very important reef-building coral in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, it primarily reproduces through asexual fragmentation. This means that its branches break off and reattach to a substrate on the ocean bottom where they grow into new colonies.

While this is a great recovery method when only part of a colony is damaged, it doesn’t work so well when most or all of the colony is killed—which often is the result from disturbances afflicting these corals. Since the 1980s, staghorn coral populations have steeply declined due to outbreaks of coral disease, increased sedimentation, bleaching and damage from hurricanes. Although only two coral species are currently on the ESA list, 66 additional coral species have been proposed for listing and are currently under review.

The white abalone population off the coast of California continued to decline even after the closure of its short-lived fishery in the 1970s. Photo by John Butler, NOAA

2. The white abalone (Haliotis sorenseni), a large sea snail that can grow to ten inches long, was the first marine invertebrate to be listed under the ESA but its population hasn’t recovered. The commercial fishery for white abalone collapsed three decades ago because, being spawners that jet their eggs and sperm into the water for fertilization with the hope that the two will collide, the animals depend on a large enough population of males and females being in close proximity to one another to reproduce successfully.

Less than 0.1% of its pre-fished population survives today, and research published in 2012 showed that it has continued to decline since its ESA listing more than a decade ago. The researchers recommended human intervention, and aquaculture efforts have begun in an effort to save the species.

Johnson’s seagrass is the first, and only, marine plant listed under the Endangered Species Act. Photo by Lori Morris, St. Johns River Water Management District

3. Johnson’s seagrass (Halophila johnsonii), the lone marine plant species listed, is classified as threatened and makes coastal habitats and nurseries for fish and provides a food source for the also-endangered West Indian manatees and green sea turtles. However, its most important role may be long-term ocean carbon storage, known as blue carbon: seagrass beds can store more carbon than the world’s forests per hectare.

The main threats to Johnson’s seagrass are nutrient and sediment pollution, and damage from boating, dredging and storms. Its plight is aggravated by its tiny geographic range–it is only found on the southeast coast of Florida. The species may have more trouble recovering than other seagrass species because it seems to only reproduce asexually–while other seagrasses can reproduce like land plants, by producing a flower that is then fertilized by clumps of pollen released underwater, the Johnson’s seagrass relies on the sometimes slow process of new stems sprouting from the buried root systems of individual plants.

Short-tailed albatrosses have made a remarkable recovery since they were believed to be extinct in the 1940s. They still face threats today though, from habitat loss to being caught unintentionally by fishing gear. Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

4. The short-tailed albatross (Phoebastria albatrus) differs from some of its neighbors on the ESA list in that an extra layer of uncertainty is added to the mix: During breeding season, they nest on islands near Japan, but after breeding season ends, they spread their wings and fly to the U.S. In the late 19th century, the beautiful birds are thought to have been fairly common from coastal California up through Alaska. But in the 1940s, their population dropped from the tens of millions to such a small number that they were thought to be extinct. Their incredible decline was due to hunters collecting their feathers, compounded by volcanic damage to their breeding islands in the 1930s.

Today they are doing better, with over 2,000 birds counted in 2008, but only a few islands remain as nesting sites and they continue to be caught as bycatch, meaning that they are often mistakenly hooked by longline fishing gear.

Atlantic salmon used to be found in most major rivers in New England, now they are only found in a small section of Maine. Photo by E. Peter Steenstra/USFWS

5. Salmon are a familiar fish frequently seen on the menu. But not all species are doing well enough to be served on our plates. Salmon split their time between freshwater (where they are born and later spawn) and the ocean (where they spend their time in between). Historically, Atlantic salmon in the U.S. were found in most major rivers on the Atlantic coast north of the Hudson, which flows through New York State. But damming, pollution and overfishing have pushed the species to a point where they are now only found along a small section of the Maine coast. Twenty-eight populations of Pacific salmon are also listed as threatened or endangered. Efforts on both coasts are underway to rebuild populations through habitat restoration, pollution reduction and aquaculture.

The five organisms listed here are just a few of the marine species on the ESA’s list. In fact, scientists expect that as they learn more about the oceans, they will reveal threats to more critters and plants.

“The charismatic marine species, like large whales [and] sea turtles…were the first to captivate us and pique our curiosity to look under the waves,” says Jonathan Shannon, from the NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Species. “While we are learning more about the ocean and how it works every day, we still have much to learn about the different species in the ocean and the health of their populations.”

Learn more about the ocean from the Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal.

Related articles

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• 40 years later: Why the Endangered Species Act still matters (cbsnews.com)
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• Why the Endangered Species Act Is Broken, and How to Fix It (zen-haven.com)

Chinese agriculture older than domesticated rice

This video is called Neolithic part I, shows the change in lifestyle brought about by the Neolithic revolution.

From the University of Leicester in England:

New discovery of ancient diet shatters conventional ideas of how agriculture emerged

17 May 2013

Archaeologists have made a discovery in southern subtropical China which could revolutionise thinking about how ancient humans lived in the region.

They have uncovered evidence for the first time that people living in Xincun 5,000 years ago may have practised agriculture –before the arrival of domesticated rice in the region.

Current archaeological thinking is that it was the advent of rice cultivation along the Lower Yangtze River that marked the beginning of agriculture in southern China. Poor organic preservation in the study region, as in many others, means that traditional archaeobotany techniques are not possible.

Now, thanks to a new method of analysis on ancient grinding stones, the archaeologists have uncovered evidence that agriculture could predate the advent of rice in the region.

The research was the result of a two-year collaboration between Dr Huw Barton, from the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester, and Dr Xiaoyan Yang, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing.

Funded by a Royal Society UK-China NSFC International Joint Project, and other grants held by Yang in China, the research is published in PLOS ONE.

Dr Barton, Senior Lecturer in Bioarchaeology at the University of Leicester, described the find as ‘hitting the jackpot’: “Our discovery is totally unexpected and very exciting.

“We have used a relatively new method known as ancient starch analysis to analyse ancient human diet. This technique can tell us things about human diet in the past that no other method can.

“From a sample of grinding stones we extracted very small quantities of adhering sediment trapped in pits and cracks on the tool surface. From this material, preserved starch granules were extracted with our Chinese colleagues in the starch laboratory in Beijing. These samples were analysed in China and also here at Leicester in the Starch and Residue Laboratory, School of Archaeology and Ancient History.

“Our research shows us that there was something much more interesting going on in the subtropical south of China 5,000 years ago than we had first thought. The survival of organic material is really dependent on the particular chemical properties of the soil, so you never know what you will get until you sample. At Xincun we really hit the jackpot. Starch was well-preserved and there was plenty of it. While some of the starch granules we found were species we might expect to find on grinding and pounding stones, ie. some seeds and tuberous plants such as freshwater chestnuts, lotus root and the fern root, the addition of starch from palms was totally unexpected and very exciting.”

Several types of tropical palms store prodigious quantities of starch. This starch can be literally bashed and washed out of the trunk pith, dried as flour, and of course eaten. It is non-toxic, not particularly tasty, but it is reliable and can be processed all year round. Many communities in the tropics today, particularly in Borneo and Indonesia, but also in eastern India, still rely on flour derived from palms.

Dr Barton said: “The presence of at least two, possibly three species of starch producing palms, bananas, and various roots, raises the intriguing possibility that these plants may have been planted nearby the settlement.

“Today groups that rely on palms growing in the wild are highly mobile, moving from one palm stand to another as they exhaust the clump. Sedentary groups that utilise palms for their starch today, plant suckers nearby the village, thus maintaining continuous supply. If they were planted at Xincun, this implies that ‘agriculture’ did not arrive here with the arrival of domesticated rice, as archaeologists currently think, but that an indigenous system of plant cultivation may have been in place by the mid Holocene.

“The adoption of domesticated rice was slow and gradual in this region; it was not a rapid transformation as in other places. Our findings may indicate why this was the case. People may have been busy with other types of cultivation, ignoring rice, which may have been in the landscape, but as a minor plant for a long time before it too became a food staple.

“Future work will focus on grinding stones from nearby sites to see if this pattern is repeated along the coast.”

Related articles

• Ancient Agriculture in China Predates Rice Domestication: Tropical Palm Diet (scienceworldreport.com)
• In ancient China, sago palms were major plant food prior to rice cultivation (ancientfoods.wordpress.com)
• Sago Palms, Bananas were Major Food Prior to Rice in Southern Areas of Ancient China (sci-news.com)
• Origins of Chinese agriculture pushed back by 12,000 years (ancientfoods.wordpress.com)

British allotments’ history

This video from Britain says about itself:

The English Enclosures

July 19, 2011

The devastating enclosures of the English commons forced peasants into the labour market and the factories of the industrial revolution. This video explains how and why.

By Nick Matthews in Britain:

Oases of contemplation, exercise and recreation

Wednesday 15 May 2013

I was delighted when the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners joined Co-ops UK.

It has been around since 1901, and as a bona-fide Industrial and Provident Society has long been a co-operative.

Allotments hold a special place in working-class culture. While there is no typical allotment holder or allotment site, nonetheless they have produced an instantly recognisable landscape.

Interestingly, in their seminal book The Allotment, Its Landscape and Culture – now sadly out of print – David Crouch and Colin Ward argue that the allotment began as a moral project that promoted what was almost a parody of William Morris’s “useful toil.”

They say that the allotment was adapted over time to provide individual space away from the home and a means of escape from “real” life. Today it remains a sociologist’s dream space and is important as a place where a range of significant social activities, attachments and cultural encounters take place.

We are seeing a huge upsurge in demand for allotments. There are around 300,000 in Britain and Northern Ireland and it is said that there is a new breed of young professionals who are seeking to “grow their own.” These may be untypical, but, as Crouch and Ward point out, in over 150 years there has never been a typical allotment gardener.

There are more young professionals, families and groups embracing allotment culture, and demand has outstripped supply in many parts of the country with long waiting lists.

In 2009 the National Trust pledged to create 1,000 new allotments on its land and they were soon snapped up.

We can date the development of the modern allotments movement back to the Enclosures Acts of 1836 and 1840, which deprived many working-class people of access to the land.

The General Enclosures Act of 1845, following a degree of popular unrest, introduced the idea of “field gardens” for the landless poor, but while hundreds of thousands of acres of land was enclosed only a couple of thousand was set aside for such use.

It was not until 1887 that local authorities were obliged to provide allotments, but even this was uneven in its application.

It was the Smallholding and Allotment Act 1907 that imposed responsibilities on parish, urban district and borough councils to provide them and further legislation in 1908 consolidated this position.

For the late Victorians allotments were thought of as productive use of time for the working poor, taking them away from the demon drink. They where also thought of as a way to provide wholesome food for a workforce housed in high-density gardenless homes.

German U-boats in the first world war cemented the allotment in popular culture. The blockade cut off the supplies of many products, and workers took to the allotment as a way of filling the gap. Interestingly the Dig for Victory campaign in World War II was based on the same principle.

During the war many railway companies released land to their workers to grow food and this is why many sites are next to railways to this day.

After the war there was a steady decline in the number of allotments but in recent years this decline has stabilised and in parts of the country we have seen a growth in numbers.

Allotments have always been good for physical as well as mental health. They are obviously a space for recreation and exercise, but are also a space for contemplation and solitude.

Of course, while it’s hard work, for many poor people the chance of growing one’s own food was a great boon. Today when we are so alienated from the natural world and most of our food comes shrink-wrapped there is almost something spiritual about growing something you can eat yourself.

Allotments and urban agriculture projects often offer an opportunity for excluded groups to participate in gardening and horticulture and can contribute to a sense of self as well as a sense of community.

An allotment is defined as an area of land, leased either from a private or local authority landlord, for the use of growing fruit and vegetables. In some cases this land will also be used for the growing of ornamental plants, and the keeping of hens, rabbits and bees.

Rods, poles and perches are Anglo-Saxon names for the same unit of measurement – one rod equals five-and-a-half yards. An allotment is traditionally measured in this way and 10 poles is the accepted size, about the size of a doubles tennis court.

Never has such a small parcel of land carried so much cultural significance and added so much to our countries’ well-being.

Related articles

• Allotments – a great British legacy (ideasbankatuea.wordpress.com)
• My Cool Allotment is a guide to the prettiest allotment gardens around (treehugger.com)
• New lease of life for allotments as they turn to graveyard a plot at a time (eveningharold.com)
• I haven’t been to the allotment in two (myallotmentandme.wordpress.com)

Birdwatching in Brunei, Borneo

This video says about itself:

April 29, 2013

The Sandakan Borneo Bird Club is proud to announce the 1st Borneo Bird Race to be held on 31st May to 9th June 2013 in collaboration with Brunei Tourism and Sabah Tourism Board. This event is specially organized for Birders and Photographers primarily, with an offshoot of promoting Borneo Island as one of the premier nature tourism destination in Asia. This inaugural race will expand over the years including Sarawak and Kalimantan of Indonesia.

The Race — an overview

For the first time, we launch the first international Borneo Bird Race 2013, where 10 countries travel more than 1000 kilometres in search of more than 400 species of birds in a wide range of habitats from the coastal regions, freshwater swamps, lowland forests, to the hills and mountain ranges of Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei. At the end of the day, each team will enjoy the beauty of this land as they count the numbers of recorded species, and the longest list shall earn the prestigious “Bornean Bristlehead Cup”.

Race starts from Ulu Temburong National Park, Brunei then continues to Kinabalu Park and concludes at Rainforest Discovery Centre, Sepilok, Sabah where the 5th Borneo Bird Festival is simultaneously held.

The key objectives of the race are:
1. To promote Borneo as one of the premier bird watching destination in the world;
2. To network with birdwatching fraternities around Asian region and the world;
3. To increase arrival of eco-tourists and birdwatchers to Borneo;
4. Create awareness and conservation of the bird species unique to Borneo to the local Community and to the global birding fraternities;
5. Foster closer integration and harmony through nature festival of the neighboring States of Borneo, Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei and Kalimantan, Indonesia;
6. To enhance and complement the “Heart of Borneo” initiative – Tourism Program;
7. Further development of naturalist guide and birdwatching guide.
8. To create and further improve nature tourism facilities and infrastructure.

From BruDirect.com:

Borneo Bird Race To Rope In Nature Enthusiasts From Around Region

Tuesday, 14 May 2013 07:19

Siti Hajar

Bandar Seri Begawan – Brunei Darussalam’s tourism plan will soon gain better momentum following the country’s wise investment that will see the pooling of efforts between two nations that aim to bring in nature enthusiasts from around the region.

Within the next few weeks starting May 31 until June 9, Brunei Tourism with co-hosts Sabah Tourism Board and Sandakan Borneo Bird Club has arranged to bring-in two dozen registered bird watchers from across seven Asian countries who will take part in the inaugural Borneo Bird Race 2013 that spans across the Abode of Peace and neighbouring Sabah.

A press conference chaired by Brunei Tourism Acting Director Mariani Haji Sabtu; Sabah Tourism Board Chairman Dato Seri Tengku Zainal Adlin; Cede Prudente, Chairperson of the Borneo Bird Festival and Race; Mohd Vol for the country’s Nature Festival; and Roger Rajah, Executive Board for the World Federation of Tourist Guide Association; explained that the event has been pegged to become a source for further economic diversification through eco-tourism. …

In total, the whole of Borneo spans an area of 743,330 square kilometres and is home to one of the oldest rainforests in the world at 130 million years old, and shelters 13 primate species, 15,000 species of flowering plants with 3,000 species of trees, 221 species of terrestrial mammals and more than 680 species of resident and migratory birds.

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• Bill Oddie: Why I was chucked out of HSBC headquarters over Bankwatch film (independent.co.uk)
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Cuckoo, linnet, and purple heron

On 12 May 2013, again to the Zouweboezem nature reserve in the Netherlands.

This reserve is famous for its black terns and its purple herons.

As we approach the reserve: shelducks near the Lek river.

Near the parking lot, chaffinch and chiffchaff singing. An oystercatcher.

A bit further: a reed warbler sings.

A sedge warbler sings.

Then, a male reed bunting.

A willow warbler and a wren sing.

A common tern flying.

A northern lapwing in a meadow.

Black terns fly above the meadow, hunting for insects.

A great cormorant.

Bearded reedlings fly away.

On a reed stem, an ergot fungus, Claviceps microcephala; in the sclerotium phase at the moment.

Marsh marigold flowers.

Black terns fly over their nesting colony, but few of them have started nesting yet. Tufted ducks sit on some of the black tern nesting platforms. It seems that the cold spring has delayed the terns’ nesting season.

A yellow water-lily flowering. That is early for this time of the year.

A great crested grebe.

A Stereum hirsutum fungus on a fallen branch.

Near the hide, a male shoveler duck swimming.

Canada geese. A mute swan. Wigeon. Gadwall ducks.

Many shiny alder leaf beetles on small trees. Some of them mating.

Water violets flowering.

A Savi’s warbler and a blackcap sing.

White dead-nettle flowers.

A green-veined white butterfly.

In a meadow, orchid flowers.

A black-tailed godwit flies, calling.

An Egyptian goose flying.

A male and a female marsh harrier fly together.

Then, a black-tailed godwit, driving away a Canada goose. Considering that Canada geese are capable of driving away big gorillas, quite a feat.

A purple heron; flying, then standing at a ditch bank.

A group of grey lag geese, with also two barnacle geese.

A male pheasant.

Many grey lag geese have goslings.

Then, something special. A male cuckoo. Usually hidden from view, but not today.

A jay flying.

A carrion crow drives away a buzzard.

A false puffball slime mould on a tree stump.

Then, a female linnet.

And a male linnet.

Then, Lentinus tigrinus mushrooms.

We are near the exit of the reserve. Corn salad flowering.

In Ameide village, a white stork on its nest on the roof of the church.

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Nuthatches squat woodpecker’s nest

Joost Kortmann from Son en Breugel in the Netherlands, the maker of this video, says about it (translated from Dutch by yours truly):

“In a northern red oak, a great spotted woodpecker had for several years a nest, with good results. This year the entrance (in this live tree) was a little overgrown. Two nuthatches showed interest. Meanwhile, the woodpecker started chopping in another (live) tree, to make a new nest. It stopped working at the new nest after two days and tried to get its old nest back. The nuthatches drove it away successfully.

Recordings

The first part of the video was made on April 15 around 14:45 pm. The second part, which I have added, was made on April 17 around 17:15 pm. It shows that the woodpecker during his inspection and chiseling work is beset by fly by nuthatches.”

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Sacred lotus closest to ancestor of flowering plants

This video from India says about itself:

Fruit and unripe seed pod of lotus or Nelumbo nucifera

Dec 19, 2012

Nelumbo nucifera, known by a number of names including Indian lotus, sacred lotus, bean of India, or simply lotus, is a plant in the monotypic family Nelumbonaceae. The Linnaean binomial Nelumbo nucifera (Gaertn.) is the currently recognized name for this species, which has been classified under the former names, Nelumbium speciosum (Willd.) and Nymphaea nelumbo, among others. Names other than Nelumbo nucifera (Gaertn.) are obsolete synonyms and should not be used in current works.

This plant is an aquatic perennial. Under favorable circumstances its seeds may remain viable for many years, with the oldest recorded lotus germination being from that of seeds 1,300 years old recovered from a dry lakebed in northeastern China.

A common misconception is referring to the lotus as a water lily (Nymphaea), an entirely different plant, as can be seen in the center of the flowers, which lack the structure that goes on to form the distinctive circular seed pod in the Nelumbo nucifera.

Native to Tropical Asian nations and Queensland, Australia, it is commonly cultivated in water gardens. It is also the national flower of India and Vietnam.

This footage is part of the professionally-shot broadcast stock footage archive of Wilderness Films India Ltd., the largest collection of imagery from South Asia.

From Big News Network (ANI), Saturday 11th May, 2013:

Sacred lotus bears closest resemblance to ancestor of flowering plants

A team of researchers has reported that they have sequenced the sacred lotus genome, and the results offer insight into the heart of some of its mysteries.

The sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) is a symbol of spiritual purity and longevity. Its seeds can survive up to 1,300 years, its petals and leaves repel grime and water, and its flowers generate heat to attract pollinators.

The sequence reveals that of all the plants sequenced so far – and there are dozens – sacred lotus bears the closest resemblance to the ancestor of all eudicots, a broad category of flowering plants that includes apple, cabbage, cactus, coffee, cotton, grape, melon, peanut, poplar, soybean, sunflower, tobacco and tomato.

The plant lineage that includes the sacred lotus forms a separate branch of the eudicot family tree, and so lacks a signature triplication of the genome seen in most other members of this family, said University of Illinois plant biology and Institute for Genomic Biology professor Ray Ming, who led the analysis with Jane Shen-Miller, a plant and biology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles (who germinated a 1,300-year-old sacred lotus seed); and Shaohua Li, director of the Wuhan Botanical Garden at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“Whole-genome duplications – the doubling, tripling (or more) of an organism’s entire genetic endowment – are an important events in plant evolution,” Ming said.

Some of the duplicated genes retain their original structure and function, and so produce more of a given gene product – a protein, for example, he said. Some gradually adapt new forms to take on new functions. If those changes are beneficial, the genes persist; if they’re harmful, they disappear from the genome.

Many agricultural crops benefit from genome duplications, including banana, papaya, sugarcane, strawberry, watermelon and wheat, said Robert VanBuren, a graduate student in Ming’s lab and collaborator on the study.

Although it lacks the 100 million-year-old triplication of its genome seen in most other eudicots, sacred lotus experienced a separate, whole-genome duplication about 65 million years ago, the researchers found. A large proportion of the duplicated genes (about 40 percent) have been retained, they reported.

“A neat thing about the duplication is that we can look at the genes that were retained and see if they are in specific pathways,” VanBuren said.

The researchers found evidence that duplicated genes related to wax formation (which allows the plant to repel water and remain clean) and survival in a mineral-starved watery habitat were retained, for example.

By looking at changes in the duplicated genes, the researchers found that lotus has a slow mutation rate relative to other plants, Ming said.

These traits make lotus an ideal reference plant for the study of other eudicots, the researchers said.

The researchers reported their finding in the journal Genome Biology.

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How animals learned to eat plants

From the University of Lincoln in England:

Land animals kept fish-like jaws for millions of years

09 May 2013 University of Lincoln

Research has confirmed how early land vertebrates, which evolved from fish, developed weight-bearing limbs and other adaptations long before their feeding systems adjusted to a vegetation-based diet.

Now, for the first time, fossil jaw measurements have demonstrated this gap in evolutionary development.

Scientists from the University of Lincoln (UK), the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the University of Oxford (UK), examined the lower jaws of 89 fossils of early tetrapods (four-footed animals) and their fish-like predecessors.

The fossils ranged in age from about 300 to 400 million years old and the team were interested in how the mechanical properties of the jaws of these animals differed through time.

They used 10 biomechanical metrics to describe jaw differences. One of these, called mechanical advantage, measured how much force an animal can transfer to its bite.

Dr Marcello Ruta, from the School of Life Sciences, University of Lincoln, said: “Our study is the first of its kind to address changes in biomechanical properties of the lower jaw across the transition from fish to land vertebrates using a diverse range of extinct species. This work paves the way to in-depth analyses of the rates of evolutionary transformation in other anatomical structures during this major episode in vertebrate history. It also lays the foundations for integrative research that explores themes as diverse as the origin of the first terrestrial food webs, the impact of acquisition of new structures on the diversification of major animal groups, and patterns and processes of functional change.”

So it turns out that just moving into a new environment is not always enough to trigger functional adaptations.

The team discovered that the mechanical properties of tetrapod jaws did not show significant changes in patterns of terrestrial feeding until some 40 to 80 million years after the four-legged creatures initially came out of the water. Until then, tetrapod jaws were still very fish-like, even though their owners had weight-bearing limbs and the ability to walk on land.

In the paper, which has been published in an early online edition of the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology, the authors say the results may be explained by an earlier hypothesis: a shift from gilled to lung breathing in later four-footed animals was necessary before they could adapt their jaw structure to eating plants.

This finding suggests tetrapods may have shown a limited variety of feeding strategies in the early phases of their evolution on land.

Lead author Dr Phil Anderson, from the University of Massachusetts, said: “The basic result was that it took a while for these animals to adapt their jaws for a land-based diet. They stayed essentially fish-like for a long time.”

Dr Matt Friedman, lecturer in palaeobiology at the University of Oxford, said: “The thing that is really interesting is that the diversity of jaw function didn’t really take off until around the origin of amniotes – creatures that lay hard-shelled eggs on land rather than being tied to water for reproduction like fishes and amphibians. It is in amniotes and their closest relatives that we see the first evidence for dedicated herbivory – until that point tetrapods had basically been carnivores. So this means it took at least 50 million years of evolution after the origin of features like limbs, fingers and toes before tetrapods achieved dietary diversity that began to resemble what we see today.”

The statistical methods developed in this work could be used in future studies of more subtle biomechanical patterns in fossil animals that may not be initially clear.

Related articles

• Coelacanth DNA and tetrapod evolution (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
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• Coelacanth genome sequenced (whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com)
• Scientists Find a Possible New Link in the Evolution of Tetrapods in the Ancient Coelacanth (latinospost.com)
• Genome sequencing of the living coelacanth sheds light on the evolution of land vertebrate (esciencenews.com)