Friendly, but too misleading?

from the Trees in Space blog:

The four types of plants

Botany has an image problem. Part of the issue is that it’s perceived as possessing arcane and esoteric language, making it impenetrable to outsiders. There is some justification in this; an average reader would need a large glossary to hand in order to tackle the more recondite specialist floras. That said, for readers in the UK, there are excellent and accessible floras that anyone can use, which, combined with a guide to plant families should be enough to set anyone on the right path.

As Kew Gardens’ recent State of the World’s Plants report attests, there are almost 400,000 known plant species, a number which is only set to increase. This is daunting complexity. There have therefore been multiple attempts to simplify the diversity of plants into a set of categories, based on their taxonomy, appearance or function, to help break down the problem into manageable chunks.

One of the most influential attempts to do this was by the great Danish botanist Christen Raunkiær, a founding figure in plant ecology, who recognised a series of plant life forms:

Plant life forms as determined by Raunkiaer (1907). Plant parts are distinguished between those which are ephemeral or temporary (thin lines) and those which persist through unfavourable seasons such as cold winters (dark lines). Names are given in the text.

These sketches appear to be straightforward divisions. One could easily map them onto common vernacular terms: tree, shrub, vine and so forth. Alas, would that it were so easy. The numbers on the

Project Feederwatch - Cornell Citizen Science and Phenology

Project Feederwatch from Cornell  -  http://feederwatch.org/

Razorback Sucker Habitat

from the Nature Conservancy:

Utah

Gently Down the Stream

Planning a fish nursery at the Matheson Wetlands Preserve

“AFTER 20 YEARS OF PLANNING AND CONCERTED EFFORTS TO BRING THIS SPECIES BACK FROM THE BRINK OF EXTINCTION, IT’S EXCITING TO THINK THAT MOAB’S DESERT OASIS MAY BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION FOR THIS ENDANGERED FISH.”

- Linda Whitham, Central Canyonlands Program Manager

The Colorado River, flowing near Moab, is home to many endangered fish species, including the razorback sucker. For many years, the razorback sucker was thought to have almost completely disappeared from this section of the river. Yet, in just the past three years there has been an exciting and unexpected resurgence of this elusive species.

HISTORY OF RAZORBACK SUCKER HABITAT

Twenty years ago, The Nature Conservancy and its partners were looking at areas along the Colorado River that could serve as potential nursery habitats for razorback sucker larvae, including the Scott M. Matheson Wetlands Preserve located in Moab. Although the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources stocks the razorback sucker each year, studies show that natural recruitment, which occurs when water floods into off-channel nursery habitat, may be necessary to ensure self-sustaining populations.

Unfortunately, changing river dynamics caused by dam operations and the appearance of tamarisk along river bankshave reduced the availability of slow-moving, back-eddy fish habitat like that found in the Scott M. Matheson Wetlands Preserve.

HOPE FOR RECOVERY

Recently, the Conservancy and its partners at the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (UDWR) began to revisit the preserve as a potential nursery habitat. After conducting research last summer, fish biologists have found existing razorback sucker larvae along the shoreline of the preserve. This find brings renewed hope that with a little innovative engineering the preserve could become a place where these larvae would be protected from predation during that vulnerable part of their lifecycle. Once they are big enough, the fish would then be released back into the river, giving them a much better chance of survival and opportunity for recovery.

LOOKING FORWARD

The Conservancy has hired an engineer to do a feasibility study to determine what it would take to bring fish larvae into the preserve’s central pond during spring flows and then release them back into the river in the fall. Meanwhile, Linda Whitham, Central Canyonlands Program Manager for the Conservancy in Utah and manager of the Scott M. Matheson Wetlands Preserve, and her UDWR partners are moving ahead with plans to develop a nursery and working to secure funding for this exciting project.

“We’re hoping that by this summer we’ll have a design plan and some funding in hand to get started on the project this fall,” says Whitham. “There’s a tremendous groundswell of enthusiasm from all our different partners. After 20 years of planning and concerted efforts to bring this species back from the brink of extinction, it’s exciting to think that Moab’s desert oasis may be a part of the solution for this endangered fish.”

Help with a BioBlitz!

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Australian Privet Hawk Moth

Here is a short video clip of an Australian Privet Hawk Moth (Sphinx ligustri). It's similar to our Hermit Sphinx moth in the same family (Lintneria eremitus). The similar but somewhat more Northeastern US Canadian Sphinx (Sphinx canadensis) is in the same Genus.

Earth with no water

Sex change in nature

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_change

Clownfish, wrasses, moray eels, gobies and other fish species are known to change sex, including reproductive functions. A school of clownfish is always built into a hierarchy with a female fish at the top. When she dies, the most dominant male changes sex and takes her place.

Heat effects on sex of turtle eggs

from the Washington Post

Baby snapping turtles (Jackie Lorentz/University of North Dakota)

Some like it hot: Scientists figure out why female turtles are born at higher temperatures

by Sara Kaplan, May 6

In the 1980s, scientists trying to save sea turtles noticed something truly bizarre.

They thought they were doing something good: rescuing eggs from vulnerable beaches and keeping them warm in incubators until they were ready to swim out to sea.

But when the sea turtles were born, almost every single one of them was male. At that point, scientists had known for some 80 years that sex was determined by a creature's chromosomes. It seemed crazy that you could skew a hatchling's gender just by taking its egg out of the sand — just as crazy as saying that the gender of a baby depended on where its mother lived while she was pregnant.

And yet here were dozens of all-male sea turtle siblings wriggling in front of them, emphatically suggesting that sex wasn't as straightforward as it seemed.

What those scientists encountered was temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD), a phenomenon found in a range of cold-blooded animals. Unlike mammals, birds and other creatures, whose sex is set by the chromosomes they get from their parents, the trigger that causes turtle embryos to develop into baby boys or girls comes from outside the egg. Warmer ambient temperatures during incubation will make the hatchlings skew toward female. But keep the eggs just a few degrees cooler — as the scientists in the ’80s inadvertently did — and they'll come out mostly male.

Five decades later, scientists are still trying to understand exactly how and why that happens. From an evolutionary standpoint, it seems like a pretty risky adaptation; it would only take a few hot years full of female hatchlings to spell the end of the entire species. And from a developmental standpoint, it's just as confusing. If an embryonic turtle's chromosomes aren't telling it what way to grow, what is?

Read the whole article (and see photos) at 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/05/06/some-like-it-hot-scientists-figured-out-why-female-turtles-are-born-at-higher-temperatures/