"Earth's Internet" attempts to document, reference as much of the natural world networking abilities and strategies as possible. Such Scientific findings are at odds with industrial scientific approaches maintaining our planet. Be warned. If your learning approach it based on Memes with short clever quips, you may be disappointed here.
Think birds are the primary dispersers of seeds? Think again. OSU researchers in Alaska found another animal that might disperse more seeds.
Image by TodaysReality
New research recently released by Oregon State University shows bears in southeast Alaska may be the best contributor for spreading berry seeds. Researchers used motion activated cameras set up in a study area about 30 miles north of Haines.
“We checked the cameras and the status of the berry clusters approximately once per week.”quote from the study
Image taken on December 26, 2017 by Santee Lakes
Cedar Waxwings eating Toyon Berries @ Santee Lakes
Image by Danilo Carradori - (Fairy Wren)
We all know that birds consume tonnes of seeds, nuts & berries, etc and disperse these seeds to other locations by means of their poop. Just check any fence lines in the rurals or even in urban neighbourhoods of any city and you'll find out just what birds are fond of eating. For me as a landscaper it was annoying to see Brazilian Pepper tree seedling emerging from the bottom of chainlink fence borders. They are a nightmare to control if allowed to grow. Others who live in rangelands whose business is cattle may curse Junipers for spreading across their grasslands, but even here again it's the birds who are at fault. Maybe Cattleman should find economic ways to profit from the Juniper's presence, than blaming them for the invasion in their home territory. It's a common misconception to say that birds are the primary resource for naturally spreading seeds. There is an Oregon State University study that says it’s bears can ddo this through their scat (poop). I'd say both critters do this, but the bear factor is interesting. The Scientists concluded that’s largely in part due to the fact that brown and black bears could consume an estimated 300-400 berries in a single bite of a devil’s club cluster. Hopefully one day somebody renames beautiful things found in Nature which incorporate these otherwise vulgar words/terms "devil," "hell," etc. It's clear that there are a number of ways that seeds from plants in nature become dispersed. Another recent report from Cornell University stated that even Snakes act as 'ecosystem engineers' in seed dispersal. Well, that's what they said 😲 See, the idea is that snakes eat rodents like rats, mice, gophers, etc. These little critters eat seed and often store them in their cheek pouches and if a snake comes along and eats them, then the seeds are eventually released by means of snake poop. Whatever 😏 Anyway it's interesting and a little scary too when you consider the way humans have "reverse engineered" (Oops, recently got in trouble from someone for not using another science-based religious metaphor, "evolutionary degeneration") our planet Earth. It's like slowly dismantling an automobile to see how many parts and components you can remove before the vehicle is incapable of functioning anymore. How's that for this world's settled science? 😒
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon
“In search of the nutrition in devil’s club fruit, we estimate that a single bear can consume over 100,000 devil’s club berries per hour of continuous foraging, and brown and black bears can collectively disperse an incredible 200,000 seeds.”quote from the study
Image by http://hookedonflyfishing.net
The Oregon State researcher's data also showed black bears were more likely to eat berries late in the season when Grizzly Bears were trading in the berries for salmon. 😅
There was previously another study and practical application of utilizing bear scat in nursery plantings to reveal what had been eaten. Brilliant idea and one I'm not unfamiliar with as I've done the same with Coyote Scat and others have fed native Toyon berries to their Mina bird to facilitate California Holly germination.
Photo courtesy of Rocky Mountain National Park
Image - Art Norton
The photo above at a Nursery reveals that one pile of bear scat sprouted 1,200 berry bush seedlings in Rocky Mountain National Park. According to the article, almost one third of the seedlings were chokecherry. The rest were Oregon grape. Clearly from the leaves you can see which are which. There was a nice comment in the article which dismissed the notice that any and all findings must be stamped as official "science-based." Here's what the author said, "The scat seedlings, which are twice as tall as any human-grown sprout, are not an official scientific study with volumes of data and hours of research. They’re unofficial and called pocket science. This mini-experiment produced the kind of results that make adding real science motivating." Good for him. This is something that anybody could do on the own and share results with others and hand it on down to other generations. 👍
"...Even predators as small as spiders can have considerable impacts on not only plant diversity, but ecosystem processes as well..." May 7, 2017 This little guy in the upper lefthand corner is a Pisaurina mira nursery web spider. As you know, spiders prey on insects for their food and grasshoppers are part of that diet. Given their choice of various plants for food, grasshoppers will preferentially feed on some plants more than others. These researchers found that grasshoppers prefer to eat grasses, but when these nursery web spiders are present, they will switch to another field and change their diet to other plants like Goldenrods. The Goldenrod often dominate an area where they grow, but in the presence of invading hungry grasshoppers who start munching on these plants, they chew holes and open up their monoculture canopy, which allows other plants an opportunity to thrive there as well. So apparently spiders do play an important role in the biodiversity of many plant ecosystems. An article on this was published by the In Defense of Plants journal below.
"How Spiders Increase Plant Diversity"
Image - InDefenseofPlants.com
"It's the shift in diet itself that has ramifications throughout the entire ecosystem in question. Many goldenrod species are highly competitive when left to their own devices. If left untouched, abandoned fields can quickly become a monoculture of goldenrod. That is where the spiders come in. By causing a behavioral shift in their grasshopper prey, the spiders are having indirect effects on plant diversity in these habitats. Because grasshoppers spend more time feeding on goldenrods in the presence of spiders, they knock back some of the competitive advantages of these plants.
The researchers found that when spiders were present, overall plant diversity increased. This is not because the spiders ate more grasshoppers. Instead, it's because the grasshoppers shifted to a diet of goldenrod, which knocked the goldenrod back just enough to allow other plants to establish. It's not just plant diversity that changed either. Spiders also caused an increase in both solar radiation and nitrogen reaching the soils!
In knocking back the goldenrod, the habitat became slightly more open and patchy as various plant species of different shapes and sizes gradually established. This allowed more light to reach the soil, thus changing the environment for new seeds to germinate. Also, because goldenrod leaves tend to break down more slowly, they can have significant influences on nutrient cycles within the soil. As a more diverse set of plants establish in these field habitats, the type of leaf litter that falls to the ground changes as well. This resulted in an overall increase in the nitrogen supply to the soil, which also influences plant diversity.
In total, the mere presence of spiders was enough to set in motion these top-down ecosystem effects. It's not that spiders eat more grasshoppers, it's that they are changing the behavior of grasshoppers in a way that results in a more diverse plant community overall. This is a radically different narrative than what has been observed with examples such as the reintroduction of wolves to the greater Yellowstone ecosystem yet the conclusions are very much the same. Predators have innumerable ecosystem benefits that we simply can't afford to ignore."
Great News for Biodiversity right ? 😍 Well not so fast! 😬
Three days later after I read that wonderful article from the folks at "In Defense of Plants," who wrote about how these fascinating insect mechanism interactions which set off change reactions of events which leads to healthier biodiversity within plant community ecosystems, "Science Magazine," then comes out three days later with an article I had seen elsewhere about insect numbers disappearing. Now pay close attention, this was not about extinction, but population numbers dropping dramatically. This is something I've seriously wondered about with regards not only insects, but many lifeforms and even touched on this very subject once before in this post here where I noticed insect disappearances in my mother's yard where we do not used ANY harsh chemical pesticdes of any kind, including synthetic fertilizers. One outstanding strange thing that is now obvious is the total absence of the native red harvester ants in her backyard which is a third of an acre. Since I can remember as a kid since 1961, we always had 15 or 20 red harvester ant colonies for which my folks always tried to spray and eradicate with never any success. Prior to leaving the USA and moving here to Sweden in May 2006, there were only two actual colonies that I knew of. It caught my attention then and I went around and counted. Now there are none. There are also none across the street where there has always been a very wide dirt strip. Even up on Rattlesnake mountain at the end of the street I found none, only black harvester ants. But I also notived that the sow or pill bugs were very limited and even earwigs were gone. Again, we never spray with the synthetics:
There are also other loss of living lifeforms I've wondered about over the last few years like mycorrhizal fungi. Many would think the microbiological world is safely tucked away in a hidden darkness and in numbers so incomprehensible that it would make it impossible for the microbiome to be harmed. Really ??? I also wrote another piece about the disappearance of a certain specific mycorrhizal fungi truffles I use to collect in and around Anza California where I use to live. For two decades every Spring & Summer (after the first arrival of monsonnal thunderstorms) I would collect mature truffles for their spores to inoculate plants I grew on my acreage and restoration projects I involved myself with locally. Suddenly in 2001 I could no longer find them. I had also previously begun to notice pine and oak trees dying off in the same location before the fungi truffle disappearance. Now large numbers of those pines are gone except for a few and the oaks that still remain are sickly or dead, even Scrub Oaks. So I wrote about that experience as well:
The two articles below is a bit more spooky. This has happened over time, but so slowly that most people "take no note." Wow, where have we heard that before ? This scenario reminds me of the story about the frog put in a pan of water where a low fire is slowly heating up the water. By the time the frog realizes what has happened it's too late. His goose is cooked. That's about where we are now and that is what the researchers are finding in the article below. It's not so much lack of biodiversity or extinction, but a huge loss of bioabundance.
In the days gone by decades ago, normal windshileds (or windscreens) would have often appeared as the photo above. It require frequent stops (when bad enough) to use the window cleaning services at the closest petrol stop.
Photo By Paul Henderson (2013)
Yoday that has all changed. This photo above is becoming more common. The update above from Canada and Britain is interesting, but they are tending to blame more cars on the roads. Folks, there is more going on than more cars on the roads as the post below informs us. But it's an interesting read anyway.
Fireflies, like these shown above in a forest in the Netherlands, have disappeared from some areas in North America and Europe where they were once abundant. The photograph to the right shows Hover flies, which are often mistaken for bees or wasps, are important pollinators. Their numbers have also plummeted in the nature reserves of Germany. Now take very special note here, I said Nature Reserves, not urban landscapes or rural agricultural areas where you would expect such a scenario to be the cause. Sounds like designating something a National Monument is a wasted endeavour which only serves to sugar coat and smokescreen to the public that all is well in the world when all is not well. With all the angry eco-protest marches happening everywhere, we are forced to swallow a sort of religous blind faith-based chant which goes like, "There is peace, there is peace, when they is no peace." The article below starts off by telling a story of the good'ol days when you drove your car and masses of bugs covered the bumper, grill and especially windscreen (shield) of your automobile. For me the worst place for buggageddon was always driving down into the Imperial Valley's industrial agricultural landscape. The insaneness of having to periodically stop at a gas station and cleaning my windscreen a couple of times before I even arrived at my ultimate destination of El Centro was annoying. But now many have noticed the lack of bugs on the windscreen and so have I the last couple of times we have gone through there. So what gives ? What's changed ? That's the whole point of this article.
Where Have All the Insects Gone ?
Of the scant records that do exist, many come from amateur naturalists, whether butterfly collectors or bird watchers. Now, a new set of long-term data is coming to light, this time from a dedicated group of mostly amateur entomologists who have tracked insect abundance at more than 100 nature reserves in western Europe since the 1980s.
Over that time the group, the Krefeld Entomological Society, has seen the yearly insect catches fluctuate, as expected. But in 2013 they spotted something alarming. When they returned to one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%. Perhaps it was a particularly bad year, they thought, so they set up the traps again in 2014. The numbers were just as low. Through more direct comparisons, the group—which had preserved thousands of samples over 3 decades—found dramatic declines across more than a dozen other sites.
Many losses reverberate up the food chain. "If you're an insect-eating bird living in that area, four-fifths of your food is gone in the last quarter-century, which is staggering," says Dave Goulson, an ecologist at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, who is working with the Krefeld group to analyze and publish some of the data. "One almost hopes that it's not representative—that it's some strange artifact."
No one knows how broadly representative the data are of trends elsewhere. But the specificity of the observations offers a unique window into the state of some of the planet's less appreciated species. Germany's "Red List" of endangered insects doesn't look alarming at first glance, says Sorg, who curates the Krefeld society's extensive collection of insect specimens. Few species are listed as extinct because they are still found in one or two sites. But that obscures the fact that many have disappeared from large areas where they were once common. Across Germany, only three bumble bee species have vanished, but the Krefeld region has lost more than half the two dozen bumble bee species that society members documented early in the 20th century.
Members of the Krefeld society have been observing, recording, and collecting insects from the region—and around the world—since 1905. Some of the roughly 50 members—including teachers, telecommunication technicians, and a book publisher—have become world experts on their favorite insects. Siegfried Cymorek, for instance, who was active in the society from the 1950s through the 1980s, never completed high school. He was drafted into the army as a teenager, and after the war he worked in the wood-protection division at a local chemical plant. But because of his extensive knowledge of wood-boring beetles, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1979. Over the years, members have written more than 2000 publications on insect taxonomy, ecology, and behavior.
The society's headquarters is a former school in the center of Krefeld, an industrial town on the banks of the Rhine that was once famous for producing silk. Disused classrooms store more than a million insect specimens individually pinned and named in display cases. Most were collected nearby, but some come from more exotic locales. Among them are those from the collection of a local priest, an active member in the 1940s and 1950s, who persuaded colleagues at mission stations around the world to send him specimens. (The society's collection and archive are under historical preservation protection.)
Weighty disappearances
The mass of insects collected by monitoring traps in the Orbroicher Bruch nature reserve in northwest Germany dropped by 78% in 24 years.
Tens of millions more insects float in carefully labeled bottles of alcohol—the yield from the society's monitoring projects in nature reserves around the region. The reserves, set aside for their local ecological value, are not pristine wilderness but "seminatural" habitats, such as former hay meadows, full of wildflowers, birds, small mammals—and insects. Some even include parts of agricultural fields, which farmers are free to farm with conventional methods. Heinz Schwan, a retired chemist and longtime society member who has weighed thousands of trap samples, says the society began collecting long-term records of insect abundance partly by chance. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, local authorities asked the group for help evaluating how different strategies for managing the reserves affected insect populations and diversity.
The members monitored each site only once every few years, but they set up identical insect traps in the same place each time to ensure clean comparisons. Because commercially available traps vary in ways that affect the catch, the group makes their own. Named for the Swedish entomologist René Malaise, who developed the basic design in the 1930s, each trap resembles a floating tent. Black mesh fabric forms the base, topped by a tent of white fabric and, at the summit, a collection container—a plastic jar with an opening into another jar of alcohol. Insects trapped in the fabric fly up to the jar, where the vapors gradually inebriate them and they fall into the alcohol. The traps collect mainly species that fly a meter or so above the ground. For people who worry that the traps themselves might deplete insect populations, Sorg notes that each trap catches just a few grams per day—equivalent to the daily diet of a shrew.
Sorg says society members saved all the samples because even in the 1980s they recognized that each represented a snapshot of potentially intriguing insect populations. "We found it fascinating—despite the fact that in 1982 the term ‘biodiversity' barely existed," he says. Many samples have not yet been sorted and cataloged—a painstaking labor of love done with tweezers and a microscope. Nor have the group's full findings been published. But some of the data are emerging piecemeal in talks by society members and at a hearing at the German Bundestag, the national parliament, and they are unsettling.
Beyond the striking drop in overall insect biomass, the data point to losses in overlooked groups for which almost no one has kept records. In the Krefeld data, hover flies—important pollinators often mistaken for bees—show a particularly steep decline. In 1989, the group's traps in one reserve collected 17,291 hover flies from 143 species. In 2014, at the same locations, they found only 2737 individuals from 104 species.
Since their initial findings in 2013, the group has installed more traps each year. Working with researchers at several universities, society members are looking for correlations with weather, changes in vegetation, and other factors. No simple cause has yet emerged. Even in reserves where plant diversity and abundance have improved, Sorg says, "the insect numbers still plunged."
A Weather Station for Biodiversity
Researchers in Germany hope to develop a set of automated sensors that will monitor the abundance and diversity of plants, animals, and fungi with the help of pattern recognition and DNA and chemical analysis.
V.ALTOUNIAN/SCIENCE
Changes in land use surrounding the reserves are probably playing a role. "We've lost huge amounts of habitat, which has certainly contributed to all these declines," Goulson says. "If we turn all the seminatural habitats to wheat and cornfields, then there will be virtually no life in those fields." As fields expand and hedgerows disappear, the isolated islands of habitat left can support fewer species. Increased fertilizer on remaining grazing lands favors grasses over the diverse wildflowers that many insects prefer. And when development replaces countryside, streets and buildings generate light pollution that leads nocturnal insects astray and interrupts their mating.
Neonicotinoid pesticides, already implicated in the widespread crash of bee populations, are another prime suspect. Introduced in the 1980s, they are now the world's most popular insecticides, initially viewed as relatively benign because they are often applied directly to seeds rather than sprayed. But because they are water soluble, they don't stay put in the fields where they are used. Goulson and his colleagues reported in 2015 that nectar and pollen from wildflowers next to treated fields can have higher concentrations of neonicotinoids than the crop plants. Although initial safety studies showed that allowable levels of the compounds didn't kill honey bees directly, they do affect the insects' abilities to navigate and communicate, according to later research. Researchers found similar effects in wild solitary bees and bumble bees.
Less is known about how those chemicals affect other insects, but new studies of parasitoid wasps suggest those effects could be significant. Those solitary wasps play multiple roles in ecosystems—as pollinators, predators of other insects, and prey for larger animals. A team from the University of Regensburg in Germany reported in Scientific Reports in February that exposing the wasp Nasonia vitripennis to just 1 nanogram of one common neonicotinoid cut mating rates by more than half and decreased females' ability to find hosts. "It's as if the [exposed] insect is dead" from a population point of view because it can't produce offspring, says Lars Krogmann, an entomologist at the Stuttgart Natural History Museum in Germany.
No one can prove that the pesticides are to blame for the decline, however. "There is no data on insecticide levels, especially in nature reserves," Sorg says. The group has tried to find out what kinds of pesticides are used in fields near the reserves, but that has proved difficult, he says. "We simply don't know what the drivers are" in the Krefeld data, Goulson says. "It's not an experiment. It's an observation of this massive decline. The data themselves are strong. Understanding it and knowing what to do about it is difficult."
The factors causing trouble for the hover flies, moths, and bumble bees in Germany are probably at work elsewhere, if clean windshields are any indication. Since 1968, scientists at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research center in Harpenden, U.K., have operated a system of suction traps—12-meter-long suction tubes pointing skyward. Set up in fields to monitor agricultural pests, the traps capture all manner of insects that happen to fly over them; they are "effectively upside-down Hoovers running 24/7, continually sampling the air for migrating insects," says James Bell, who heads the Rothamsted Insect Survey.
Between 1970 and 2002, the biomass caught in the traps in southern England did not decline significantly. Catches in southern Scotland, however, declined by more than two-thirds during the same period. Bell notes that overall numbers in Scotland were much higher at the start of the study. "It might be that much of the [insect] abundance in southern England had already been lost" by 1970, he says, after the dramatic postwar changes in agriculture and land use.
The stable catches in southern England are in part due to constant levels of pests such as aphids, which can thrive when their insect predators are removed. Such species can take advantage of a variety of environments, move large distances, and reproduce multiple times per year. Some can even benefit from pesticides because they reproduce quickly enough to develop resistance, whereas their predators decline. "So lots of insects will do great, but the insects that we love may not," Black says.
Other, more visible creatures may be feeling the effects of the insect losses. Across North America and Europe, species of birds that eat flying insects, such as larks, swallows, and swifts, are in steep decline. Habitat loss certainly plays a role, Nocera says, "but the obvious factor that ties them all together is their diet."
Some intriguing, although indirect, clues come from a rare ecological treasure: decades' worth of stratified bird droppings. Nocera and his colleagues have been probing disused chimneys across Canada in which chimney swifts have built their nests for generations. From the droppings, he and his colleagues can reconstruct the diets of the birds, which eat almost exclusively insects caught on the wing.
The layers revealed a striking change in the birds' diets in the 1940s, around the time DDT was introduced. The proportion of beetle remains dropped off, suggesting the birds were eating smaller insects—and getting fewer calories per catch. The proportion of beetle parts increased slightly again after DDT was banned in the 1970s but never reached its earlier levels. The lack of direct data on insect populations is frustrating, Nocera says. "It's all correlative. We know that insect populations could have changed to create the population decline we have now. But we don't have the data, and we never will, because we can't go back in time."
Sorg and Wägele agree. "We deeply regret that we did not set up more traps 20 or 30 years ago," Sorg says. He and other Krefeld society members are now working with Wägele's group to develop what they wish they had had earlier: a system of automated monitoring stations they hope will combine audio recordings, camera traps, pollen and spore filters, and automated insect traps into a "biodiversity weather station". Instead of tedious manual analysis, they hope to use automated sequencing and genetic barcoding to analyze the insect samples. Such data could help pinpoint what is causing the decline—and where efforts to reverse it might work best.
Paying attention to what E. O. Wilson calls "the little things that run the world" is worthwhile, Sorg says. "We won't exterminate all insects. That's nonsense. Vertebrates would die out first. But we can cause massive damage to biodiversity—damage that harms us."
Update May 20, 2017: Sithsoniaan Tropical Research Institute
Credit: Chung Yun Tak
Credit: Saskya Van Nouhuys
I'm interjecting this tropical research report here because it is relevant to the importance of insecting leading the way ecosystems are sustained in balance. Using plasticine caterpillar models like this one in the photo above and at right at the Smithsonian's ForestGEO site of Tai Po Kau in Hong Kong, researchers discovered a global pattern of higher predation at low elevations and low latitudes. Clearly what we consider pest insects are those insects thaat eat plants we like in our landscapes, gardens and farms. But we should also acknowledge that there are beneficial natural components which eat such pests. First thing that comes to most people's minds are such predators as birds & anmals, but that is not what these researchers found. Insect predators are the most important abundant predators of pest insects in the wild as this study below found. So when loss of Bioabundance of predatory insects takes place, our goose is cooked and the only real winners in the perverted sense as all the Agro-Chemical & Biotech Industries. As sick & horrific as that sounds, it's nevertheless the truth.
Predators are Real Lowlifes
Insects drove the trend, not mammals or birds. “As someone who has studied insect biodiversity in the tropics for most of my life, I wasn’t surprised that insects were responsible for most of the predation observed,” said Yves Basset, leader of the ForestGEO Arthropod Initiative at STRI.
The team put out almost 3,000 model caterpillars for four to 18 days at 31 different sites from Australia to Greenland at different altitudes, from zero to 2,100 meters above sea level. Based on characteristic marks left by predators in the clay, they could tell whether the models were attacked by birds, mammals or insects.
This should be a wake up call, but most likely it will generally fall on deaf ears. Mere handfulls of interested ones will click "Like" on some Enviro-Facebook page, but mostly it will go unnoticed. The average human being hates bugs and buys into the industrial science marketing of "An only good Bug is a dead Bug." Think back on those RAID commercials. Synthetic Pesticides are incapable of differienting between and good and bad insect. Most don't care. They want bugs gone. Seriously, walk down any Home Depot, Lowes, Hornbach, Bau Haus or other local hardware store and the only viable healthy garden solution they offer is a science-based synthetic toxic option. No instruction or education of ever building a biodiverse system in your garden thru biomimicry. There was a reference to E.O. Wilson at the end of the article. These days everyone seems to want to worship the ground that E.O. Wilson walks on as something hallowed. The 80+ E.O. Wilson, is a Harvard professor of evolutionary biology who made his celebrity claim to fame back in the 1970s with his study of social species in two books, The Insect Societies and Sociobiology. He is internationally acknowledged as "the father of sociobiology" and is the world's leading authority on ants. Hence I can understand why Gretchen Vogel who wrote the article referenced him in the last paragraph where she quotes him as saying "we must pay attention to the little things that run the world." Sure enough in his book, Diversity of Life, E.O. Wilson stated:
“Most life on land depends ultimately on one relationship: the mycorrhiza, the intimate and mutually dependent coexistence of fungi and the roots systems of plants.”
His point of course was that the importance of these beneficial fungi should not be underestimated. So okay, he has some good points on why our understanding of Nature's micro-world should be better. I totally agree. But then at other times he does an about face and turns right around and out of the other corner of his mouth tells the world that Industrial Agriculture's Biotech World is the only thing that can save Nature. In 2011 in an interview in "EarthSky Journal," E.O. Wilson said:
"And within science, this is going to be a century of biology. We are entering an age of synthesis. So many discoveries have been made in biology in the cell, at the molecular level, and on up to the development of organisms."
"And we need all the biology and all the advances we can find in agriculture, especially. We’re going to have to switch worldwide to dry land agriculture. We don’t have enough water in enough countries to feed all those people and to restore soil to arable condition. So this means that we have to have genetically modified organisms. I’d take that as a given. Some people don’t like the idea. But that’s one of those necessities brought about by the human condition."
Clearly the very thing Wilson here is advocating is the very thing that is killing biodiversity and bioabundance. E.O. Wilson like Bill Nye will never admit that because supporting biotech world is paramont in keeping hold of their science celebrity darling icon status. Bill Nye was once opposed to GMOs, but then one day Monsanto showed him the light. More than likely he was ushered into a back room and explained the facts of life by the good'ol boys club about what he should do to keep that status quo as a celebrity icon if he knew what was healthy for him. Both Wilson and Nye are also staunch advocates of the"Agrument from Poor Design" religious dogma. I use the term religious here because there is nothing scientific about it. It's done more harm to the natural world and held back real world sustainable eco-green technological innovation more than anything else. Both men are also part of the new secular attitude espoused earlier by Edward Abbey who believed mankind is worthless and desperately needs culling if not outright removal. Although both men do not see either of themselves as part of that problem. Nobody questions these science celebrity icons and they should. Unfortunately, E.O. Wilson's and Bill Nye’s intolerant worldview seems to be rubbing off and infecting many of today's Gen-X and Millennials (think of turmoil & uncertainty) which might explain some of the insane chaos which is a common component of today's world.
Well, getting back to insects and the two artcles. A couple years ago Germany (one of the biggest users of palm oil) expressed self-righteous indignation towards Indonesia for cutting down their country's rainforests and replacing them with palm oil plantations. The Indonesian leader also fired back exposing Germany for destroying 70% of Germany's original forests. Sure enough that is true. What forests that do exist have become industrial forestry plantations, with only those few scattered nature reserves which we spoke of earlier. This is also true of most of industrial Europe including Sweden. This may well account for the drop in not only insects, but also other wildlife. So blame cannot be put squarely on the shoulders of industrial science, but also these science celebrity icons whom they go to bed with figuratively speaking to promote their technology. For all the public shouting and fingerpointing these celebrities do at the average human being for not being eco-green, they themseves are the blind leading the blind. These icons need to be exposed for what they really are. As for the average person, follow the lead recommended by the first article from the "In Defense of Plants" people. Learn how nature works and biomimic that in your own landscape or garden. As far as the bigger picture, this world's leadership (irrespecitive of the ideological worldview) needs to be completely eradicated soon. If that doesn't happen, then nothing will be saved.
Update 2018 --->>> Anyone else noticing this too ??? 😲
I've been waiting for an opportunity to highlight the pollinator/predator attracting abilities of California Coffeeberry for a very long time. I have a sense of photographer's remorse for not documenting my own California Coffeeberry ("Eve Case" & "San Bruno") shrubs all those years in Anza California for their pollinator/predator attracting abilities. As reported previously, these plants do not have anything close to a showy display when it comes to flowering. Yet, it was always as if my California Coffeeberries had a sort of potent pheromone infused nectar for which every winged insect couldn't resist. There is almost nothing in the scientific literature about this important ability of Coffeeberry. As we understand with most of the science stories out there on many flowers, it's always the showy display, colour, fragrance etc that has some evolutionary advantage. The problem with their description is that the storytelling is done from a human perspective on what a human thinks, sees or smells. Do insects and other critters really think and feel about something as we do ? What about all those night pollinators ? Surely colour and looks don't come into play. California Coffeeberry breaks all the rules here. From a human perspective, there is nobody would ever plant a California Coffeeberry for it's showy beautiful fragrant flowers. Because from a human viewpoint, none of those good qualities exist. In the photo above and below, take a real close look at those flower clusters.
Image - Mother Nature's Backyard
Clearly we cannot simply judge which shrubs would be ideal for attracting beneficial insects to take control of pests based on mere outward appearance of flowers. The California Coffeeberry, while having gorgeous foliage and variability in fruit colour throughout the year, is definitely not high on anyone's list for it's flowering beauty contest awards. Judging by mere outward appearance would be a mistaken viewpoint with regards this plant and one based on ignorance of just what it's true potential really is and why. I'm not the only one to have noticed Coffeeberry's subtle unseen ability to cause a plethora of insects to go insane when it blooms. Actually, at my old place up in the San Jacinto Mountains, I would often see insects huddling around even immature flower clusters long before they opened. Two quotes below prove what I've been saying all this time. The first one is from a San Diego artist, photographer & garden enthusiast, James Soe Nyun. The second one comes from the University of California's Division of Agriculture & Natural Resources' author, Harold McDonald, avid native plant gardener.
"The coffeeberry’s flowers are much more nondescript to humans. On the recent garden tour I spoke to a homeowner who was wishing that she hadn’t planted her coffeeberries so close to paths because the bugs seem to go crazy over its blooms, more so than just about any other native plant. Here we have the humble blooms of Frangula (Rhamnus) californica ‘Eve Case.’ "
"Coffeeberry is like some of the best kind of people: not particularly flashy, but always handsome, dependable and low maintenance. We appreciate the green it provides throughout the year. All manner of flies and bees appreciate the tiny white flowers (I hear a quiet roar each time I pass the ones by my back steps), and the berries all seem to disappear, so I assume the birds are enjoying them surreptitiously!"
My own personal experience with California Coffeeberry in Anza California
Image Mine (May 2013)
In the foreground below the Jeffrey Pine which was transplanted from Garner Valley back in 1986, this Coffeeberry cultivator is "Mound San Bruno" which was planted back in 1994.
Image Mine - 'San Bruno'
My own personal experience with the Coffeeberry's pollinator qualities came quite by accident. I selected California Coffeeberry for it's bright green foliage and multicoloured berries. I never gave a thought about the flowers. In the photograph above is a "Mound San Bruno" which is a lower growing small cultivator under that Jeffrey Pine. Up on the hill behind the Jeffrey is a California Holly (or Toyon) and behind that is my "Eve Case" cultivator of California Coffeeberry. That was the larger shrub and from it volunteers spread by means of Scrub Jays planting seeds were a common occurrence. But what caught my attention one day while I walked past the shrub in bloom (always the first shrub to bloom), was a fairly load humming or roaring sound as Harold McDonald made mention of in the second paragraph above. And as James Soe Nyun mention in his story, the bugs insects go crazy over the blooms. I had never seen so many diversified groups of insects scampering over each other for a fix of whatever it was making everyone high.
Bees, Wasps, Flies, Mosquitoes & Gnats, oh my
Of course the obvious critters that come to mind when you mention bees and wasps are Honey Bees and Yellow Jackets. But there are 100s or maybe 1000s of these types of creatures, the majority of which we've probably never seen, or if we do, we've never given a second thought other than, well it's just some other little bug. But these are the type of beneficial predators we want to attract. While the large ones will also often hunt prey and provide pollinator services, it's those smaller ones that really attack and kill the herbivore pest bugs which eat our garden and farm crops. This is where the plant's true purpose shine through.
Photo: Megan O’Donald
Honey Bees on California Coffeeberry (Frangula californica/Rhamnus californica)
Image - Marc Kummel (Oct 2013)
Tachinid Fly (Cylindromyia, Tachinidae, Diptera) on native Coyote Bush (Baccharis pilularis, Asteraceae)
Image - Marc Kummel (July 2015)
Small bristly Tachinid Fly (Tachinidae, Diptera) ovipositing on Coffeeberry
Adult Tachinid Flies visit flowers, but their larvae are parasitic on other insects out in the wilds like Scorpions, Centipedes many spiders and especially herbivore insects like caterpillars and help control them. They are beneficial insects - except for the insects they parasitize! Here is a good resource for Techinid Flies:
Bee Fly (Thevenetimyia, Bombyliidae, Diptera) on a flower of native Coffeeberry
Image - Marc Kummel (April 2015)
Crane Fly (Tipulidae, Diptera) California Coffeeberry (Frangula californica, Rhamnaceae)
Butterflies & California Coffeeberry
The next group that were always obsessedly attracted to my California Coffeeberry shrubs were members of the butterfly family (Both Butterlies & Moths). Mostly they hovered and rarely landed. You could always tell that they wanted to though, but were intimidated by the mass of tiny flies, wasps, bees, mosquitoes, gnats and other things crawling all over each other on these flower clusters. Pale yellow Swallowtails were also a big draw to Coffeeberry, but they too didn't like the party animal house gang who showed up at the Flower Festival.
Image - Marc Kummel (May 2015)
American Lady and Lorquin's Admiral butterflies on Coffeeberry flowers
Image - Marc Kummel (May 2013)
Spring Azure (Celastrina ladon) butterfly on native Coffeeberry (Rhamnus californica, Rhamnaceae)
Image - Marc Kummel (May 2014) Gold-Hunter's Hairstreak (Satyrium auretorum) butterfly on Coffeeberry (Rhamnus californica, Frangula californica)
Other Critters who visit California Coffeeberry
Image - Mark Kummel 2017
This is ant looks like the common Velvety tree ant (Liometopum occidentale) which is common to the San Diego backcountry, especially under Coast Live Oaks.
Image Marc Kummel (July 2014)
Ants (Formicidae) tending aphids (Aphididae) on Coffeeberry (Frangula californica, Rhamnaceae)
One comment to note here on Aphids. I also had some Aphids and Ants on the Coffeeberry, but mainly on the tips of new leaf buds. But never fear, Coffeeberry nectar grabs the attention of Ladybugs too. 😉
Image - Marc Kummel - 2017
Interestingly, my Coffeeberry "Eve Case," always had it's entire leaf canopy loaded with so many droplets of sticky honeydew that the leaves looked glossy wet. They were very sticky and many of the insects were as much attracted to the leaves as flowers. My smaller "Mound San Bruno" variety didn't have as much of a sticky leaf problem, but they still loved the blooms. In all those 20+ years of gardening, not once did I ever employ the use of synthetic science-based pesticides on my 3+ acres. Between all my chaparral hedges (Coffeeberry, Ceanothus, California Holly & Flannel Bush or Fremontodrendron), the insect pest control balanced the rest of the property. Oddly, numerous different kinds of beetles also climbed into the mixed orgy of insects climbing over one another on the flower clusters.
Image - Marc Kummel (May 2015)
Lots of beautiful beetle butts on this native Coffeeberry (Frangula californica, Rhamnaceae)
Image - Marc Kummel (June 2015) Metallic Wood Boring Beetle (Acmaeodera, Buprestidae, Coleoptera) on native California Coffeeberry
“Nature is not competitive. It is ruthlessly collaborative” - Spencer Smith (rancher)
It's sad when you realize that it's mostly the common people who actually work & reside outside of mainstream Academia & the Scientific community who are the ones who have to pushed for a more biomimetic approach to caring for this planet. Spencer Smith is one of those as are Joel Salatin and Gabe Brown. But there are also many well known institutions who have taken the bold step of rejecting mainstream science-based methodologies with regards the usage of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. Unfortunately for all of us, their's is not the science that rules our world. At times many of these people who have chosen to pursue a course of holistic biomimicry have been criticized for their supposedly pseudoscientific course of action by the Scientific Orthodoxy of Academics who have prior industrial commitments. Nothing about biomimicry is anti-science, rather the so-called "Green Revolution" we have all been force fed since Elementary School is just plain bad science which is based on ignorance of how nature really works. But not all Academics and Scientific Researchers have bought into the conventional line of thought. One group I have followed is the Entomology Department at UC Berkeley along with the Kremen Lab Group. For me personally, I have a strong interest in California's Chaparral Plant Community and the potential for beneficial usage of such plants in attracting beneficial insects for pest control by means of hedgerows. I've written about this before with info from the Xerces Society. This group has achieved excellent results through real world plantings of chaparral hedgerows adjacent to agricultural farm fields in California's Central Valley. Yet very little discussion is found in mainstream Media journals. The group has also selected predetermined chaparral species which been proven to be the most effective in attracting the beneficial predators, along with providing the proper nesting habitat for their young. Consider this chart below which provides a list of the best chaparral species they have used along with the times of year they are most effective bloomers.
Well, those are some of the most popular and I must say easiest shrubs to maintain. Many of the sites I have visited on this subject are recommending drip irrigation, but for me in the short term & long haul, it's initially expensive, needs maintenance of the head fittings because of poor water quality or insects invading looking for water and then wildlife in general (Coyotes, Rabbits, Ground Squirrels, etc) will chew into the soft pipe looking for water. So rather than wasting money on an expensive drip system which will need various replacements parts from damage and wear (not to mention keeping the shrubs on life-support forever, instead of maturing), I would recommend establishing the chaparral hedgerow by means of the Groasis Waterboxx Technology planting system which directs water downwards, encourages root growth straight down into subsoil layers and mycorrhizal blended mix within the soil at time of planting the seedlings. This has already been successfully done in numerous desert areas for windbreaks around the globe.
Image - designrevolution.org
Image - groasis.com
Take note of the photo on the right. Every 5 minutes a giant truck from Minera Cupa, Spain passes loaded with rocks that are replanted with biodegradable waterboxxes. These waterboxxes are being used all over the world for mine site reclamation projects and vegetative programs to green deserts around the Earth. This is where water savings comes into play, plus these boxes can be used over and over if they are not the biodegradable type. Mexico has purchase one million of these planting boxes with 80,000 going to desert restoration projects in Baja California. This would be the cheapest and most inefficient way of establishing chaparral hedgerows. Prior to planting however, farmers could install an underground out of sight simple deep pipe irrigation system infrastructure to be used maybe once or twice a year, perhaps not at all if rainfall totals ever normalize or chaparral root systems reached valley floor water tables. But it would always be available as a back up system.
Image - University California Davis
Can you identify some of the chaparral plants being used in the hedgerow above ? Mexican Elderberry, California Holly or Toyon, California Coffeeberry, Coyote Brush, California Buckwheat and California lilac or Ceanothus. Even a few native bunch grasses. Their purpose in the hedgerow as in the wild is to provide not only valuable food sources, but also a habitat for all beneficial pollinators and predators. Much like the larvae of this adult syrphid fly on the right, called hover fly, which will feed on aphids. The other important factor is maintaining a good soil and gravel mix which will provide good ground nesting habitat for many of these critters who dig burrows, capture and paralyze pest prey and stuff them down the hole for their young to feed on until they hatch.
Image - University California Davis
One of the more interesting facts I found in their research was that not just any plants will do for attracting those good pollinator/predator insects. In fact the wrong plants will be a magnet for the pest insects. Farm fields with weedy margins loaded with non-native annuals or ruderals are a haven for the bad bugs. This makes sense to me as most of those types of ruderal plants have no real defense mechanisms. Most of their resources go into offensive strategies. Like putting all energies into seed production to make more of themselves. Ever notice that many of these weeds are quite often loaded with pests ? They have no defenses. These Stinkbugs in the photo here on the right are some of the major pests that damage crops. Take a look at the weedy field margin above. Notice any familiar plants ? Black Mustard, Malva or Cheeseweed, Sow Thistle & Wild Radish all host plants to not only Stinkbugs, but also cucumber beetle, Lygus and Flea Beetles. Clearly another reason to plant chaparral hedgerows (which create mycorrhizal soil systems which outcompete weeds for nutrients) and removal of weedy margins.
Other Hedgerow Components of Note: Baja Fairy Dusters, Gold Finches & other predator birds
Image - Horticulture Limited
Baja Fairy Duster (Calliandra californica)
One important plant of note for many of the agricultural areas in the southwest's desert areas where much of the agriculture is performed. Baja Fairy Duster is an excellent pollinator and predator attractant shrub. Being a desert plant with deeper root systems and it's tolerance for high heat, it should make an excellent addition to a Hedgerow in desert environments. My mum's place in El Cajon California where I planted one in her front yard has a continuous 3 or 4 months long period of blooming during the hottest times of the year and attracts almost as many beneficial insects as California Coffeeberry. The other side benefits are all the predatory birds like finches and sparrows, etc. Don't forget many Hedgerow folks have also placed Owl & Kestrel nesting boxes on posts in Hedgerows. These birds are predators to rodents which are also crop pests. Pest birds on field crops were found to do the same amount of damage irrespective of type of plant communities or none at all. Hedgerows do not increase bird pests. I've provided a link below.
