- Let “The Bean Counters” show you where to collect wild Phaseolus.
- Protected areas get wikified.
- Expensive book published on the heritage breeds of New Zealand.
- Wild boar going crazy in France.
- Another Hawaiian taro festival. And why not.
- Ecosystems for climate change adaptation. No agroecosystems though.
- Moringa! Not just for people.
- Camelina! Not just for Europeans.
- What is it about barley wild relatives lately?
In the `ecosystems for climate change adaptation’ not only do they leave out agroecosystems (as usual) but get the biodiversity bit wrong. It is mainly coastal ecosystems. For these they advise: `Preserve and restore the structural complexity and biodiversity of vegetation in tidal marshes, seagrass meadows, and mangroves’. This is about as wrong as it gets. Coastal vegetation – in and out of the water – delivers its `ecosystem services’ by `natural monocultures’ (sorry!) of highly adapted species doing the job better than any other species can do. There are vast areas of monodominant Rhizophora and zonal Avicennia, Thalassia and Zostera, and Spartina in and at the edge of the water, and Ammophila and Ipomoea pes-caprae binding the sand on the dunes and beach. There is a similar narrow range of `ecosystem engineer’ species of monodominant vegetation – varying by location – at the edge of or floating in fresh water bodies all over the world.
If you want ecosystem services go for single highly specialized species that are adapted to do the job better than anything else. Don’t mess up this function by diversifying the vegetation.
The associated biodiversity in this specialist vegetation can be phenomenal – Darwin described the diversity of plants and animals in the monodominant Pacific kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) as the greatest he had seen (after working in rain forest). Paddy rice also has this associated biodiversity in a pure stand in mud – farming in nature’s image ??