Author: Luigi Guarino

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Hundreds of 100 questions

Gosh, it’s difficult to keep track of this stuff. There’s been an explosion of “one hundred most important questions facing X” initiatives in the past couple of years. These are the ones I was able to track down, listed in no particular order, but there may be others out there, in which case let us know.

I think the only one we actually blogged about here was the plant science one.

Anyway, I bring all this up because I’ve just heard that Professor Jules Pretty from Essex University is now spearheading an effort to summarize the world’s agricultural challenges down to the top 100 priority questions. Of course, the most interesting thing about these lists will be the intersection among them. Talk about bang for your buck.

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Aurochs alive and well

Well, not quite. But some of their DNA is. A paper just out in PLoS ONE has found two mitochondrial DNA haplogroups (the ones labelled R and P in the diagram below) which apparently got into Italian local breeds from “European aurochsen [haplogroup E] as the result of sporadic interbreeding events with domestic herds grazing in the wild.” Some of these breeds are rare and marginalized, though, so even the last remnants of the aurochs might be in danger.

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Featured: CWRs and protected areas

Our mate Danny weighs in on CWRs and protected areas:

Maybe what is required is a more dynamic approach to CWR conservation… A more holistic approach to increasingly mobile target areas.

And yes, he has some details.

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Short-haired bumblebee goes home

The bumblebee Bombus subterraneus is extinct in the UK — it was last seen in 1988 at Dungeness nature reserve on the south Kent coast — but has been thriving in New Zealand.

The short-haired bumblebee was exported from the UK to New Zealand on the first refrigerated lamb boats in the late 19th Century to pollinate clover crops.

It has disappeared in Britain (though it apparently is still to be found on the continent) because of “[l]oss of extensive, herb-rich grasslands, especially those containing good stands of plants of the families Lamiaceae and Fabaceae, through agricultural intensification.” But now there’s a plan to set up a captive breeding programme using the expats, with a view to reintroduction, including in restored habitats.

I could not find any information on whether the decline of the short-haired bumblebee affected the pollination of any plant species, or whether the slack has been taken up by other bumblebees. But be that as it may, this is an interesting example of assisted migration, of a sort, though I don’t think climate change has been implicated in the fate of the insect in Britain. It’s also an example of going back to former colonies to look for genetic resources that are no longer to be found in the “mother” country. Like those Hopi peaches of a few days back. Uhm, I feel another post coming on…