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.
Featured: hot cows
back40 has hot news on cool cows:
Cows are hot. Their eponymous rumens run at about 104F due to the furious activity of rumen biota. This means that heat is often a worse problem than cold since it takes energy to stay cool as well as warm, yet they need to eat and so refill the rumen to get energy. The hurrier they go the behinder they get. Shade in summer is as important as wind shelter in winter.
Not a lot of people know that.
Featured: Cretan wild date palm
Prof. Heywood gives us holiday advice:
In fact, Phoenix theophrasti grows in nine coastal localities in Crete. See here (scroll down to the English text!). That at Moni Preveli, which I have visited several times, is an inlet by a popular tourist beach and you can view the Phoenix populations by pedalo! Very laid-back way of botanising.
Sounds ideal!
Featured: Baroque maize
Eliseu on the portrayal of maize peduncles in a baroque painting:
I think the peduncles are only to give a prominent look to the maize cobs and are the artist’s free interpretation of nature. However, I’ve seen maize cobs with long peduncles, so long that the ears would be pointing downwards, but didn’t look that straight, though!
Featured: Climate change
Meike sets out a research agenda:
[D]efinitely both climate change and land use changes will affect crop production areas and the distribution ranges of crop wild relatives. Most likely they will also influence gene flow and introgression rates, e.g. by affecting the niches of pollinators, flowering times etc.
She was talking about mapping studies, but we say there’s more than enough there for everybody.