Category: Genetic erosion

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Rapid agrobiodiversity surveys

This SciDevNet piece led me to this Nature article on the theory and practice of the Rapid Biological Inventory, “a quick, intensive taxonomic expedition designed to identify areas of particular biological, geological and cultural significance before development and exploitation take hold.”

Using satellite images, maps and other data, biologists target promising areas and then work with local scientists and students to walk existing and newly cut trails, recording the species they encounter. (…) In parallel with these are social inventories — surveys of the organisational structure of local communities and how they use the forest. The teams work with indigenous groups, government and local conservation organisations to deepen their understanding of the value of the surveyed areas.

I think the concept was pioneered by Conservation International, under the name Rapid Assessment Program, or RAP, but as far as I can see it hasn’t been applied to agricultural biodiversity, at least not explicitly. Seems to me one could come up with a pretty good “rapid agrodiversity assessment” methodology based on standard crop descriptors combined with traditional knowledge, wrapped up in a participatory rural appraisal (PRA) approach. Maybe someone already has?

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How the European Common Catalogue destroys biodiversity

Charities know that it is a good idea to forge a bond between those who have and those who have not — the better to make those who have, give. So winsome children and kindly old people show us that we are all part of one big happy family, and families help one another, don’t they? But what if those who are normally the position of having, and giving, become those who need?

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that as far as agricultural biodiversity is concerned, Europe is probably more in need of help than anywhere else. Elsewhere, as in Europe, intensive agriculture and monocropping are destroying existing biodiversity. But elsewhere, unlike Europe, farmers, gardeners and ordinary folk who just want to grow themselves a bit of food have a bit of choice. If they can find the variety they want, they can buy it (or obtain it by barter, whatever) and grow it. In Europe that is not legal.
Continue reading “How the European Common Catalogue destroys biodiversity”

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Using biodiversity collections

Researchers have estimated rates of reproduction and survival for the marbled murrelet by “comparing the ratios of birds in different age groups using 170 specimens collected between 1892 and 1922 housed in the collections of the California Academy of Sciences and the UC Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology … with values predicted from comparison with other bird species, and with contemporary rates obtained from murrelets they captured at sea and from their mark-recapture studies.” The results suggested that birth rates were almost 10 times higher for this endangered seabird 100 years ago than they are today. Read all about it here. That’s a very creative use of a biodiversity collection to explain the recent decline in numbers of this species, and its conservation status. Has something similar been done with herbarium and/or plant genebank collections? I can’t think of any examples, but they must be out there…

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Wild food plants of Zimbabwe

According to this article in the Harare Herald, the Kellogg Foundation will be supporting research by University of Zimbabwe scientists into “wild and famine plant foods, their preparation and preservation (and) nutrient analysis … to enhance livelihood security.”

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Assisted migration

Would you move a species threatened by climate change to an area where it isn’t currently found but where the new climate suits it better? That’s “assisted migration,” and the lively debate around it is described by Carl Zimmer in the New York Times here. He quotes a thorough review of the ecological and evolutionary responses to climate change which may be found online as a pdf here. It seems to me that assisted migration is likely to be feasible for only a small number of wild species, but what about crops? Making threatened crops and landraces available to farmers in more suitable climates sounds like a pretty good idea to me.