- DFID-supported collection of stories showing how information about new ways of doing things is communicated to rural people in developing countries includes some agrobiodiversity stuff.
- The genetic nature of the Pea-comb phenotype in chickens.
- Entomopathogenic fungus can become an endophyte in sorghum and confer protection from stem borer. Ain’t agrobiodiversity grand?
- Different earthworm species have different effects on the competition between four annual plants and their relative fecundity. Ain’t agrobiodiversity grand?
Reindeer game up
The species Rangifer tarandus is divided into seven subspecies, but all are in trouble, according to a survey of their status published in a recent paper in Global Change Biology. We’re talking about the animals that are usually called reindeer in Europe and caribou in North America. All across their circum-polar range their populations are undergoing an unprecedented synchronous decline (red denotes herds in decline in the map below, which I hacked from the BBC article quoted below, green indicates those on the increase and dark grey means no data is available).
One subspecies — R. t. tarandus — comprises the semi-domestic and wild reindeer that live across northern Scandinavia and Russia and are so important to the Sami people and others. Here’s one of the authors quoted by the BBC on the causes of the decline:
“If global climate change and industrial development continue at the current pace, caribou and reindeer populations will continue to decline in abundance,” says Vors.
“Currently, climate change is most important for Arctic caribou and reindeer, while anthropogenic landscape change is most important for non-migratory woodland caribou.”
Interestingly, reindeer were recently re-introduced to Britain after a gap of 800 years. I guess their long-term future there must be in question.
Bactrian camel a little less on the edge
Today’s BBC story about the unexpected birth of a Bactrian camel calf at Knowsley Safari Park in the UK reminded me how little I know about camels — although my performance on the camel question on the recent domestication quiz should have warned me. In particular, I didn’t know that there are wild Bactrian camels (Camelus bactrianus) in NW China and Mongolia, though admittedly they are down to about a thousand and endangered. It’s unclear from the Knowsley website whether the Bactrian camel birth is part of a captive breeding and re-introduction programme, but there are such programmes there for other species:
Our Pere David’s deer herd is one of the largest in the UK. These deer were classified as extinct in the wild until the mid 1980’s when a group of 39 deer went back to China as part of a project organised by the Zoological Society of London. Four of our deer formed part of this group returned to the 1,000 hectare Dafeng reserve. Now classified as critically endangered, they are protected from hunting on the reserve and the captive breeding herds such as ours at Knowsley are still very important to ensure the future of these deer.
Nibbles: Plant bombs, Reindeer and caribou, Livestock wild relatives, Agricultural geography of North Korea, Cyclone rehabilitation, AVRDC, Kew, Organic, Farmers and climate change
- Jacob alerts me that our “throw duplicates of all accessions from an airplane flying across Africa” Gedanken experiment may be closer to realization than we thought.
- Reindeer in trouble. In other news, there are 7 subspecies of the things.
- Indonesia looks to its threatened livestock wild relatives.
- Agriculture (among other things) in North Korea.
- Buffalo distributed in Myanmar. From where?
- Local vegetables promoted in the Philippines.
- More inspirational stuff on the Millennium Seed Bank from Jonathan Drori.
- Organizations Involved in Organic Plant Breeding Projects and Education. Not as many as you’d think.
- “Learning centres” helping farmers identify challenges, adapt to climate change.
Buzz off, elephants told
From a FBFriend, a link to Treehugger.com’s story of how beehives are being used to keep African elephants from raiding farmers’ fields. Such a fine story, from a group at Oxford University that happens to include an old mate. 1
Oxford’s press release has the details. In essence, farmers build a fence that consists of beehives strung together on a wire. When elephants brush against the wire the beehives swing and the bees come out swinging. And even thick-skinned elephants are afraid of bees, which sting them around the eyes and — ouch — up the trunk. The result is that “a farm protected by the beehive fence had 86 per cent fewer successful crop raids by elephants and 150 per cent fewer raiding elephants than a control farm without the fence.”
This makes no sense; how can something be 150% lower than something else? Time to check the original paper.
Over the 6-week study period, the two focal farms experienced twenty successful crop raids involving 133 elephants. Farm A, with the beehive fence, experienced seven successful raids involving 38 elephants. Farm B experienced thirteen raids (86% more than Farm A) involving 95 invading elephants (150% more than Farm A; X2 = P < 0.001, df 1) (Fig. 2). In addition, Farmer B recorded a further 71 elephants in eight failed raid attempts that he prevented from entering his farm using his traditional deterrent tactics. In total Farm B had 21 attempted raids by 166 elephants during the 6-week trial, all of which occurred less than 500 m from Farm A. Most notably, by the end of the harvest season, Farm B had almost no crops to harvest, with the farmer estimating that about 90% of his harvest had been destroyed or eaten by elephants, whereas Farmer A was able to harvest relatively successfully collecting a variety of sorghum, beans, potatoes and maize. This suggests that the fence was at least partially successful in deterring elephants.
That’s better, but not much. Almost twice the raids, involving two and a half times more elephants is how I’d put it.
Strangely, the beehives did not need to contain bees to be an effective deterrent. Just the (recorded) sound of angry bees is enough to deflect an elephant who has experienced stings. But if the hives are occupied the farmer gets honey and, presumably, better pollination too.