- Berry Go Round No. 2 is up with lots and lots of botanical links.
- Pomegranate juice manufacturer says its juice is best.
- Cattle and aurochs did the wild thing.
- The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs has a potato genebank. With pic goodness.
Nibbles: Decoration, insects
- (Agro)biodiversity used as personal decoration in the Omo Valley.
- Eating bugs is good for you. No, really. FAO says so!
Nibbles: Carnival, Boars
- Tangled Bank #99; apologies for the late link.
- Participatory approach to wild boar problem — in Brighton, England!
Disease hotspots mapped
A letter in Nature this week looks at “Global trends in emerging infectious diseases.” 1 It includes some interesting maps, including these:
They show the global distribution of relative risk of an emerging infectious disease (EID) event caused by: (a) zoonotic pathogens from wildlife, (b) zoonotic pathogens from non-wildlife, (c) drug-resistant pathogens and (d) vector-borne pathogens. That’s based on climate, human population density and growth, and wildlife host species richness. Note in particular the map in the top right-hand corner: basically risk of zoonotic pathogens jumping to humans from livestock. Compare this livestock density 2:
Not a great match with density of domesticated animals. Maybe the correlation would be better with livestock diversity?
Nibbles: Honey, seeds, bioprospecting, chocolate
- Haagen Dazs understands. No bees = no honey and no fruit.
- Over-excited about seeds. Jeremy comments, “It’s that time of the year”.
- South Korea bioprospecting in Costa Rica.
- A round-up of recent (bad) news on the chocolate front.
- Namibia: no country for vegetarians.