So let me get this right. The parasite Toxoplasma gondii changes the behaviour of the rats it infects when they eat cat faeces by making said rats less scared of cats, which makes them more liable to be eaten by said cats, which is good for said parasite as it helps it complete its life cycle. More than weird enough. But the little bugger also affects the behaviour of the humans it infects, and may contribute to cultural diversity? Get outta here!
Featured: Breeding perennial grains
The article on perennials was really good, particularly the summary of what has been done. I just wish it wasn’t in ISIS. If the Land Institute wants to accomplish anything in the greater scheme of things, they have to crawl out of the holier than thou organic only everyting else be dammed mindset or they’ll just keep being ignored by mainstream breeders. It’s sad, really. We all need to work together.
Well why don’t you tell us how you really feel, Anastasia?
Connecting through food
In Bittersweet, a new column on GlobalPost, Matt McAllester writes about how food connects us and the people who cook it to faraway lands.
Last month he went looking for wild boar meat in Baghdad. Obviously like to set himself ambitious targets, our Matt. Anyway, well worth a read. Unfortunately you can’t subscribe to his stuff alone, but GlobalPost is an excellent general news site.
Digesting Annals of Botany
Annals of Botany have what I think is quite an innovative feature where they ask Prof. John Bryant of the University of Exeter, UK to take “a closer look at some of this month’s Original Articles.” Each issue he picks four of his favourite papers and writes an summary of the work done and the key results, all in a succinct and elegant paragraph. The latest example describes two pieces of work on mechanisms which maintain diversity in ecosystems, allelopathy and herbivory. And an earlier installment highlighted a paper from Probert et al. at Kew which found that the longest-lived seeds are from warm, dry climates. I’ve set up an email alert for Prof. Bryant’s little nuggets, and no doubt I’ll be mentioning them in future.
Featured: Habitat Directive
Shelagh tells us more about the Habitats Directive and CWRs:
You may be interested to know that a few years back I carried out some analysis of the number of CWR included in the annexes of Habitats Directive. The results can be found in Chapter 5 of the text book, Crop Wild Relative Conservation and Use for those that have a copy. I’m not supposed to circulate the pdf but since it may be of interest, I’ve extracted the relevant pages, but note now that I can’t add an attachment here.
Read more here. And here’s the extract: Kell_etal_2008_extract