Ancient bushes

From Chris Clarke’s Creek Running North:

On the floors of Mojave Desert valleys grows the creosote bush – Larrea tridentata. The resinous denizen of the hot lands sends out new aerial stems from the base of the plant. Little by little the plant expands, gaining a bit less than a millimeter in width each year. In time the old branches in the plant’s center die out, crowded and pressed for nutrients. The plant becomes a ring. In the southern Mojave there are oblong rings of creosote. One near Johnson Valley is twenty feet across on the short axis, sixty-five on the long. Dividing the rate of growth into the size of the ring, ecologists figure that “King Clone” is on the order of eleven thousand years old. The seed from which it grew predated all of recorded human history. King Clone was already older than the oldest bristlecone pine when the first pyramids were built.

Maybe they grow more quickly elsewhere.

Identifying Ontario sport fish

I guess that leaves out native minnows. Everything else seems to be, er, game. See “Fish Identification & Urban Fishing Opportunities” (PDF). Unfortunately, this field guide does not include species names.

Go here to find links to other interesting publications, such as lists of lakes and their fish.

Hope for horseshoe crabs

Falling numbers of migratory birds awakened the wildlife authorities in the eastern U.S. to the vital role that horseshoe crabs play in feeding them on their journeys. The crabs, an ancient lineage dating back 400 million years, were caught by millions to be cut up for bait, pet food, and even fertilizer. To protect them, or to protect their cute feathered predators, catching horseshoe crabs has been restricted or banned by nearby states. The numbers of crabs coming to the beaches to mate and lay eggs have slowly begun to rise from dangerously low levels. Perhaps it’s not too late for them, if people remember to refrain from killing them.

Horseshoe crabs serve another useful purpose. They react violently to meningitis bacteria, so their blood can be used to detect it. They also have a one-step blood-clotting mechanism, so they prove that blood clotting evolved gradually over eons.

Rain slows forest fire in Manitoba

A forest fire in Manitoba has been slightly dampened by rain. The fire started Saturday afternoon during a rally of all-terrain vehicles in a provincial park. The ATV rally was called off four hours early after the fire started. The organizers have shut down access to their Web site and are not answering calls.

This news story suggest that several thousand hectares are burning. But I wonder if the reporter has mixed up hectares with acres.

MacLean’s Magazine says that 28 square kilometers have burned, but rain has reduced the fire to a smoulder

The fire, which has been burned about 28-square kilometres, was reduced to a smouldering blaze after 4.5 millimetres of rain fell overnight.

Tom Mirus, manager of the province’s conservation fire program, says the fire does not pose a direct threat to any community in the area and there have been no evacuations.

Two water bombers, two helicopters and ground crews are working to keep the fire contained, but Mirus says it could be days before it’s considered under control.

The fire was caused by humans and Mirus says investigators are trying to determine if an all-terrain vehicle derby being held in the forest may have sparked the blaze.

I don’t know what the hyphen in “28 square” means; probably nothing but it could mean that the fire is 28 km on a side.

Coyote attacks on toddlers

Coyotes are getting more urbanized and more used to people. They are adding small children to their potential menu.

Southern California:

• A coyote grabbed a 2-year-old girl by the head and tried to drag her from the front yard of her mountain home
• On Friday, a nanny pulled a 2-year-old girl from the jaws of a coyote at Alterra Park in Chino Hills, a San Bernardino County community about 30 miles east of Los Angeles. The girl suffered puncture wounds to her buttocks.
• A coyote came after another toddler in the same park Sunday. The child’s father kicked and chased the coyote away. That incident prompted Fish and Game officials to temporarily close the park, which is near Chino Hills State Park, a natural open space of thousands of acres spanning nearly 31 miles.
• Eleven-year-old rescues toddler from coyote. State wildlife officials are saying it could be the first coyote attack on a human in New Jersey. ..when it grabbed little Liam Sadler, [Ryan] Palludan instinctively sprang into action, yelling and kicking at the attacker which was later determined to be a coyote.

Across the country coyotes are moving into cities and suburbs showing up in unusual places - like the one that wandered into a Chicago sandwich shop last year. And in April, 2007, a coyote caused a stir in downtown Detroit, running loose for about one hour before being captured by local animal control officers. The advice for people who encounter coyotes in the city or anywhere else is to make plenty of noise - that should scare them away.

About bloody time 2: fisheries body to reassess bottom trawling

One of the most destructive fishing practices is trawling. That means scraping the bottom of the sea. The goal is to stir up bottom-dwelling fish, such as flounder. The result is to destroy and disrupt practically everything on the sea floor. In cold waters, it can take fifty years for the bottom to recover. The fisheries management group, the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO), announced Wednesday that they would

….assess the impact of bottom trawling on several fishing grounds outside Canada’s 200-mile limit and close them if it finds the fishing method harms vulnerable sea life….

Environmentalists at a NAFO meeting in Montreal praised the decision after years of arguing that bottom trawling or dragging destroys corals, sea mounts, sponges and other marine life and habitat.

The fishing method involves dragging heavy nets with metal gates along the ocean floor. The nets scoop up everything in their path.

…NAFO, which manages commercial fishing outside Canada’s 200-mile limit, has pledged to complete the mapping of the fishing grounds and evaluation of marine life by the end of this year.

It will recommend that areas should be closed or fisheries restricted where damage to deep-sea species can’t be prevented.

Foreign trawlers operating outside the 200-mile limit are heavily subsidized by their national governments, thus creating overuse of the resources. Canadian fisherman are heavily subsidized, too, with the result that more and more fisherman are chasing fewer and fewer fish.

See also “It’s time to stop trawler fishing, November 2006.”

No fish by 2050?

The world’s fisheries may be practically gone by 2050, according to biological research calculations.

Says lead author Boris Worm, “Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world’s ocean, we saw the same picture emerging. In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems.” This sad picture emerged over four years of analyzing 32 controlled experiments, observational studies from 48 marine protected areas, and global catch data from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) database from 1950 to 2003. The scientists also looked at a 1000-year time series for 12 coastal regions, drawing on data from archives, fishery records, sediment cores and archeological data.

Here’s the mathematical projection:

We’re still taking 235,000 tons fish per day from the sea.

Go to Blog of Science to read about the research and its implications. It’s still reversible.

Thousands of bats die in midwinter

Researchers don’t know why bats are leaving their caves to die in the snow or sucumbing to a mysterious white fungus. The bats don’t have as much body fat as usual. It takes them a long time to wake up enough to start moving. And when they leave the caves, there’s still snow on the ground.

Researchers speculate that the winter might not be cold enough for the bats to truly hibernate, so they are using energy too quickly. Then they wake up literally starving. In their weakened condition, fungus has attacked their bodies. We don’t know if it’s a cause or an effect but I suspect the latter.

There were some die-offs last year so this year scientists are looking for them. One thing they are finding is dead bats in areas where they didn’t know bats hibernated. Bats eat a lot of insects. For some crops, a loss of the bats might mean a loss of 1/8 to 1/6 of the crop to insects.

Links:

• Bats perish and no-one knows why (NY Times)
  Experts fear that as many as 250 000 bats may die this winter.

• Mass die-off of bats worries and puzzles researchers
  A mass die-off of tens of thousands of bats in the U.S. Northeast is confounding researchers and worrying wildlife advocates. The phenomenon has been dubbed white nose syndrome since many of the dead and dying bats show a white fungus on their nose. However, the fungus itself is believed to be a secondary symptom; the primary cause is as yet unknown. Officials estimate that white nose syndrome has had a 50 to 90 percent mortality rate in those afflicted. “We’ve never seen anything like this before with our bats, much less any other mammals, with a very large regional die-off,” said Susi von Oettingen of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Bat advocates aren’t the only ones worried about the plummeting population. Farmers and others will likely miss the bats later this year since the disappearance of whole populations could mean a much larger number of insects. So far, the disease has been found in Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont, though biologists say it could easily spread to other regions.

• Quebec mines scoured for signs of disease as bats drop like flies in U.S
  Researchers in Canada watch for similar problems.

Albino squirrel is seen in Toronto

Albino animals have a genetic inability to produce pigment molecules such as melanin and carotene. As a result, they are wholly or partially white. And they are generally at a disadvantage when it comes to camouflage. Nevertheless, the can survive. (The image at left is an albino squirrel, photographed in the U.S. by Ian Vargas.)

Glendon Mellow at The Flying Trilobite tells us that there’s a white squirrel living in Trinity-Bellwoods Park in Toronto. It’s an albino. Visit his blog for pictures that he took.

According to the Urban Decoder, albino squirrels have been seen around the park since about 1985. Someone else has reported an albino squirrel at Woodbine & Danforth in Toronto. The image at right is a white, non-albino squirrel.

Please look at the Wikipedia entry for “squirrel” for information about colonies of albino squirrels.

Big scary crocodilians

I just want to point to this article by Darren Naish on Tetrapod Zoology about the large, non-dinosaur members of the Mesozoic. [a, from Carvalho et al. (2005)]

Indian tiger population continues to drop

I’m tempted to say, “…like a falling cat.” But that would be just gallows humor.

The Guardian has the article:

• In five years, the tiger population has fallen to 1,400, less than half the previous estimate.
• Poachers have wiped out the tigers in some reserves.
• Other reserves suffer from habitat destruction as villages crowd forests.
• Experts say that not enough is being done to fight poachers.
• Laws against selling tiges’ body parts are being openly flouted.
• In a few years it will be too late.

See also:

• Saving the tigers of Myanmar
• Tiger habitat down 40% in ten years

Super-raptors at Tetrapod Zoology

Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology gives us a run-down on some of the giant raptors that have developed in island ecosystems.

Dinosaurs of China: Sinraptor hepingensis

Sinraptor hepingensis is not a new dinosaur, but this is the first time I’ve seen one. It was discovered in 1987 and named in 1992. This carnivore was 10 metres long and a top predator in its region during the late Jurassic, 160 million years ago.

Florida Everglades: Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge

We just got back from a three-hour visit to Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge on the northeastern edge of the Florida Everglades. We were allowed to gaze from an observation deck at the real everglades. And we walked happily around earthen dikes of water impoundment areas where waterfowl were plentiful.

The impoundment areas are a test patch of the Everglades ecosystem. Sections are separated by dikes, and the researchers control the water levels to maintain healthy growth of the Everglades vegetation, produce plentiful wild food for native fauna, and discourage invasive species.

We saw broad-winged hawks, black vultures, great blue herons, great white herons, little blue herons, tri-coloured herons, cormorants or anhingas, possibly a green heron, possibly limpkins or wood storks, some dark heron-like birds, egrets, possibly ibises, coots, marsh hens, gallinules, lizards, turtles, and a few alligators basking in the sun. The alligators look at first glance like old tire treads. LotStreetWiz saw a dark snake about five feet long, which whipped away before I saw it.

Key deer: island biodiversity

The Florida Keys are a series of islands off the tip of Florida in the southern U.S.

Today we stopped at the Key Deer Refuge on Pine Key and saw four or five Key deer. They are a half-scale variety of the white-tailed deer. This must be a young one; it looks no bigger than a dog.

The islands have protected the deer from predators and they have become smaller, which makes food and territory go farther. The Key deer are the smallest variety of Virginia white-tailed deer. They are found on about 20 of the small islands that make up the Keys, but in sizeable numbers only on two of them (Pine Key and No-Name Key). To combat inbreeding and help keep them viable, researchers have moved some deer from one island to another.