by Dave Goulson
10. Hothouse Flowers
1. Probably the best-known mammalian pollinator is the incredibly cute honey possum of south-western Australia. These tiny, long-snouted creatures are the only mammals to feed exclusively on nectar and pollen, having a brush-like tip to their tongue to aid in pollen collection. Amongst mammals they are unique in a number of other ways: they have the largest testes, proportional to their size, and the smallest young at birth, weighing just 1/200th of a gram.
2. The largest flower on Earth is that of the rare plant Rafflesia arnoldii, which is found in the dense, steamy rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. The brownish-pink, mottled flowers are about one metre across, can weigh more than ten kilograms and reek of decaying flesh to attract flies. This plant is also peculiar in having no leaves and little in the way of stem or roots; it is a parasite, sucking its nutrients from rainforest vines.
3. In the 1970s Lawrence Gilbert, a butterfly expert from the University of Texas in Austin, discovered that the Heliconius butterflies of South America are able to digest pollen. These elegant, long-winged neotropical insects are Methuselahs of the butterfly world, living for up to six months as active adults, whereas most butterflies live for just a couple of weeks. To fuel this longevity they collect a ball of pollen at the base of their tongue and exude sugary liquid on to it. This is sufficient to cause the pollen to release much of its amino acids (the building blocks of proteins), which the insects can then suck up through their tubular tongues.
11. Robbing Rattle
1. Plant taxonomists seem to be a perverse bunch. Not only do they insist on family names that have at least a dozen or more syllables, but they then change them every five minutes, so that whatever names you manage to learn are soon out of date.
12. Smutty Campions
1. Geraniums should not be confused with pelargoniums, the red-flowered stalwart of every hanging basket, which are often mistakenly called geraniums. True geraniums include many native, wild species, such as herb robert and the lovely purple-flowered meadow cranesbill (so called because the seedhead resembles the head of a bird with a long bill, one of the distinguishing features of the geranium family). There are also many perennial herbaceous garden varieties, most of which are good plants to encourage bumblebees.
13. The Disappearing Bees
1. Interestingly, corncrake distributions, both past and present, closely match those of the great yellow bumblebee. Corncrakes used to be found nesting in hay meadows and cereal fields all over the UK, but the loss of hay meadows removed much of their habitat, and the switch to early-maturing winter cereals means that many of their nests are destroyed by combine harvesters. They now cling on only in the remote, crofted corners of Scotland where farming has changed relatively little.
2. Actually, to start with, much of the set-aside was useless for wildlife as it was often treated with herbicides to prevent weeds from seeding, and land was only left fallow for short periods, giving little time for wild plants and animals to colonise before it was ploughed up. Later iterations of set-aside schemes were much improved, allowing for the long-term set-aside of areas. Sadly, just as many of these were becoming havens for wildlife, EU policy changed and in 2008 more or less all set-aside schemes were abandoned.
3. At the time of writing a number of major garden centres and DIY chains have recently withdrawn these compounds from their shelves.
14. The Inbred Isles
1. I hesitate to use the phrase ‘paradigm-shifting’, which sprang to mind here but is now horribly overused in scientific circles – it seems that every research grant application has to pretend that it is going to shift at least half a dozen paradigms if it is going to stand any chance of receiving funding. The European Research Council actually specifies that it will only fund paradigm-shifting research, but as far as I can see, if you know you are going to shift a paradigm before you have done the work, it must be a pretty dumb paradigm in the first place. When I was an undergraduate I embarrassed myself considerably by pronouncing paradigm as para-dig-m (in case, like me, you don’t know, it should be para-dime).
2. Actually, no we don’t – at least not the roads part. It is a source of constant dismay to me that successive governments unthinkingly accept forecasts of future growth in traffic, and hence the need for endless road-widening schemes, bypasses, and so on. Why aren’t we spending this same money encouraging people out of their cars and on to public transport, or giving incentives to companies to allow their staff to work from home one or two days a week? This would also reduce pollution, and would reduce the need to grow biofuel crops, freeing up more land for food production or for conservation.
15. Easter Island
1. It is sometimes argued that primitive human societies lived in harmony with nature, and that it is only modern society that is wasteful, profligate and destructive. However, the evidence suggests that humans haven’t really changed much at all. Our ancestors exploited the environment as ruthlessly and with as little care for the future as we do today. The only difference is that our increased number and more advanced technology enable us to destroy the Earth much more quickly than they could manage. As Matt Ridley points out in his excellent book The Origins of Virtue, the idea that Native Americans had an environmental ethic and avoided over-exploiting resources was a romantic but entirely false invention of the twentieth century, later fostered by films such as Last of the Mohicans. Indeed, there is strong evidence that in some regions the Native Americans hunted bison simply by stampeding whole herds over the nearest cliff, only bothering to cut joints from the topmost carcasses in the pile.
2. There remains some debate as to exactly what happened on Easter Island. Jared Diamond’s fascinating tome, Collapse, paints a very bleak picture of the state of the islanders when first visited by Europeans, but his view has offended the descendants of the islanders, who resent the implication that their ancestors destroyed their ecosystem and turned to cannibalism, and argue instead that the main decline of the islanders occurred after European visitation. If we put political correctness to one side, the facts appear to support Diamond – there is no doubt that the islanders failed to manage the resources at their disposal, drove dozens of species to extinction and vastly reduced the capacity of the island to support life of any sort.
3. Some estimates of the number of species on the planet even go as high as 100 million, although an awful lot of these would be bacteria.
Acknowledgements
I must thank all of the many people that I have worked with over the last twenty years, particularly my thirty or so PhD students and the countless undergraduate project students who have working in my research group, all of whom have had to put up with my spectacularly disorganised and forgetful supervision. It was an honour to work with you all. My apologies to them and other scientists whose work I mention if there are factual errors or inaccuracies.
Particular thanks are due to my agent, Patrick Walsh of Conville & Walsh, without whom my first book, A Sting in the Tale, might well still be nothing more than a file on my laptop, in which case A Buzz in the Meadow would surely never have been written. Thanks also to my editor, Dan Franklin, and the wonderful staff at Jonathan Cape and Random House, with whom publishing is a pleasure.
Finally, I must mention Ellen Rotheray and Kirsty Park, the first people I trust to read my manuscripts. Thank you both for your encouragement, and for gently pointing out the worst of my many blunders.
Index
The index that appears in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Adonis blue butterfly
Aesculapian snake
agri-environment schemes
Animalocaris
Anthophora plumipes
Aoki, Shigeyuki
aphid
arachnid
&nbs
p; Arctic poppy
axolotl
Banksia
barn owl
bartsia
bat
bat bug
bed bug
bee orchid
beech marten
Berlins, Marcel
Bernwood Forest
Bernwood Meadows
bilberry bumblebee
Birch, Martin
black hairstreak
blackthorn
black-veined white butterfly
Bombus wurflenii
Brakefield Paul
brimstone butterfly
broom
buff-tailed bumblebee
Buglife
bumblebee
Bumblebee Conservation Trust
Burgess Shale
buttercup
butterfly
buzz pollination
campion
campion moth
campion smut
carboniferous period
carrion beetle
Carson, Rachel
Casey, Leanne
centaury
Chagas’ disease
Chapman, Jason
Charente
cheating, in mutualisms
chicken farm
cicada
cinquefoil
clothes moth
clover
cockroach
cocksfoot grass
Colony Collapse Disorder
Colorado beetle
common carder bumblebee
Conway-Morris, Simon
corncrake
Cothill
courtship
cow-wheat
cowslip
coypu
Cresswell, James
cricket
Crithidia bombi
crustacean
cuckoo
cuckoo pint
cuckoo spit
Dactylorhiza majalis
dance fly
Darwin, Charles
Dawkins, Richard
DDT
deadnettle
decomposition
Decourtye, Axel
death-watch beetle
demoiselle damselfly
Diamond, Jared
disease transmission by flies
dolichopodid fly
dormouse
Dowdeswell, Wilfrid Hogarth
Dutch elm disease
dragonfly
Duke of Burgundy fritillary butterfly
earthworm
earwig
Easter Island
ecological genetics
Ehrlich, Anne
Ehrlich, Paul
Épenède
eurypterid
extinction
extinct megafauna
extra-pair copulation
eyebright
Fabre, Jean-Henri
false oat grass
firebug
fire salamander
Fisher, Ronald A.
Floral mimicry
flower, evolution of
Fontaneau, Monsieur
Ford, E. B.
forget-me-not
foxglove
frog
froghopper
Fukatsu, Takema
garden bumblebee
Garibaldi, Lucas
genetic drift
genitalia
geranium
Gilbert, Lawrence
Glanville fritillary butterfly
glow-worm
golden oriole
Gould, Stephen Jay
grasshopper
great green bushcricket
great reed warbler
great tit
great yellow bumblebee
green lizard
green woodpecker
greenfly
hairstreak butterfly
Haldane, J.B.S.
Hallucigenia
Hanski, Ilkka
hare
hawkbit
hedgehog
Heliconius butterfly
heliotropism
hellebore
Henry, Mickaël
Hererra, Carlos
holly blue butterfly
Homo erectus
Homo floresiensis
Homo neanderthalensis
Homo sapiens
honeybee
honey possum
honeysuckle
hoopoe
hormone, insect
house fly
hoverfly
hummingbird hawkmoth
impacts of man on the environment
imidacloprid
inbreeding
insect evolution
insecticide
Integrated Pest Management
invasive species
Island Biogeography Theory
Kells, Andrea
Kettlewell, Bernard
kissing bug
lacewing
Lack, Andrew
ladybird
lady’s bedstraw
landfill site
large tortoiseshell butterfly
leaf-cutter ant
lizard
Lopez-Vaamonde, Carlos
MacArthur, Robert
Maniola jurtina
mammoth
mating
meadow brown butterfly
meadow clary
meadow foxtail grass
meadow vetchling
meadowsweet
meddick
melanism (the occurrence of dark forms of a species)
Mendel, Gregor
metamorphosis
Microbotryum violaceum
millipede
mites
mole
Monach Isles
monarch butterfly
Montagu’s harrier
Morrison, James
mosquito
moth
Musca domestica
mutualisms
Native American
nectar
nectar robbing
Nieminen, Marko
neonicotinoid
nest usurping in bumblebees
newt
nutrient cycles
O’Connor, Steph
Oncocyclus iris
Opabinia
orchard
orchid
Owen, Denis
owl butterfly
Oxford
panda
paper wasp
parthenogenesis
peppered moth
Peat, James
pesticide
petals, function of
pheromone
Philodendron
picture-wing fly
pignut
pollen
pollination
pond
pond skater
Poupard, Monsieur
Pozo, Maria
purple emperor butterfly
praying mantis
prickly pear
primrose
Pywell, Richard
Quammen, David
Queen of Spain fritillary butterfly
ragged robin
ragwort
Rafflesia arnoldii
Raine, Nigel
Rayner, Pippa
red-eared terrapin
red-legged partridge
red-shanked carder bee
red-tailed bumblebee
restharrow
Rhinanthus minor
Rolph, Tasha
Rothamsted Experimental Station
Rove beetle
ruderal bumblebee
scarce swallowtail butterfly
scarlet tiger moth
Scilly Isles
scorpion fly
shield bug
short-haired bumblebee
snapdragon
speckled wood butterfly
springtail
stone curlew
sweet vernal grass
shrew
shrill carder bee
Simberloff, Daniel
&nb
sp; single large or several small debate
small blue butterfly
soldier aphid
stag beetle
stalk-eyed fly
stonechat
superb fairy wren
swallow
swallowtail butterfly
sunflower
tardigrade
teasel
Tendrich, Steve
thermal rewards
thistle
Thomson, James D.
thyme
ticks
toad
tormentil
trilobite
triploid
tufted vetch
vampire bat
Varroa mite
vinegaroon
viper’s bugloss
vole
Walcott, Charles
wall lizard
Walport, Sir Mark
water bear
water boatman
water scorpion
Watson, Robert
western whip snake
whirligig beetle
white-tailed bumblebee
Whitehorn, Penelope
whitethroat
Wigglesworth, Sir Vincent Brian
wild basil
wild carrot
Wilson, E. O.
wing spots (on butterflies)
wood-ant
woodlouse
wood white butterfly
woody nightshade
Wright, Sewall
Wyatt, Tristram
Xerces Society
yellow rattle
yorkshire fog grass
ALSO BY DAVE GOULSON
A Sting in the Tale
About the Author
DAVE GOULSON studied biology at Oxford University and is now a professor of biological sciences at the University of Stirling. He founded the Bumblebee Conservation Trust in 2006, whose groundbreaking conservation work earned him the Heritage Lottery Award for Best Environmental Project and “Social Innovator of the Year” from the Biology and Biotechnology Research Council. His previous book, A Sting in the Tale, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.
A BUZZ IN THE MEADOW. Copyright © 2014 by Dave Goulson. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Lines from “The Fly” by Ogden Nash, copyright © 1942 by Ogden Nash. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown Ltd.