How Fungi Can Save The World

A must for anyone who wants to understand the natural world is the TED lecture by Paul Stamets  entitled “Six Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World."   It is 18 minutes that will change your view of the world beneath your feet.
Fungi don't get much attention unless your bread gets moldy or you get out and hike around in nature.  It is easy to forget that they occur all around us, and that the mushrooms we see are just the fruiting bodies of an extensive hidden network of hyphae making a quiet living while decomposing dead plant material.  The broad range of fungi's ability to decompose waste is under-appreciated by most of us.

After watching Stamets' lecture, you will want to check out his 6-minute video on this Youtube site.  He further expounds on the appetite of fungi for pollutants.  They are able to feed on oil, PCB's, dioxin and nasty toxins, reducing them to natural elements which are recycled into nature.  His short video lecture can be found at this .  It it, he demonstrates the conversion of toxic petroleum-soaked dirt into healthy soil, with the production of giant mushrooms as an intermediary step.
This should not be news to us.  Fungi are part of the reason that our forests are not littered with the trunks of the trees that have died over the last hundreds of years.  They are important for the health of many trees which could barely survive.   The association of fungi with plant roots, called Mycorrhizae, occurs in 90 % of plant species.  This symbiotic relationship means the trees can supply carbohydrates to the fungus.  In trade, the fungus makes otherwise unavailable demineralized phosphate ions available to the plants through their roots.
With encouragement, fungi may become more symbiotic with humans, cleaning up some of our man-made messes.   Take the time to watch Six Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World.  It will lift your spirits.

 

Prairie Bioblitz

Penn-Sylvania Prairie BioBlitz, Picnic and Campout is scheduled for Saturday, May 29, 2010.  It is open to the public and is sponsored by the Missouri Prairie Foundation, our partnering organization.

So what is a BioBlitz? In the words of National Geographic, 

A BioBlitz is a 24-hour event in which teams of volunteer scientists, families, students, teachers, and other community members work together to find and identify as many species of plants, animals, microbes, fungi, and other organisms as possible. 

A BioBlitz gives adults, kids, and teens the opportunity to join biologists in the field and participate in bona fide research expeditions. It's a fun and exciting way to learn about the biological diversity of local parks and to better understand how to protect them.

Take part in intensive nature study with experts on mammals, amphibians, reptiles, bees, butterflies, moths, plants, soils, snails and more, and help inventory species on this 160-acre prairie owned by MPF in Dade County. The event begins at 2 p.m. and lasts until the next morning for some species. After a potluck picnic dinner, amateur astronomer Dan Zarlenga will set up his telescope and interpret the night sky. Great for families, teachers and nature lovers of all ages!
RSVP to info@moprairie.com or call 1-888-843-6739. To learn more about MPF, visit www.moprairie.org. 90 minutes West of Springfield.  Take Hwy. 160 West to Hwy 97, North approx. 9 miles, then West on Hwy E 2 miles and left on a dirt road 1/2 mile.
All the details are at this Missouri Master Naturalist site.

Worlds Strongest Insect

Here is the answer to a question that has been concerning me for years.  Just what is the strongest animal in the world?  For the insect world at least, you will be happy to know the answer is Onthophagus taurus.  Still not sure what that is?  This bug works out by pushing dung- its a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.  The findings are published in the current issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, as reported by livescience.com.

The beetle, called Onthophagus taurus, was found to be able to pull a whopping 1,141 times its own body weight, which is the equivalent of a 150-pound (70 kilogram) person lifting six full double-decker buses. While the study researcher knows of a mite that can take on a hair more, that organism is an arachnid, not an insect.
The beetles aren't the dung-ball-carrying variety, and instead the females bury most of the fecal material (with a little help from males) from, say, cow droppings.
The females build little tunnels where they use the dung to lay their eggs in. It's in this tunnel where mating, and the pre-mating fights between waiting males, takes place. But not all males are equipped for battle, with some sporting horns and others hornless. The no-horn beetles instead wait at the tunnel's entrance, sometimes hiding out in self-built side tunnels, and sneak in to mate before getting caught by a horned male. The horned males, on the other hand, duke it out head-to-head.

"Their horns kind of meet on the shoulders, and they push each other backward and forward, and the guy being pushed will brace when pushed in the tunnel," Rob Knell from Queen Mary, University of London told LiveScience. Obviously, a story like this is crying for a Youtube video, so here it is in the PG-13 version.

So how do you test an insect's strength.  Bench pressing and push-ups are pretty much out of the question.  One method is determining the load it can pull.

In the study, Knell and Leigh Simmons from the University of Western Australia set up a similar fighting scenario. But first they fed the horned beetles a good diet, poor diet or no food at all.
To test strength, the researchers attached a cotton thread to the rear of each beetle participant, before letting the insect walk into a tiny tunnel created in the lab. Once in the tunnel, the beetle got a tug from the researchers pulling on its little leash. The pulling caused the beetle to brace its legs against the tunnel in a manner similar to that used when fighting.
The beetles with horns, also called major males, that were fed good food got much stronger when fed compared with those not fed. The hornless males on a good-food diet, however, grew much more massive testes without showing the surge in strength.
Here's the likely reason: "The little males don't fight at all, but when they get to mate with a female, they only get to mate with her once," Knell said. "She's also mating with one of the guard males [that guards the tunnel]. So the small male has to invest in testes mass so he can inseminate the female with as much sperm as possible."

The results of this study have implications for the understanding of evolution.  This and more can be found at this link.  There is good evidence that a strong population of dung beetles burying cattle dung produces richer soil than other methods without requiring a much fertilizer.  They not only bury the dung in the soil but by tunneling down, they aerate the soil.  To dig deeper in the story (sorry) read this fascinating article.
Finally, this story has implications here in Missouri, as described in the Missouri Conservationist.

Tumble bugs, or dung beetles, do appear to have declined in Missouri and elsewhere. There are several likely causes for the decline. These include the use of fly and intestinal parasite control chemicals on cattle, which pass through their system and can make their dung toxic to insects. The popularity today of cool-season grass pastures can lead to drier and more compacted soils that are less hospitable to digging insects (dung beetles bury their dung balls to provide food for their young). As we manage more native prairies using grazing cattle, dung beetles are becoming more common on those sites. They provide many benefits, such as controlling insect pests, nutrient recycling and improving soil structure. For more information, visit: http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/dungbeetle.html.

There are now chemical companies producing products to protect cows from flies without harming the dung beetle population.  The Beatles- "We love you, yeah, yeah, yeah!"

Land Snail

 Like Rodney Dangerfield, the snail underfoot gets no respect.  Its mollusk cousin,  the octopus, has an interesting life, can morph into calamari in your pasta and lives in salt water.  Its brother mollusk, the slug, is generally reviled and doesn't do well with salt at all.  Snails- when we think of them at all- are usually as escargot in an expensive restaurant.  

James gave the huffle of a snail in danger,
And nobody heard him at all.
                                           --A.A. Milne

The "huffle of a snail in danger" has always been a favorite in our family, used to describe the frustration and impotence we feel with many political and environmental issues.  But what would cause a snail to huffle?  The environment, for one.
As pointed out in today's News-Leader MDC article, "Most snails feed mainly on dead plant matter and fungi. A few species feed on live plant material, and one is a carnivore that feeds on other snails. Gastropods have a rasping tongue, called a radula, that is coated with small teeth-like protrusions. The in-and-out motions of the radula help the snail scrape food into their mouths."
The rasping tongue scrapes food off solid surfaces such as rocks and- significantly- pavement.  This habit has been used in European environmental studies because the snails store up heavy metals such as cadmium.  By putting caged snails at various locations for defined periods, researchers can collect comparative data on heavy metal levels on roads and thus compare surface pollution rates.  Unfortunately, this same feeding strategy has lead to a decline in snail populations from pollution of their natural habitats.
The article goes on to point out their interesting sex life.

Most Missouri land snails are hermaphrodites, meaning they contain both male and female components. Some species participate in a unique mating process that includes each snail shooting a dart-like spike (R-rated article) into its mate. Some believe this unusual behavior, which was documented as early as the time of the ancient Greeks, led to the creation of the myth of Cupid — the small cherub who creates love by shooting arrows into people's hearts. Each snail will lay up to 100 eggs in the top level of the soil. The eggs hatch in two to four weeks of favorable weather. Snails may lay eggs as often as once a month throughout the summer. Snails go into periods of dormancy in winter and can also become dormant during dry periods in the summer.

 For more on what eats snails and what snails eat, go to Land Snail Ecology or Wikipedia.  And to improve your mind, read this classic, Four Friends by A. A. Milne.

Ernest was an elephant, a great big fellow,
  Leonard was a lion with a six-foot tail,
George was a goat, and his beard was yellow,
       And James was a very small snail.

Leonard had a stall, and a great big strong one,
  Ernest had a manger, and its walls were thick,
George found a pen, but I think it was the wrong one,
       And James sat down on a brick.

Ernest started trumpeting, and cracked his manger,
  Leonard started roaring, and shivered his stall,
James gave the huffle of a snail in danger
       And nobody heard him at all.

Ernest started trumpeting and raised such a rumpus,
  Leonard started roaring and trying to kick,
James went a journey with the goat's new compass
       And he reached the end of his brick.


Ernest was an elephant and very well-intentioned
  Leonard was a lion with a brave new tail,
George was a goat, as I think I have mentioned,
       But James was only a snail.

Bad News for Bees

The ongoing story of colony collapse of bees isn't getting any better.  According to a CBS News story, a federal survey indicates a heavy bee die-off this winter.  Two federal agencies along with regulators in California and Canada are scrambling to figure out what is behind this relatively recent threat, ordering new research on pesticides used in fields and orchards. Federal courts are even weighing in this month, ruling that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overlooked a requirement when allowing a pesticide on the market.

Although bees have been declining over decades from various causes. But in 2006 a new concern, "colony collapse disorder," was blamed for large, inexplicable die-offs. The disorder, which causes adult bees to abandon their hives and fly off to die, is likely a combination of many causes, including parasites, viruses, bacteria, poor nutrition and pesticides, experts say.

This year bees seem to be in bigger trouble than normal after a bad winter, according to an informal survey of commercial bee brokers cited in an internal USDA document. One-third of those surveyed had trouble finding enough hives to pollinate California's blossoming nut trees, which grow the bulk of the world's almonds. A more formal survey will be done in April.

A scientific study which you can read at PLOSone.com, the online scientific journal  of the PLOS (Public Library of Science) found about three out of every five pollen and wax samples from 23 states had at least one systemic pesticide - a chemical designed to spread throughout all parts of a plant.
Although there is no known risk of eating the honey, this indicates the scope of the problem a hive of bees faces in surviving and successfully pollinating our plants.  None of the chemicals themselves were at high enough levels to kill bees, but it was the combination and variety of them that is worrisome.
It is important to remember that one-third of the foods we eat are dependent on pollination by honeybees, spanning the gamut "from apples to zucchini."  While it is easy to blame pesticide manufacturers, it is important to understand that much of the productivity of farmers and orchard keepers depends on controlling pests which damage crops.  Certainly any of us who have watched Japanese beetles attack a garden can become overwhelmed with pesticidal urges.
There is more information on the pesticide debate in the CBS News story.

Earth Hour March 27th

On Saturday, March 27, at 8:30 p.m., hundreds of millions of people around the world will turn off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour. State and local governments, schools, organizations, businesses and individuals will unite by turning out the lights on pollution and climate change. In the United States , Earth Hour will send a message that by working together we can create a cleaner, safer, and more secure future.
Twenty-three Official Earth Hour States will be participating including Missouri.  Governors’ residences and state capitol buildings will go dark as state governments make a statement to fight pollution and climate change during Earth Hour. Official Earth Hour States will show they care about our country, our planet, and our future.
Participating Landmarks
• Golden Gate Bridge – San Francisco , CA

• Empire State Building – New York , NY

• Mount Rushmore – Keystone, SD

• Space Needle – Seattle , WA

• National Cathedral – Washington , DC

• Gateway Arch – St. Louis , MO

• The Las Vegas Strip – Las Vegas , NV

• Duluth Aerial Bridge - Duluth , MN

Watch this video to experience the magnitude of Earth Hour.
You can also visit www.EarthHour.org and contact EarthHourStates@ gmail.com for state participation and authorization.