Author Archives: David George Haskell

Rusty Blackbird

A very unusual visitor came to our bird feeder this morning: a male rusty blackbird. Although scattered flocks of them occur in the wet woodlands in the valley, this is the first one that I’ve seen in the Sewanee uplands. He ate some of the chickens’ corn, then took off.

Photo by Blake Matteson, used from Flickr under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Photo is by Blake Matheson, taken in California. From Flickr under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0). Blake’s photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/34328261@N02 Rusty feather edges are seen in winter only. The males turn all glossy blue-green-black in the summer. Females are gray-brown. Both sexes have a pointed, slightly downcurved beak.

Rusty blackbirds nest in the far, far north, all the way to the tree line. They build large nests in trees alongside beaver ponds, muskeg swamps, and other watery habitats. The nests are so sturdy that other species, especially solitary sandpipers, like to use them in subsequent years.

Range of the rusty blackbird during June and July. Data are compiled from ebird.org. The darker purple indicates more frequent reports of birds.

In the winter, the birds flock in bottomland wetland forests in the southeast, sometimes mingling with larger flocks of grackles and red-winged blackbirds, but sometimes keeping to themselves.

Range of the rusty blackbird during December to February. Data are compiled from ebird.org. Note the concentrations in the wetter lowlands.

Unfortunately, this species appears to be in free-fall. The available data show a 90% decline since the 1960s. The cause of these plummeting numbers is not fully understood. Changes in the availability of forests on either the summer or winter grounds could be part of the explanation. Northern forests are being increasingly logged and disturbed, and climate change is drying them out and causing more frequent fire. Acid rain and mercury are also significant problems in the north. Here in the south, hardwood forests are cleared for agriculture, housing, and pine plantations. But neither of these habitat trends seems severe enough to account for the decline. Some as yet unknown form of contamination or disease might be involved. Or the decline might be rooted in the supply of the rusty blackbirds’ favorite foods, grasshoppers and other insects.

All this bad news is made a little sadder by the recent death of Russ Greenberg, the ornithologist whose work brought to light and highlighted the plight of this species. Russ was brilliant, genial, hard-working, and inspiring. He was especially kind to greenhorn grad students like my younger self, generous sharing his time and insights. He also pioneered the study and promotion of the ecological benefits of shade-grown coffee, and made many contributions to our understanding of bird biology. Part of his legacy is a continent-wide effort within the academic and conservation community to better understand the rusty blackbird’s decline. If you’re a birder, I encourage you to stay tuned to ebird for news about the upcoming rusty blackbird “blitz” in the spring of 2014, a survey effort designed to learn more about their wintering grounds.

Much of the natural history information in this post comes from:

Avery, Michael L. 2013. Rusty Blackbird (Euphagus carolinus), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online: http://bna.birds.cornell.edu.bnaproxy.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/200 doi:10.2173/bna.200

A couple of interesting opportunities from Orion…

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…the wonderful magazine, not the belted constellation. Check ’em out:

1. Orion is teaming up with Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Middlebury College’s Environmental Studies Program to offer the Bread Loaf Orion Environmental Writers’ Conference. This is a residential conference, so it is available only to those with spare time and money, but for those who can attend it promises to be a fruitful week. The organizers have kept costs low (compared to other events like this) and are offering some financial help. The list of faculty and staff is amazing.

2. Two of the best writers of our time, Robert Macfarlane and Rebecca Solnit, will discuss writing in an open phone/web conference on December 5th. Registration is free. This should be a great discussion and no-one has to burn fuel to get there, so it’s a low-carb event.

Invasion of the ladybugs. UN treaties violated.

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An airborne invasion of ladybugs has turned Sewanee into a pointillist’s drunken joke. Our house has several thousand of them jostling on the southern wall, with a few hundred making their way through hidden cracks to the interior. As I type, they bombard the keyboard. Walking outside, I get them in my hair, down my shirt, into pockets.

A plague of coleoptera? That seems to be the general opinion in town, with calls for chemical weaponry not far behind. More on that later.

Who are these creatures? They are Harlequin ladybird beetles (Harmonia axyridis), also known as Asian ladybugs or multicolored lady beetles. They’re looking for shelter over the winter. Any crack will do. The more the merrier: they call to each other with chemical attractants, possibly because there is safety in numbers.

These insects were first brought from east Asia to America in an attempt to enlist them in our never-ending fight against aphids. So the legions of ladybugs banging against our walls are a testament to the foresight of the USDA and a witness to the prodigious numbers of aphids that, despite their new Asian foes, crowd like feedlot cows on twigs and flower stems.

If swarms of colored beetles were a rare occurrence, the military-industrial-wedding-complex would be charging big bucks for uplifting releases of these merry air-dancers. No such luck: these insects have crossed the cultural threshold that divides purty from plague. How to deal with them? Some companies make lures and traps, decoying the beetles with a mimic of their aggregation pheromones. I have no experience with these devices, but I suspect that they are only partly successful. Like a liquor store on the edge of a college town, you’ll grab some of the swarm, but many others will BYO and head straight to the party. Vacuums work well on smaller swarms and a mesh or nylon stocking placed inside the suction tube (trap it between tube sections) will keep the doomed beetles out of your bag. Or just wait and they’ll disperse or die on their own. Eventually.

But this is not just a story about Homo vacuumus. These beetles may quite literally have a silver lining. Their ecological success is partly due to their invulnerability to disease, a super-power conferred by their “hemolymph” (insect blood). The potency of this vital essence is easily confirmed: poke a beetle and see the defensive yellow ooze of blood emerge from chinks in their legs, staining your hand and releasing a powerful odor. Studies of the antimicrobial properties of the blood show that it contains a chemical, harmonine, that inhibits both TB and malaria. Knowing this, I pick the ladybugs out of my hair with new found respect and even a sense of hope that medical wonders may yet emerge from the entomological onslaught.

The weaponry story does not end here, though. These insects not only carry chemical defenses in their blood, they may also attack competitors with biological weapons. A microbe that lives peacefully on the harlequin ladybug appears to be lethal to native ladybugs. When these natives prey on the eggs of the harlequin ladybug, the microbe attacks and death follows.

In sum: we’re under attack from insects that are in violation of multiple international arms agreements. Enjoy the spectacle.

Orchid seeds

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My ankle brushed against the dried flower stalk of a cranefly orchid and puff! a cloud of sandy dust billowed across the surrounding leaf litter. I got down on the ground for a closer look: the orchid’s fruit capsules were mature and starting to split apart.

Each capsule is roughly the size of a pinto bean. Inside are thousands of seeds. To the naked eye the massed seeds look like piles of very fine sawdust; with a squint we can make out the individual seeds. A camera lens and digital zoom lets us see a little closer.

Cranefly orchid leaf with its distinctive purple underside. The leaf appears in fall then dies in the spring.

Cranefly orchid leaf with its distinctive purple underside. The leaf appears in autumn then dies back in the spring.

Cranefly orchid capsule, split open and shedding seeds.

Thousands of seeds in one capsule.

A tiny puff of air is all they need to take flight.

These seeds owe their existence to pollination by noctuid moths. The moths suffer the indignity of carrying orchid pollen on their eyes. The cranefly flower has a slight twist and the direction of this twist determines whether the left or the right eye of the moth receives the pollen.

The wind-blown seeds’ future depends on where they land. Successful growth requires (or is greatly helped by) the presence of decomposing wood, so this orchid is one of thousands of species in these forests that depend on old logs and fallen branches.

Regular readers of Ramble will be interested to know that this orchid’s only close relatives live in east Asia. It joins many other plant species in reminding us of the ancient connections between the forest of the southeastern US and those of eastern Asia.

The abundance of orchid seeds has impressed botanists for centuries. Here is Charles Darwin calculating that one plant could in a couple of generations of unchecked seed production “clothe with one uniform green carpet the entire surface of the land throughout the globe.”

“[seeds] are produced by orchids in vast profusion. Not that such profusion is anything to boast of; for the production of an almost infinite number of seeds or eggs, is undoubtedly a sign of lowness of organisation, … a poverty of contrivance, or a want of some fitting protection against other dangers. I was curious to estimate the number of seeds produced by some few Orchids; so I took a ripe capsule of Cephalanthera grandiflora, and arranged the seeds on a long ruled line as equably as I could in a narrow hillock; and then counted the seeds in an accurately measured length of one-tenth of an inch. In this way the contents of the capsule were estimated at 6020 seeds, and very few of these were bad; the four capsules borne by the same plant would have therefore contained 24,080 seeds. Estimating in the same manner the smaller seeds of Orchis maculata, I found the number nearly the same, viz., 6200; and, as I have often seen above thirty capsules on the same plant, the total amount would be 186,300. As this Orchid is perennial, and cannot in most places be increasing in number, one seed alone of this large number yields a mature plant once in every few years.

To give an idea what the above figures really mean, I will briefly show the possible rate of increase of O. maculata: an acre of land would hold 174,240 plants, each having a space of six inches square, and this would be just sufficient for their growth; so that, making the fair allowance of 400 bad seeds in each capsule, an acre would be thickly clothed by the progeny of a single plant. At the same rate of increase, the grandchildren would cover a space slightly exceeding the island of Anglesea; and the great grand-children of a single plant would nearly (in the ratio of 47 to 50) clothe with one uniform green carpet the entire surface of the land throughout the globe. But the number of seeds produced by one of our common British orchids is as nothing compared to that of some of the exotic kinds … What checks the unlimited multiplication of the Orchideæ throughout the world is not known.”

(p. 277-279 in Darwin, C. R. 1877. The various contrivances by which orchids are fertilised by insects. London: John Murray. 2d edition, quote from the Darwin-Online archive.)

Mandalas at National Academy of Sciences

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Mandalas take many forms. These circular representations of the Universe are most well developed in Buddhist and Hindu traditions, but they also appear in other realms, some of them quite unexpected. Jung thought that the mandala was an archetype, “the psychological expression of the totality of the self,” a interesting interpretation, albeit one that is perhaps at odds with the self-transcendent meaning seen by many others.

Two mandalas converged in National Academy of Sciences building on the Washington Mall last week. I brought one of them, embedded in the words of The Forest Unseen. I discovered the other mandala as I entered the building and looked up. The dome of the Academy’s Great Hall is representation of the totality of science, with the words “Ages and cycles of nature in ceaseless sequence moving” scribed on its inner rim. Do I hear an echo of Buddhist impermanence here in a space opened in 1924 as a “Temple of Science“?

At the center: the sun. Around: symbols of the various divisions of early Twentieth Century science (information theory, quantum mechanics, and genomics are missing, among others). The artwork was created by Hildreth Meière, one of the most prolific and honored of the Art Deco public artists, and one of America’s most lauded mosaicists. For this project she used tile painted with hot gesso, producing a luminous, textured surface.

For better photos than my cameraphone shot above, see the NAS’s flickr page. NAS also has some excellent information about the meanings of the various elements in the design. If you have an iPad, you can get an app that walks you through the symbolism of the dome, a joy that is not yet available to the unpadded.

As I walked into the building to receive the book’s award and to talk about the forest mandala, my sweaty-palmed tension was eased a little by Meière’s mandala. Science and mandalas can, perhaps, be in fruitful conversation.

The Yamaki’s White Pine

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I was in the Washington DC area earlier this week. Luckily, I had a free morning on the day before the mafiosi closed the federal government, so I was able to visit the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum at the National Arboretum.

Bonsai is an interesting art form, a complicated intertwining of human desires and plant physiology. The trees seem both ensnared and exulted. The trees’ caretakers both control the trees and are their servants. Bonsai and Penjing honor natural landscapes and tree growth forms, yet do so in an entirely human context, providing an interesting metaphor for people’s relationships with the broader community of life.

One of the most striking trees is the Yamaki pine, a tree that first entered cultivation in 1625. It was collected from the wild on Miyajima, the “Shrine Island” in Hiroshima Bay, in the southern part of Japan. The tree is a Japanese white pine, Pinus parviflora, a species closely related to the American white pine, Pinus strobus.

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The tree outlived the Edo period into which it was born. Worldwide, the human population has increased nearly fifteenfold during the tree’s life. During this time we’ve discovered all kinds of Earth-shaking technologies.

One of these innovations resulted in the atomic bomb, dropped by the U.S. just two miles from the tree’s home in Hiroshima. Thanks to the fortuitous placement of a nearby wall, the tree survived. Decades later the Yamaki family, tenders of the tree for the last five human generations, gave the tree to the country that had bombed their homeland. We cannot presume to understand all the layers of personal meaning in the Yamaki’s gift of this ancient tree. But against the backdrop of what happened at Hiroshima, their actions evince a love of peace and a depth of generosity that are staggering and inspiring.

A few miles down the road from the bonsai, we have the other end of the spectrum of human maturity: bullying and whining from those in power, and a vortex of anger and recrimination swirling out from this epicenter of malign human relationships. If victims of nuclear warfare can extend the hand of friendship, then so too can the rest of us. Among the many messages I hear in this tree, a question: Can I rise above the corrosive emotions and thoughts that well up within? As I drove past the Capitol building, the answer was: Not yet, unfortunately.

For more information about the tree’s story, see the National Bonsai Foundation’s overview.

Aphids: The Sequel

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I’ve been keeping my eye on the funky residents of the beech aphid colony, watching them groove the summer away. I found the colony back in late July when it was already quite large. It then grew a little, adding new clusters of young aphids, but gradually waned through September. This week, the last beech aphid departed, leaving just a few wisps of wax on the ground below. Over the weeks, the colony added more and more winged individuals. These are the individuals that disperse and mate; all others are asexual and sedentary.

Winged Beech Aphids, feeding among wingless forms (Grylloprociphilus imbricator)

Discarded strands of Beech Aphid wax on the mosses and lichens below the aphid colony

Discarded strands of Beech Aphid wax on the mosses and lichens below the colony

The day before I saw the last beech aphids, two newcomer species arrived on the twigs that had been the colony’s home. One was another aphid, a huge one. I thought at first that the beech aphids had somehow swelled and transformed, but another look confirmed that these new aphids are in fact a different species, the appropriately named giant bark aphid, (Longistigma caryae). For an aphid, they’re monstrously large, perhaps eight times the volume of a typical aphid. They also have long, sturdy hind legs, giving them a cricket-like appearance.

Giant bark aphid (youngsters on left, adult on right)

Like other aphids, this species feeds by sliding its needle-like mouthparts into plant phloem and eating the pressurized sugary sap that squirts through the needle into their guts. In their thirst for dilute nutrients like amino acids, they void the excess sugar, dropping sticky honeydew below. This is all too much for many gardeners and the ag extension agencies continue their long tradition of suggesting chemical sledgehammers to crush these nuisances. Malathion and Orthene? Really?

Hidden for now from the nozzleheads, these bark aphids took up residence in exactly the same spot as the beech aphids. I mean exactly: down to the centimeter. Are they exploiting the feeding holes or weakened bark left by their departed distant cousins? The coincidence is striking. The beech tree no doubt let out a sigh. One load of sugar-suckers gone — at last! — and another bunch of free-loaders show up. Bring on the freeze? Come hither migrant warblers?

The new residents brought their own private security team. The guards are paid with sugar and they take their work seriously. I’ve visited several times in the last week and the bark aphids always have three or four large honey-colored ants in attendance. The ants gather honeydew from the aphids, then stand and wait from the next drop. One ant filled her abdomen, then scuttled up the branch and found a skinny-looking sister. They stood head-to-head and the nectar was transferred, causing the second ants’ abdomen to swell into an amber globe. The first ant returned to her charges; the second scurried up the twigs into a blueberry bush, then I lost sight of her. I have no idea where the ants may be nesting. I’m keeping my eyes open.

I’d love to know more about the identify and natural history of the ants that are tending these aphids. Myrmecophiles, your insights would be received with gratitude. [Addendum: The ant is likely a carpenter ant, perhaps Camponotus americanus. . Thank you, Ann Fraser and AntWeb!]

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Mammal fest

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We’ll get to weighty matters shortly, but first some photos of gratuitously cute mammals from my trip to Colorado. One of the more zoologically startling features of the western U. S. is the number of mammals wandering in plain view. The furry-faced, doe-eyed, jaunty-eared denizens of Tennessee tend to stay out of sight in the thick woodland, so mammalogists must be content with scat and sketchy tracks (not counting the white-tailed deer on the porch). Not so in the wilder parts of Colorado.

Golden-mantled ground squirrel. Mueller State Park, Colorado.

Richardson's Ground Squirrel. Florrisant Fossil Beds National Monument.

Richardson’s Ground Squirrel. Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.

Colorado Chipmunk. Florrisant Fossil Beds National Monument.

Colorado Chipmunk. Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.

Mule Deer. Mueller State Park.

Bobcat. Florrisant Fossil Beds National Monument.

Bobcat. Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.

Trespass being considered by Cottontail rabbit (either Mountain or Eastern Cottontail, the bobcat would know for sure). Florrisant Fossil Beds National Monument.

Trespass being considered by Cottontail rabbit (either Mountain or Eastern Cottontail, the bobcat would know for sure). Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.

After a few days wandering among these animals and flipping through the field guide, a question emerges: Why so many squirrely creatures in the west? The Field Guide to the Mammals has twenty four pages of ground squirrels, almost all from the west. The one eastern species, the eastern chipmunk, has twenty two cousin species in the west. A rodent biodiversity bomb has flung fat-cheeked squeakers into every grassy glade, forest edge and rock pile west of the Mississippi.

A recent paper by Ge et al, evolutionary biologists working at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, helps us to understand what happened. The ground squirrels (Xerinae, a subfamily comprising the chipmunk, marmots and other ground squirrels within the rodent family, the Sciuridae) originated in Europe about thirty five million years ago. From there the animals spread to Africa and North America. The group’s explosive diversification happened later, about sixteen million years ago, and seems to have been triggered by climatic changes.

The same cooling drying climate that separated the American and Asian forests created a grand opportunity for ground squirrels. As forests retreated, open meadows, grassy plains and sparsely vegetated mountainsides took over, especially in the arid west. This change, combined with the highly variegated landscape (not too many other places in the world have such a complex mix of mountains, plains, deserts), caused the ground squirrels to speciate into the many species we see today. Some of these then colonized other parts of the world, probably after they moved west over the Bering land bridge. For the marmots, chipmunks and ground squirrels, Manifest Destiny did not end at the Pacific Ocean. They kept going and colonized Siberia, Asia and Europe: the far, far, Wild West.

We hear in this story echoes of our own. Homo sapiens is also a creature of the grasslands, brought into being by forests in retreat from a cool, dry climate.

Note how the ground squirrels survey their homes: on two legs.

Note their social systems: they often live in close-knit groups in stable villages.

We’re lucky that their thumbs are not quite as agile as our own and that their food didn’t take quite as much brainwork to catch.

The Forest Unseen wins “Best Book Award” from the National Academies

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The Forest Unseen has won the “Best Book Award” in the 2013 Communication Awards from the National Academies.

I’m absolutely thrilled that they chose the book. Giving voice to the incredible scientific stories that lie hidden away inside the ivory tower was one of reasons I started this project. That the National Academies should find merit in the result of this work is stunning and gratifying, to say the least. I’m also very humbled to be in the incredible company of the other finalists and winners (see below for the full list).

The award is given by the The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, with support from the Keck Foundation. The full press release is reproduced below and is found on the National Academies website.

Press release: The Forest Unseen Wins Best Book Award From National Academies; Science Magazine, PRI’s ‘The World,’ and USA Today Also Take Top Prizes

WASHINGTON — The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine announced today the recipients of the 2013 Communication Awards. Supported by the W.M. Keck Foundation since 2003 as part of the Keck Futures Initiative, these prestigious annual awards — each of which includes a $20,000 prize — recognize excellence in reporting and communicating science, engineering, and medicine to the general public. The winners will be honored during a ceremony on Oct. 16 at the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, D.C.

“We had a wide range of outstanding nominees from which to choose,” said May Berenbaum, chair of the 11-member communication awards selection committee, an NAS member, and professor and head of entomology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. “The winners are excellent examples of science communication that can inform and engage the public.”

Selected from approximately 300 print, broadcast, and online entries, the recipients of this year’s awards for works published or aired in 2012 are:

Book

David George Haskell for The Forest Unseen (Viking Penguin)

“…for his exquisite portrait of nature’s universe, drawn from one tiny patch of forest.”

Film/Radio/TV

Joanne Silberner, David Baron, and PRI’s “The World” for “Cancer’s Lonely Soldier,” “Pink Ribbons to Haiti,” “An Ounce of Prevention,” and “The Infectious Connection”

“…for shining a light on the hidden toll cancer takes in impoverished nations, killing more people than HIV, malaria, and TB combined.”

Magazine/Newspaper

Eliot Marshall, Elizabeth Culotta, Ann Gibbons, and Greg Miller at Science for their stories “Parsing Terrorism,” “Roots of Racism,” “The Ultimate Sacrifice,” and “Drone Wars,” which appeared in a special issue on human conflict (May 18, 2012)

“…for an articulate, wide-ranging examination of what social scientists have learned about human violence, conflict, and terrorism.”

Online

Alison Young and Peter Eisler (reporters), John Hillkirk (content editor), and the entire team at USA TODAY for the series “Ghost Factories”

“…for a nationwide investigation of abandoned lead factories that armed reporters and citizens with the knowledge and technology to recognize threats in their own backyards.”

The following were finalists:

David Quammen for Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (W.W. Norton and Co.)

Paula Apsell and Sarah Holt for “Cracking Your Genetic Code” (WGBH/NOVA and Holt Productions)

Nell Greenfield-Boyce for “Scientists Take Cautious Tack on Bird Flu Research,” “Scientists Debate How to Conduct Bird Flu Research,” “Bird Flu Studies Getting Another Round of Scrutiny by Panel,” and “Bird Flu Researchers to Meet About Research Moratorium” (NPR)

Jeff Montgomery, Molly Murray, and Dan Garrow for “Climate Change Puts Coast in Crosshairs,” The News Journal, Wilmington, Del.

The Keck Futures Initiative was created in 2003 to encourage interdisciplinary research and is funded by a 15-year, $40 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation. Nominations for the 2014 Communication Awards will be accepted in early 2014 for work published or broadcast in 2013. For more information on the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative and the Communication Awards, please visit www.keckfutures.org. For more information about the W.M. Keck Foundation, please visit www.wmkeck.org.

Members of the media who would like to attend this year’s awards ceremony on Oct. 16 in Washington, D.C., should email commawards@nas.edu to receive complimentary tickets.

The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council make up the National Academies. They are private, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology, and health policy advice under a congressional charter. The Research Council is the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. For more information, visit http://national-academies.org.

Contacts:

William J. Skane, Executive Director

Molly Galvin, Senior Media Officer

Office of News and Public Information

202-334-2138; e-mail news@nas.edu

http://national-academies.org/newsroom

Twitter: @NAS_news and @NASciences

RSS feed: http://www.nationalacademies.org/rss/index.html

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalacademyofsciences/sets

Red: A ticket outta here (for travelers that have already come a long, long way)

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The coming wave of songbird migration has plants getting excited: finally they can get the kids out of the house before winter’s rigors set in. As thrushes, vireos and warblers move southward by the millions, their hunger creates an opportunity for seed dispersal that many plants have grabbed with enthusiasm. Look around in the late summer woods and you’ll see berries fattening up, preparing the bribe for passing birds. Bright red is the color of choice, the hue most likely to seduce an avian eye, so berries tend toward the garish, not the subtle blush.

We’re a few weeks away from the peak of migration (late September through early October brings the largest numbers), but the plants are ready. These eager food vendors include spicebush, dogwood, yellow Mandarin, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and Solomon’s plume.

Fruit of Yellow Mandarin (also known as Fairybells, Prosartes lanuginsoum)

Jack-in-the-pulpit fruits (Arisaema triphyllum)

Fruits of Solomon's plum (Yellow Mandarin (Maianthemum racemosa). Often also called "False Solomon's Seal."

Fruits of Solomon’s plume (Maianthemum racemosa). Often also called “False Solomon’s Seal.”

Yellow Mandarin has an interesting family tree. It has a few siblings in North America, but all its other close relatives are Asian species. This whole clan was for years classified in one genus, Disporum, but the North American species are now recognized as distinct enough to merit placement in their own genus, Prosartes. Solomon’s plume and Jack-in-the-pulpit also have close relatives in Asia. This Asia-America connection is echoed by the biogeography of many other species, especially among the plants of the Southern Appalachians which often have close affinities to species in East Asia. Boufford and Spongberg, scientists from the Harvard Herbaria, summarized the situation:

The similarities of the forests of Japan, central China, and the southern Appalachians in appearance as well as in ecological associations are in many instances so great that a sense of déjà vu is experienced by botanists by one of the regions visiting the other.

The list of Appalachian species with very close East Asian kin is long and, surprisingly, is much longer than the same list for plants with close kin in western North America. Japan is closer than Oregon, it seems. A few of the more familiar examples include: tuliptree, magnolia, dogwood, Virginia creeper, mayapple, ginseng, partridge-berry, blue cohosh, witch hazel, and honey locust. And, of course, the aptly-named “Mandarin.”

Donoghue and Smith’s analysis of this pattern concludes that close evolutionary connections between East Asian and Eastern North American species are “exceptionally common in plants, apparently more so than in animals.” Their work suggests that “many temperate forest plant groups originated and diversified within East Asia, followed by movement out of Asia at different times, but mostly during the last 30 million years.”

These botanical connections are reminders that Asian and American temperate forests were once connected, a connection that was severed as the world dried and cooled in the late Cenozoic. But it is also the result of a few long-distance dispersal events between climatically similar areas.

Animals move to the beat of a different biogeographic drummer. Their kinship patterns are more predictable: western and eastern North America share many close relatives, connections south to the tropics are also common.

So the migration of American birds is powered by Asian food. The botanical restauranteurs hope that the birds opt for the take-out option, carrying seeds away from the parental storefront. Most of these seeds will land a few meters from the parents, but a very small number might make a huge leap, perhaps landing in southern Mexico or on the coast of South America. There, they’ll likely perish. But the biogeographic future is written by the one or two that can put down roots and flourish.

The same is unfortunately true for plant diseases. A few long-distance migrants are reshaping the forests of the world. It is no accident that so many of the more notable plant-killing invasive diseases in the Southern Appalachians have their origins in Asia. Once they get over here they find a “home way from home,” minus the constraints that they experienced in their homeland.

I’ve rambled about the color red before, both here on the blog (“Quite possibly the most overused image of North American birdlife”) and in The Forest Unseen (“November 5th — Light”). I’ll note briefly here that until the leaves fall in a few weeks, the plants face an uphill battle against the physics of light in the forest. It is dark in the woods these days (photography is impossible without steadying the camera on my boot or using a flash). The summer tree leaf canopy is not only robbing most of the light, it is selectively stripping out the reds. Only when a shaft of sun sneaks through a canopy opening do these fruits truly shine. As autumn comes on, the botanical beacons will light up more often.

Thrushes: get ready.