Tag Archives: Australia

Scale matters when analysing plant-pollinator networks: a new research paper out today

It’s long been recognised that the scale at which we study the natural world – over long or short time periods, or across small areas or whole regions – affects the conclusions that we draw about ecological patterns and processes. This is certainly true of plant-pollinator interactions. For example, a widely distributed plant can have very different pollinators at the extremes of its range, and pollinators like bees may vary their focus on nectar and pollen sources from year to year.

The analysis of these interactions as networks of actors has become increasingly popular in the last couple of decades. However there is no consensus about how frequent sampling should be, or the geographical scale over which networks should be studied. In fact all scales (from regional “meta-networks” down to single-season, single-site, single taxon observations) are relevant, depending on the questions being asked or the hypotheses posed.

But it’s important that we acknowledge that conclusions drawn at one scale may not apply at other scales.

That’s the take home message from a paper published this week which is the latest output from the PhD work of Australian bee expert Kit Prendergast. We have collaborated on several papers based on her data and this is actually my 100th peer-reviewed publication: a proud milestone for me and one which I’m glad to share with a wonderful early career researcher like Kit!

Here’s the reference with a link to a read-only version of the paper:

Prendergast, K.S. & Ollerton, J. (2022) Spatial and temporal scale of analysis alters conclusions about the effects of urbanisation on plant-pollinator networks. Arthropod-Plant Interactions https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-022-01290-z

And here’s the abstract:

Bipartite networks of flowering plants and their visitors (potential pollinators) are increasingly being used in studies of the structure and function of these ecological interactions. Whilst they hold much promise in understanding the ecology of plant– pollinator networks and how this may be altered by environmental perturbations, like land-use change and invasive species, there is no consensus about the scale at which such networks should be constructed and analysed. Ecologists, however, have emphasised that many processes are scale dependent. Here, we compare network- and species-level properties of ecological networks analysed at the level of a site, pooling across sites within a given habitat for each month of surveys, and pooling across all sites and months to create a single network per habitat type. We additionally considered how these three scales of resolution influenced conclusions regarding differences between networks according to two contrasting habitat types (urban bushland remnants and residential gardens) and the influence of honey bee abundance on network properties. We found that most network properties varied markedly depending on the scale of analysis, as did the significance, or lack thereof, of habitat type and honey bee abundance on network properties. We caution against pooling across sites and months as this can create unrealistic links, invalidating conclusions on network structure. In conclusion, consideration of scale of analysis is also important when conducting and interpreting plant–pollinator networks.

Impacts of the introduced European honey bee on Australian bee-flower networks – a new study just published

Animal deaths in the Australian bushfires even greater than first feared – and what about the plants?

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2019-12-27 15.07.16

Earlier this year I reported on the unprecedented Australian bushfires with some reflections of what I was observing during my time as a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales – see: How are the Australian bushfires affecting biodiversity? Australia reflections part 4. Karin also wrote a piece about the fires, focusing on the human impacts – see: Climate Change Stories From a Nation on Fire.

At the time scientists and the media were suggesting that perhaps half a billion reptiles, mammals and birds had been killed, a figure that provoked a strong public reaction when accompanied by images of fire-scorched koalas. This was then revised upwards to 1 billion. But it turns out that even a billion is nowhere close to the real number of animal deaths. A new interim report commissioned by WWF-Australia suggests that just under 3 billion animals were either directly killed or displaced. Those which were displaced were vulnerable to feral predators such as foxes and cats, or more likely to succumb to starvation. An article in The Guardian about the WWF-Australia report is worth reading – here’s the link.

The actual figure is 2.69 billion individual animals. Think about that for a moment. That’s about equivalent the number of people living in India and China combined. This is the breakdown for the different animal groups that were assessed:

● 143 million mammals
● 2.46 billion reptiles
● 180 million birds
● 51 million frogs

One thing should be immediately apparent: this is not a complete list of the “animals” that have been killed. A lack of data means that fish, turtles and (crucially) invertebrates such as spiders, bees, beetles, and earthworms, were excluded. Those invertebrates live at much higher densities than any of the animal groups that were assessed and indeed are the sole or principle food for many of those species. The number of insects required to support just the insectivorous birds is staggering: globally, birds are estimated to eat 400-500 million tonnes of insects and other arthropods every year.

Even if we were to consider just the larger invertebrates, those bigger than say 0.5 cm in length (which are a minority – most are considerably smaller), then then the true scale of the animal deaths is going to be one or two orders of magnitude higher. Or possibly more. Thirty billion, 300 billion, 3 trillion…? Who knows? It’s impossible to estimate, we just don’t have enough information about those organisms.

The other major component of wildlife that is missing from the report is the plants. I know that studies of plant mortality are being undertaken at the moment and it will be important that this is given the same level of publicity as the assessments of animals.

Writing in the foreword of the report, Dermot O’Gorman the CEO of WWF-Australia pointed out that: “It’s hard to think of another event anywhere in the world in living memory that has killed or displaced that many animals. This ranks as one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history”.

I disagree. I think it’s THE worst wildlife disaster in terms of the scale of animal losses over such a short period of time. No doubt deforestation and destruction of grasslands in South America, Asia and Africa has killed more animals and plants. But that’s over a timescale of decades to hundreds of years. Australian wildlife was devastated in a matter of months. And no one knows exactly what the 2020-21 fire season will bring. But I think that we can safely predict further impacts on wildlife – and people.

Feral bees in odd places; Australia reflections part 7

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On a trip to the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney yesterday Karin and I came across an interesting colonial-era statue in which a colony of feral, non-native honey bees had taken up residence. These bees are yet another alien invasive species that can create conservation problems in parts of the world where they don’t belong naturally. But it was funny enough to inspire a bit of Ogden Nash-style poetry on Twitter; you need to watch the video to fully appreciate it:

Sir John Robertson
Kay-See-Emm-Gee
Turned his head
Into a home for bees
The people came
From far and near
To watch the honey
Dribble out of his ear pic.twitter.com/A3tz5Pz5kR

— Prof. Jeff Ollerton (@JeffOllerton) January 13, 2020

Life between the tides: Australia reflections part 6

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That last post about climate change and politics was a bit heavy, for which I make no apologies. But there’s always space for something lighter on this blog. Sometimes it’s nice to reflect on what brought me to the point of being a scientist with an interest in biodiversity. Some of my earliest exposure to natural history involved peering into rock pools on the coast near Sunderland in the north east of England. In an old family album there’s a photograph of me aged about four, intently gazing at the welks, crabs and anemones as they wait for the next tidal surge to bring food or predators. If I wasn’t in Australia I’d go and hunt that photo down and share it with you. Right into my 20s my dad would tell any and every one about my childhood obsession with “gannin’ on the yocks”. The word “gannin'” is north eastern colloquial English for “going” while “yocks” was me not being able to pronounce “rocks”. “I’m gannin’ on the yocks” became a family catchphrase that could be used in any number of circumstances. It might just sum up my professional career if I think hard about it….

Later, at school and then college, I took part in several class projects that involved running transect lines down the shore and examining the zonation of the creatures: more hardy organisms, predictably, at higher points, the sensitive species lower down. Generations of biology students must have done similar studies. Do they still?

These rocky shore reminiscences have been inspired by a great piece of writing about tide pooling by Sarah Jean McPeek over at the Lively Discussions blog. I can’t match Sarah’s eloquent lyricism but I can match her love of a rocky shore. There are some great ones on the coast near Coogee, ranging from very small, deep holes, up to huge, artificial ones that were built as ocean swimming pools. Here’s some photos:

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Holes within a pool. This is a great opportunity for a rocky shore ecologist to do a replicated manipulation experiment:

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This is a different kind of experiment to test the hypothesis that water in large pools has evaporated enough to make it significantly more saline and thus increase the buoyancy of the human body. Hypothesis supported:

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A classic wave-cut platform:

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This very distinctive seaweed is known as Neptune’s necklace (Hormosira banksii):

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This pool is being influenced by a freshwater spring that’s coming in from the left:

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These fresh water streams and pools are important for the local coastal birds, including silver gulls (Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae) which belong to the same genus as black-headed gulls (C. ridibundus) in the northern hemisphere but which I think is a prettier species:

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Australian white ibis (Threskiornis molucca) also enjoy the fresh water pools:

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Humans have inhabited this coastal area for at least 20,000 years and its the traditional land of the Cadigal people. In more recent times the locals have enjoyed the huge tidal swimming pool known as Wylie’s Baths. I’ve snorkeled here a few times and seen some beautiful fish and invertebrates:

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Much further up the coast at Port Macquarie, which we visited over Christmas as I recalled in this post, the geology is very different. The rocky shores are composed of hard volcanic basalt rather than the softer Sydney sandstone:

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This is an incredibly dynamic environment. According to my relatives in Port Macquarie, the place where Karin is standing was until recently a rock pool almost two metres deep that was rapidly filled up by the shifting sands of the coast. Winter storms will probably scour the sand out again. Will the limpets and barnacles have survived I wonder?

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Climate change, politics and a host of viewpoints: Australia reflections part 5

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It’s impossible to get away from discussions of climate change and its role in the Australian bushfires at the moment. It’s all over the Australian media, at least that part of the media that isn’t controlled by the Murdoch empire. Politicians of various stripes are falling over themselves to declare their point of view and some careers are (hopefully) being harmed by crass statements that try to belittle expert, informed opinion – the latest example from Twitter is #NotAWeatherGirl, which has been trendingfor a couple of days now.

If you have any interest in global climate change then the name of Prof. Michael E. Mann will be familiar to you, from his famous hockey stick graph, his work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, his books on the topic, the RealClimate blog, as well as numerous media interviews and television appearances. Until yesterday we’d not met. But by coincidence, like me, Prof. Mann is also on sabbatical in Australia, is also working at UNSW, and is based near to us. Via Twitter I invited him for a meet up to discuss what’s happening in Australia at the moment and to set it in a global perspective. Karin and I met with Mike at a local café, along with an Australian journalist who has asked to remain anonymous, and we chatted for a couple of hours. From the position of outsiders coming from cultures that politically are moving closer together, and with an expert local perspective, it was interesting to consider what the USA, the UK and Australia have in common and what’s different. And of course, Karin’s Danish heritage provided yet another perspective. What follows is a short summary of our discussion and some additional thoughts.

One thing that’s clearly true is that the climate change deniers have lost. Period. There’s no faux science or dodgy statistics that they can fall back on that have any credibility. Fudging the data, as some have tried to do for Australia, does not work anymore: anyone willing to listen can see through this charade.

The world’s weather systems are changing, and they are changing EXACTLY in line with the predictions based on human-induced climate change. These changes are causing massive disruptions to natural ecosystems and to human societies, from the drought and fires in Australia and California, to the flooding in Jakarta and the American mid-west, and in parts of the UK. Karin’s been writing about this recently in relation to human stories from the bushfires and I recommend you take a look; as always, her take on such events complements my own.

The misery that these bushfires and floods have produced among citizens has prompted previously skeptical or agnostic politicians to act, or be seen to be acting. Those that don’t (and we’re looking here at Aussie Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the increasingly desperate Donald Trump – who’d’ve thunk he’d try to start a war in the middle of a personal political crisis….?) are going to find themselves quickly out of office. In this regard the British government is rather different, and Boris Johnson appears to be on board with the need to act on climate change. Even Piers Morgan seems to be hurrying to get on to the right side of history. But the danger is that it will be too little, too late. Denmark, of course, along with other Scandinavian countries is showing just how much can be done to cut emissions from energy generation, travel and agriculture, and to invest in a more sustainable future.

In the face of such overwhelming scientific evidence, the consortium of right-wing media barons, plus vested business interests and unfriendly foreign agents, have adopted a different tactic. Rather than deny the science they are targeting the individual influencers who they see as a danger to their power. The vile abuse of Greta Thunberg is the most obvious example, but Mike’s come in for his fair share of abuse too. Anyone with green credentials who flies or has a less than Spartan lifestyle is accused of hypocrisy, and the focus is being turned on to what individuals should be doing rather than what governments and industry can achieve much more easily and with greater impact. In Australia it seems there is a campaign to down-play the role of natural processes in the bushfire crisis by claiming that it’s mainly due to a spate of arson, and that “Greenies” have made the situation worse – Twitter bots and trolls have been implicated in this conspiracy.

All of this is an effort to undermine sustainability arguments: that we can have a sound economy based on social justice, environmental protection, green jobs, and a transition to a low-carbon economy. But we need some structural changes to the global economy, including getting away from this obsession with GDP and “growth”. This doesn’t mean throwing the baby out with the bath water and dismantling capitalism altogether. We were agreed that we need to build on the best bits of capitalism and open democracy, and move forward with that, rather than tearing down what has been achieved in terms of human progress. As I’ve mentioned before, Steven Pinker’s recent book Enlightenment Now has some great arguments on this topic.

Related to this is the fact that environmentalism does not have a political home – it is neither left- nor right-wing in focus: there are greens across the spectrum. Karin summed it up neatly this morning when she said: “Perhaps environmentalism is the catalyst to bring us together, no matter what our political beliefs or backgrounds are?”

This is important to appreciate because we all tend to gravitate towards others who share our views. Meeting face-to-face with people like Mike and the journalist is inspiring but there’s always the danger that we are talking within a bubble, an echo chamber that just reflects backs our own perspectives on the world. The same is true of social media. One of the discussions we had was about who we aim our blogs, books and Twitter messages at: who are we trying to talk to? Those people too entrenched in their views, who will deny the impact of, or solutions to the world’s environmental problems are a lost cause. Nothing will sway them. Those who agree with us don’t need any further convincing: they are already strong allies. But there’s a huge swathe of the population between these two poles that can hopefully be won over and convinced by sound arguments. That’s who we need to reach out to, that’s who I hope is following the tragic events in Australia and elsewhere in the world, and seeing what is really happening.

Jeff and Mike Mann

How are the Australian bushfires affecting biodiversity? Australia reflections part 4

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2019-12-24 14.10.52

Australia’s vast, unprecedented wildfires are going to have a devastating effect on the biodiversity of the country. To fully understand why this is the case, you need to know something about where species occur and why.

Australia is a land of lizards. Karin and I see them everywhere we walk and frequently encounter them in gardens. Reptiles are the most diverse group of vertebrates in Australia, with more than 1000 described species. Of these, over half are lizards. One family alone, the skinks (Scincidae) accounts for almost 440 species, with species new to science being described every year. Some of these lizards are physically extremely impressive, particularly the dragons (Agamidae – about 90 species) and the monitors or goannas (Varanidae – 30 species). We encountered lace monitors (Varanus varius) over Christmas at Port Macquarie, in coastal bushland and (very dry) rainforest at Sea Acres National Park (see photos above and below):

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Spot the goanna:

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Growing up to two metres in length, they seem to arrogantly swagger through the bush as though they own it; which of course they sort of do – they were here millions of years before people arrived. Smaller but still impressive are the Eastern water dragons (Intellagama lesueurii) – here’s male and female checking one another out:

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Much smaller but more charming are the various skinks that seem to inhabit every garden and green space in the city; this one seems to be the Eastern water skink (Eulamprus quoyii):

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And here’s where we get to the main point of this post. All of the lizards I mentioned above are endemic to Australia, it’s the only place on Earth where they naturally occur. But they are all widespread species found across a huge area in the east of the country, from Queensland to Victoria, a linear distance of over 2,000 km. This is unusual for species in Australia, and indeed in the rest of the world; most organisms naturally occur over a much smaller area. To see what I mean, look at the image below from Steve Wilson & Gerry Swan’s book A Complete Guide to Reptiles of Australia:

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The maps adjacent to each species description illustrate the distribution of these organisms. The garden skink and the grass skink live in suitable habitat over vast areas. But the other two species are much more restricted in their ranges, which are so small that they need to be highlighted with arrows. The elongate sunskink (Lampropholus elongata) for instance is found only “in the vicinity of Grundy Fire Tower and “The Flags”” at 1180-1455 m in the Great Dividing Range. This is more typical of species distributions in Australia: most are restricted, and some are extremely restricted. This is true of other reptiles, plants, birds, insects and fungi, in fact all major groups, not just the lizards. Such a skewed distribution of species occurrences, with many rare and localised, and a few common and widespread, is natural; it’s an outcome of the processes of natural selection and evolution. But it’s been exacerbated by habitat loss across the world, including Australia. According to the Wilderness Society of Australia, the country “has lost 25% of rainforest, 45% of open forest, 32% of woodland forest and 30% of mallee forest in 200 years”.

But even these figures do not reflect the full scale of the loss: I’ve seen estimates that more than 90% of the temperate rainforest exemplified by Sea Acres National Park has been destroyed. Given what I’ve said about the limited distribution of many species, that must mean that locally endemic species have gone extinct in the past. The huge extent of some of the Australian bushfires, individually covering tens of thousands of hectares and collectively around 6 million hectares, means that most or all of a species’ population could be wiped out. To give just one example, a small marsupial mammal, the Kangaroo Island dunnart (Sminthopsis aitkeni), is found only on Kangaroo Island. Indeed, it’s restricted to the western part of the island, where a large bushfire has been raging out of control in recent days. We will only know whether this species has survived, and in what numbers, once ecologists are able to survey the area once the danger is over.

However even for widespread species the fires can have a massive effect on their genetic diversity, which is an important component of biodiversity. When we lose individuals from a population we lose genetic variants too. A recent assessment by ecologists at the University of Sydney has suggested that almost half a billion reptiles, mammals and birds have been killed so far by the fires. Losses of trees and other flowering plants, as well as insects, spiders and so forth, will be much, much greater of course.

This destruction of biodiversity has a human impact too. On television news reports we’ve heard farmers and fire fighters describing the emotional trauma of seeing animals on fire and hearing the screams of koalas as they burn in the tree tops. All of this biodiversity serves to ensure that Australian ecosystems function effectively and sustainably now and in the future. Ecosystems which are crucial for reducing the future effects of climate change, for ensuring supplies of fresh water, supporting agriculturally-important pollinators and predators of pests, and bringing in billions of tourist dollars. All in all these fires are a tragedy for Australian biodiversity, as well as for the human population of this fabulous country.

A land of fire and water: Australia reflections part 3

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Fire and water; those opposing elements have been our constant companions during this trip to Australia. All the major international news media have been reporting on how serious the bush fire situation is in the south east of the continent. In East Gippsland, Victoria, tens of thousands of residents and holiday makers have been advised to leave the area. Four thousand of those who haven’t left were forced to spend last night on the beach, as fires got closer to the town of Mallacoota. These are just the latest examples of climate change refugees in their own country, something I highlighted in a post about our visit to the USA earlier this year. Of course, Australia is a continent that is used to bush fires, they are nothing new. But what is new is the scale of these fires and the extended drought and high temperatures that are making the landscape more flammable than ever.

There’s currently a lot of media discussion in Australia about how landscapes were managed historically by Aboriginal peoples, whose selective and regular burning of the bush reduced fuel loads. Karin and I have just returned from Port Macquarie where we enjoyed Christmas with an Australian branch of our family. Several of them have spent a considerable amount of time working with remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. We were told a story about an Aboriginal elder who asked one of our relatives to drive him out to an area of bush that had not been burned for over a decade. It was that elder’s role to burn this land at regular intervals, a family tradition that went back generations. Having driven for several hours along dirt roads, the elder asked to stop; he hopped out of the vehicle, went up to a patch of dry grass, and casually set fire to it with a small lighter he was carrying. After pausing a few seconds to make sure that the flame had caught he hopped back into the car and said “Let’s get out of here”. An hour back down the road the companions stopped and looked back. The whole landscape was aflame, with a column of black smoke rising, I was told, in a mushroom cloud “like a nuclear explosion”.

This sounds extreme, but these areas are isolated and a long way from any human settlements or infrastructure. Such activities have been part of toolbox of ways in which Aboriginal peoples have managed these landscapes for thousands of years. By burning areas on a regular cycle the negative effects of large, out-of-control fires are reduced, and opportunities for seedling establishment and fresh foliage for animals to browse are created. There’s more information about these practices here and here.

In the more heavily populated parts of Australia, and in the adjacent national parks, fires have long been suppressed, such that when they do occur they are much more violent conflagrations, over a greater area, than would normally be the case.

On one of our trips near Port Macquarie we came across an area of woodland that had burned recently, separated by a small road from an adjacent block that had not burned. In the following set of images I’ve alternated the two blocks so you can see what the woodland looked like before and after burning. But remember that this was not an especially intense fire; the trees are still living, and there is foliage in their crowns. Once there’s been some rain and a chance for the vegetation to regrow, the previously burned block will look identical to the currently unburned area. Indeed in one shot you can already see some green shoots emerging from the ground:

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So fire in itself is not a problem for these natural communities. What is a problem, for nature and for the communities of people who live in and around these woodlands, is the intensity, the scale and the frequency of the fires that are currently occurring. This morning Karin and I watched silently to a news report of yet another volunteer fire fighter who had lost his life overnight. In this case he had been part of a crew whose 10 tonne fire truck had been lifted up and overturned by cyclone-strength winds created by the blaze itself – there’s a BBC news account of the tragedy here. “Unprecedented” is a word we’re hearing a lot on ABC News.

Evidence for the number and size of the fires was everywhere in and around Port Macquarie, as we observed when we took a drive up to the peak of North Brother Mountain in Doorgan National Park. From a height of about 470 m (1500 ft) we could see some amazing panoramic views of the region that also showed black fire scars on the landscape – this is looking south:

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Looking north there’s little evidence of the fires – some have occurred there but much smaller in scale. But there is a lot of that second element, water. We were able to explore some shallow coastal lagoons fringed with grey mangroves (Avicennia marina):

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Mangrove habitats are fascinating places that are ecologically important as nurseries for marine fish and invertebrates. They also provide physical protection to coastlines, acting as a buffer to storm surges that would erode the land. In recognition of this, a recent project around Port Macquarie has involved restoration of these mangrove areas and was instigated by commercial oyster farmers and a local fishing society. I’m particularly intrigued by the upward-pointing aerial roots of mangroves; termed pneumatophores, they function to provide oxygen to the trees, but also increase the physical complexity of the floor of the lagoon, providing habitats for small animals:

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But evidence of the drought in this part of the world is never far away. On our seven-hour train trip back to Sydney we passed mile after mile of parched farmland, with dried-up waterholes and dust-filled streams. The only thing stopping it from burning is the absence of vegetation:

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As I complete this blog post, it’s 31st December and we’re back in Coogee Bay, ensconced in the apartment of my colleagues Angela and Stephen. They have headed to Stephen’s native Canada to visit family. It’s going to be cold! We’re very happy to house sit and see in the New Year in warmer climes. Best wishes for 2020 to all of my readers: let’s hope that it’s the start of an environmentally more enlightened decade.

Scoring (real) birdies: Australia reflections part 2

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2019-12-18 08.02.28

When it comes to golf I’m largely in agreement with Mark Twain who was reported to have described the game as “a good walk spoiled”. As with so many of these well known and iconic quotes, Twain did not originate the phrase and almost certainly did not say it. Reminds me of what Einstein didn’t say about bees. Regardless of how you feel about golf*, and I appreciate that many people enjoy and play the game, golf courses represent an interesting set of environmental challenges and opportunities. On the one hand maintaining areas of perfect turf requires a big input of water, fertilisers, biocides, even grass dye, and energy – there are some interesting thoughts on this in a recent blog post at goingzerowaste.com (though it’s riddled with adverts so be patient). One of the links I picked up from that blog was to the Audubon Society in the USA which has an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Golf certification scheme. Its aim is to help course management teams to reduce the impact of their activities and, importantly, to maximise and protect the biodiversity on their golf courses.

There are similar schemes elsewhere in the world, for example the Golf Environment Awards in the UK. Of course building new golf courses that irreparably damage important wildlife sites is unforgivable. For existing courses these are moves in the right direction because typically less than half of a course is the playing area. The rest comprises rough grass, woodland, lakes and streams and so forth: in other words, good habitat for a broad range of wildlife.

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All of this was on my mind last Wednesday when I was invited on an early morning birding trip to the urban Eastlake Golf Course by UNSW bird researcher Dr Corey Callaghan. We were joined by other staff members and postgrads from the department. Six of us spent a very enjoyable couple of hours from 6:15 am walking a route that took us close to the large bodies of water that give the course its name, through woodland and bush dominated by species of Banksia and Casuarina. The latter, despite being true flowering plants, look for all the world like the familiar conifers of many a British golf course.

Over a period of two hours we saw 70 species of birds. To put this in perspective, our Waterside Campus bird surveys back in Northampton also take around two hours and start early in the morning, through a similar mosaic of grassland, woodland patches, and a water body (the River Nene). On these surveys we typically see between 20 and 30 species; the most we’ve ever recorded in one morning is 39, and that really was exceptional. Remember also that Sydney is not in the tropics – at around 33 degrees south we’re technically subtropical here. Given the latitudinal gradient in bird diversity, a two hour survey on a tropical golf course should yield even more records, all else being equal.

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Of those 70 bird species, I think about 20 were new to me, i.e. lifers in birding parlance, though I still need to write up the list of birds I’ve seen so far on this trip. Perhaps I’ll do that this afternoon as temperature in Sydney peak and its frankly too hot to do much else. As I write it’s midday and official temperature for the Coogee area is already 29 degrees C, and that’s with a cooling sea breeze. Western Sydney is likely to top 40 degree later today.

Although whole families of birds in this region are unfamiliar to us in the Northern Hemisphere, there were others that we saw on Wednesday which would not be out of place in Northamptonshire. For example, we saw common greenshank, which overwinters here after an epic journey from northern climes, and Australian raven which is a different species to the ravens and crows from the UK, but very similar looking. The wading birds such as greenshank and sharp-tailed sandpiper were benefiting from the drought conditions that has exposed parts of the lake bed. Though if this continues there’s a danger of most of the water being lost completely, impacting the large eels and other fish we saw in the shallows, as well as the semi-aquatic Eastern water dragon.

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Birds, plants, fish and lizards were not the only wildlife we saw at Eastlake however – some very delicate fungi were benefiting from the regular watering of the fairway:

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It’s not all been birding and swimming in the (not very) warm sea, however. This week Angela, Stephen and I were joined by our CSIRO collaborator Dr Raghu Sathyamurthy for an intense week of writing. This manuscript boot camp has gone better than we expected and we have a very good first draft of a paper that should be in a position to submit to a journal by the time my visit here ends on 2nd February.

*I make an exception for crazy golf at seaside resorts which I play with my old university mates with beer, gusto, and not a little rivalry.

Ash on the beach, fire in the bush: Australia reflections part 1

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2019-12-13 12.17.43

Although we’ve only been in Australia for less that two weeks, it feels as if we’ve been here forever; once we got over the jetlag and the weird sleeping patterns, Karin and I have easily settled into the life of a Southern Hemisphere summer. It’s hard to believe that back home in the UK it’s cold, wet and (politically) miserable….

We’re based at Coogee Beach in the eastern suburbs of sprawling Sydney, just a short walk from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) where I’ve spent most of my time, and an even shorter walk from sand and surf. It sounds idyllic but one of the recurring features of the past week has been the amount of ash and charred leaves washing up on the beaches from the bush fires that surround Sydney at the moment:

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The region is in the midst of an extended drought and this has worsened the fire season. The Australian Government seems intent on denying that it’s anything to do with climate change, though recently one of the state ministers has broken ranks. That’s going to be little consolation this year but may mark the start of some changes in policies. Let’s see.

During our time here Karin and I have facilitated a workshop on “Writing for a non-academic audience” which was attended by 17 UNSW postgraduate researchers. I’ve presented a lecture on “Macroecology and macroevolution of plant-pollinator interactions: pattern and process at large geographical and temporal scales”…..

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….and spent a lot of time chatting with staff and postgrads at UNSW. In addition, Angela Moles, Stephen Bonser and I have made initial progress with a short paper that I’m hoping will be ready to submit before we head back to the UK in early February.

Time to actually get out and see some of the habitats and biodiversity of this part of Australia has been limited. But we’ve done a couple of hikes north and south of Coogee Beach, along cliff-top trails and boardwalks through remnant coastal heathland habitat, enjoying the novelty of watching rainbow lorikeets visiting the inflorescences of native Banksia trees:

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Yesterday we went further afield with a bird watching trip down to the Royal National Park (RNP) with Kew/NRI scientist Phil Stevenson (who is in the country for a couple of weeks on a flying visiting to speak at a conference and meet with colleagues); and Graham Pyke from Macquarie University, whose work on foraging behaviour of pollinators I’ve known for many years, but whom I’d never met. Leading our trip was Steve Anyon-Smith, a professional bird guide who literally wrote the book on birding in the RNP. Steve was great, highly knowledgeable, and a mine of information about the Australian environment. As well as seeing about 67 bird species we encountered a host of other wildlife, and I collected data on wind and animal pollination for another set of species. Here’s some images from that day:

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An orchid – Dipodium punctatum.

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The bower of a male satin bower bird.

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Not a great shot – it’s an Eastern dwarf tree frog.

2019-12-13 13.14.41 This is better – a very confiding Eastern water dragon along a well-used coastal trail.

Along that trail we also saw two forms of Banksia serrata – an upright one and a prostrate form – growing quite close together:

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I’ve seen a lot of birds visiting the inflorescences of this species but it’s suggested that mammals might be the main pollinators – the flowers have a very thick, yeasty smell. Perhaps it’s both?

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An Australian fringe-lily.

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This is Epacris longiflora – thanks to Ryan O’Donnell for the identification.

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And of course we saw a lot of the iconic laughing kookaburras.

Steve was really concerned that much of the forest and wildlife in the NPR may be destroyed over the summer. None of it has yet burned and, with temperatures due to rise enormously by next week, much of this habitat could be lost to fire by summer’s end. I sincerely hope not, it’s too precious and beautiful to lose. Vegetation in relatively light burns can reestablish itself given time, as we encountered in one of the Coogee remnants that burned a few years ago:

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But the bigger, hotter, more intense fires that are currently sweeping the state are something else entirely, and are alien to these forests. Aboriginal Australians carefully managed their environment using regular, small burns, a practice that has been lost in most areas.

Fire in Australia is a theme that I keep coming back to. A few weeks ago, during one of my second-year undergraduate grassland ecology lectures, I was discussing fire as a threat and a management tool in grasslands. I mentioned the situation in Australia with respect to Aboriginal use of fire and I asked my students what the purpose of their burning the grasslands was. Someone suggested that it might relate to their agriculture. My response then was “no” because Australian Aborigines were nomadic hunter-gatherers who never developed agriculture, which is what the received wisdom has been for decades. The answer I’d give now is: “yes, quite probably”. As so often is the case in science, the received wisdom was wrong.

My colleague at the University of New South Wales, Angela Moles, has loaned me a book called Dark Emu which draws on early European settler accounts, Aboriginal oral tradition, and recent archaeological discoveries to turn our understanding of the ecology of pre-European Australia on its head. In particular, it seems as though the (then) very large Aboriginal population was much more settled and had developed a sophisticated form of agriculture that included the creation and exploitation of huge areas of native grasses for their grains. This was all destroyed by colonial European agriculture within a short time period, before it was fully understood. One of the arguments in Dark Emu is that these native grasses are much more suitable to the Australian climate than wheat and may allow more sustainable agriculture in the future.

If you want to know more, here’s a link to a recent review and interview with the author, Bruce Pascoe:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/24/dark-emus-infinite-potential-our-kids-have-grown-up-in-a-fog-about-the-history-of-the-land

Strange as it might sound for a professor to say, I was happy to be wrong on this (or indeed any) occasion: scientific understanding only progresses by people being wrong and incorrect ideas being superseded by new knowledge. I made a point of sending my students an email telling them about what I’d discovered. It may well form a question on the test they have to take next term…..