Shelomi Doyle

Finished up in Samoa and headed home to Australia, we have achieved so much thanks to a grant from the Global Genome Initiative to collect DNA and herbarium samples of Samoan flora. Highlights: field trips, workshops, new supplies and equipment. So much scientific potential! Now for a little rest...

Ice Age shelter high up in the Blue Mountains reveals Aboriginal heritage from 20,000 years ago

New research indicates Dargan Shelter was occupied as early as the last Ice Age and repeatedly visited during this cold period.

A weird group of boronias puzzled botanists for decades. Now we’ve solved the pollination mystery

A team of scientists has discovered the secret to making ‘Boronia Babies’ is a tiny moth. Heliozelidae pollinate the weird flowers made famous by May Gibbs.

In defence of swamps and all their goodness...

Fresh off Samoa's highest mountain collecting herbarium and DNA samples with the team for a global project. Amazing cloud forest and lava stone plains with an array of endemic species. Highlights include moss, orchids, ferns, and the sweetest wild blueberries! (Vaccinium whitmeei)

Will you look at that! Why we are delighted by random, beautiful marvels | Patti Miller They cannot be sold, made into a tasty dish or set to work. So what qualifies as a marvel? And why do we respond to them with such deep pleasure?

"Why do we respond to marvels with such deep pleasure? It must be partly an aesthetic pleasure, the desire for beauty, but there is something else, something to do with a gift that cannot be ordered and paid for..."

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Fire ecology database for documenting plant responses to fire events in Australia - Scientific Data Scientific Data - Fire ecology database for documenting plant responses to fire events in Australia

Fire ecology database for documenting plant responses to fire events in Australia

by José Rafael Ferrer-Paris, Ada Sánchez-Mercado, David Keith @willcornwell.bsky.social @markooiecol.bsky.social et al.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The orchids of Samoa are so diverse, and make up its largest flowering plant family, due to the tiny seeds and epiphytic habit that are perfect for islands. Meet the endemic Dendrobium samoense, with Phreatia micrantha, Coelogyne lycastoides, and Bulbophyllum samoanum. Hopefully more to come!

Plant translocations and reintroductions for conservation purposes are often unsuccessful. Sandrine Godefroid and colleagues have summed up the outcome of over 3000 plant translocations across Europe, their outcome and reason for success or failure.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

It's Mucuna glabra, a big forest vine with green beany flowers. Traditionally the flat seeds have been used for playing games, and apparently you can cut the vine and drink the water from it in an emergency!

Why ecology is like real-life Pokemon: while exploring this cloudy other-wordly Antarctic Beech Forest in Australia over Christmas, I just happened to find some Gingidia rupicola (mountain carrot), which is Endangered and only has an estimated 50 individuals in the wild! Always keep your eyes open!

I hereby create a community of people who love, respect, and admire boglands. They are mysterious, beautiful, and powerful to ecology, archaeology and climate. Yet these systems continue to be misunderstood and threatened. Who wants to join my bog fan club? Please share - bogs need friends right now

Thanks Sophie, there are some interesting seeds here too...

‘Rare and threatened’: the bid to save Grampian flowers after fire disasters Royal Botanic Gardens scientists are heading to the Victorian national park in search of plant survivors amid the charred landscape The Grampians globe-pea, a critically endangered wiry shrub, had finished flowering and was fruiting when fires tore…

‘Rare and threatened’: the bid to save Grampian flowers after fire disasters

While you sleep, these insects are working hard on the night shift to keep our environment healthy

Artificial lights at night are causing serious disruption to these insect night shift workers. That’s a problem for everyone.

Gene pools are getting dangerously shallow for many species. We found 5 ways to help

Genetic diversity is being lost across many species – especially birds and mammals. But you can help stop the decline.

It will do for now I suppose!

One of the perks of working in Samoa is having adventures in epic places! These volcanic islands are home to lots of special hidey holes like the To sua ocean trench, where ferns, gingers and a tenacious fig line the rocky walls. When in Rome...

World Flora Online December 2024 Plant List and data release is live.

All made possible thanks to the 195 co-authors.
(See 2 of 2)

available to browse here www.wfoplantlist.org.

all the data is here doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

#wfo #worldfloralonline #botany

1 of 2

A male Giant Dragonfly, with a wingspan of up to 11 cm, perches on a twig after emerging from the swamp, where the larvae can spend up to 10 years in an underground burrow.

Finally saw the endangered Giant Dragonfly (Petalura gigantea), which lives in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. This is a (smaller) male with an impressive wingspan of about 11cm. Larvae spend up to 10 years in a swampy burrow before emerging in late spring to mate.

#dragonfly #insects #nature

Three must read papers for PhD students. #scisky #PhD #science #research #academicsky

1. The importance of stupidity in scientific research

Open Access
journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

It's always nice to finish the year in Australia, even more so when it involves sharing about #peatlands with like-minded folks at the #ESAus2024 ! I even managed a visit to the Royal Botanic Gardens, full of botanical treats including my old friend Melaleuca nesophila.

#nerdalert #ecology #botany

Earthquake and cyclones have Vanuatu in a 'constant state of recovery' People in Vanuatu applaud its latest show of resilience following a deadly magnitude-7.3 earthquake, but they say it can't respond to its cascading natural disasters alone.

People in Vanuatu applaud its latest show of resilience following a deadly magnitude-7.3 earthquake, but they say it can't respond to its cascading natural disasters alone.

Large Heath butterfly (Bob Eade)

📢 NEW PhD opportunity: Peatlands, plants, and pollinators.

This exciting project will use population genetics & landscape info to inform conservation management strategies for the endangered Large Heath butterfly across Scotland's peatlands.
👇🏼
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Since @KewScience is still not around but this is too good not to share...
Everyone check the newest phylogeny of #Orchidaceae (nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...) and download this AMAZING updated #OrchidTreeOfLife (in English and Spanish!): figshare.com/s/241e1bd47d...

As requested, some lovely Drosera binata from an Australian peat swamp!

Biodiversity impacts of the 2019–2020 Australian megafires - Nature Data collected from more than 2,000 taxa provide an unparalleled opportunity to quantify how extreme wildfires affect biodiversity, revealing that the largest effects on plants and animals were in are...

Biodiversity impacts of the 2019–2020 Australian megafires.

In this massive collaboration, >100 Australian ecologists put a novel spin on meta-analysis to discover how fire frequency, interval, unburnt area, pre-fire drought and protected areas modify fire impacts.🌏

www.nature.com/articles/s41...