Arquivos de periódicos de janeiro 2019

31 de janeiro de 2019

Biodiversity in a Calabur tree sapling

Now that we have entered the Anthropocene, the "Age of Humanity," in which humans recognize themselves as the dominant agents of the earth's environment, we are responsible for the consequences of our power, most notably global warming and loss of biodiversity.
Biodiversity is related to the stability, to the self-regulation of the biomes, has important influence on the productivity of the crops and the restriction to the propagation of diseases, citing only two critical aspects.
The extinction of pollinating insects through the use of pesticides puts crop yields at risk and, more than an economic issue, endangers our food security. Dams breakage and river pollution cause extinction of frogs and fish, predators of insect larvae vectors of various diseases, increasing the risk of epidemics of diseases, as observed recently with the outbreak of yellow fever.
Every being has its place in the environment, where it preys or is preyed upon in an intricate web of relationships, and its absence brings consequences that we can not fully evaluate. What we are sure is that they provide an irreplaceable environmental service.
Looking around us, for example, in a square, we see trees, see and hear birds, eventually cicadas. Occasionally we are attacked by stepping on an anthill. But not only that, there are countless others, which I try to bring and show here by observing a recent sapling of a fruitful Calabur (Muntingia calabura) tree, usually seen only as attractive to birds, that I have planted less than a year ago.



On visits to this young Calabur tree, I observed and recorded a large diversity of insects and arachnids coming to it to shelter, feed and eventually breed. In the six-month period there were only thirty visits, in which a diversity of eighteen species of insects and two species of arachnids were observed and recorded, not counting those who did not allow themselves to be photographed. The specimens here are very small, some tiny, and go unnoticed to the least attentive look.
Many people have entomophobia (fear or aversion to insects) or arachnophobia (fear or aversion to spiders), but here they may see them "safely," perhaps even appreciating them in their beauty or strangeness.

This post was updated on July 5
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/nelson_wisnik/25978-biodiversity-in-a-calabur-tree-sapling-update

To access the observations, "explore" filtering for the person's name "nelson_wisnik" and the Description/tags "calabura" or access the project"https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/observations-of-biodiversity-in-a-calabura-tree". You are welcome.

Posted on 31 de janeiro de 2019, 11:14 PM by nelson_wisnik nelson_wisnik | 1 comentário | Deixar um comentário