Study finds tiny cavities in Banksia trees are nests for native bees

January 8, 2019, Curtin University

A new study from Curtin University has found pre-formed cavities in Banksia trees to be an important nesting home for a tiny native Western Australian bee.

The study, published in the international open-access Journal of Melittology, observed the nesting behaviour of Euryglossina perpusilla (E.purpusilla) in Star Swamp Reserve, a 96-hectare A-class reserve in North Beach, located in Perth's northern suburbs.

Author, Ph.D. student Kit Prendergast, from Curtin's School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said little was known about the nesting habits of Euryglossina bees.

"Most native bee sub-families are known to nest in just one type of substrate, being wood nesters, or ground nesters. However, the sub-family Euryglossinae exhibits a range of sociality in nesting habitats and nest construction," Ms Prendergast said.

"They appear to use a range of materials to create their nests in, including the inside of stems, soft wood, pre-existing cavities and soil."

Ms Prendergast installed trap-nests, or bee hotels – wooden blocks with cardboard lined holes 4mm, 7mm and 10mm in diameter – to observe the nesting behaviour of cavity-nesting native bees. Although many native bee species in the Megachilidae family nested in the trap-nests, E. purpusilla never occupied them, instead choosing smaller natural cavities of 1.5 to 3mm in diameter in Banksia branches. However, a small Megachile species was observed to also share the Banksia holes with E. purpusilla.

Ms Prendergast said the study offered important insights that may protect the survival of E. purpusilla, as effective conservation required knowledge of a species' niche and interactions with its environment.

"There is an urgent need to increase our knowledge of Australian native bees given the rapid transformation of natural habitats by urbanisation and reports of bee declines across the globe," Ms Prendergast said.

"With much of the original Banksia woodland destroyed in the southwest Australian biodiversity hotspot, remnant bushland habitats such as Star Swamp Reserve may be fundamental to ensuring endemic species such as these native bees persist."

Euryglossinae is the most species-rich bee sub-family in Australia, with 404 named species comprising minute to small-bodied bees endemic to Australia.

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Global warming lethal to baby lizards: Nests become heat traps

New study alters expected impact of climate change on lizards

Date: August 19, 2015

Source: Arizona State University

Summary: The expected impact of climate change on North American lizards is much worse than first thought. A team of biologists has discovered that lizard embryos die when subjected to a temperature of 110 degrees Fahrenheit even for a few minutes. They also discovered a bias in previous studies, which ignored early life stages such as embryos. Embryonic lizards are immobile and cannot cool off when surrounding soil becomes hot.

Continued ...

Where ants go when nature calls: Ants use corners of their nest as 'toilets'

Date:

February 18, 2015

Source:

PLOS

Summary:

Ants may use the corners of their nest as 'toilets,' according to a new study. Little research has been done on ant sanitary behavior, so the authors of this study conducted an experiment to determine whether distinct brown patches they observed forming in ants' nests were feces. They fed ants, living in white plaster nests, food dyed with either red or blue food coloring and observed the nests for the colorful feces.

Continued ...

Urban bees using plastic to build hives

Date:

February 11, 2014

Source:

University of Guelph

Summary:

Once the snow melts, bees will be back in business -- pollinating, making honey and keeping busy doing bee things. For at least two urban bee species, that means making nests out of plastic waste. A new study reveals that some bees use bits of plastic bags and plastic building materials to construct their nests.

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Blinded by the light: As sea-turtle nests increase, so do disorientations – via Herp Digest

By Dinah Voyles Pulver

ENVIRONMENT WRITER, The Daytona Beach News Journal,  September 8, 2012.

Jennifer Winters stood on the beach and tried to imagine what light, shining through the night, might have caused 10 newly hatched loggerhead sea turtles to wander north on the beach instead of heading to the ocean.

Winters, who manages Volusia County's beachfront habitat conservation program, could see several possible distractions, which she noted on a clipboard lit by a set of tiny LED lights.

Was it the bright light glowing out of a parking garage? Unshielded streetlights across A1A? Or a lamp on a deck pointed out toward the beach instead of illuminating the sidewalk?

All are technical violations of the county's lighting ordinance, a stipulation of the federal permit that allows Volusia beaches to remain open to driving. Winters would later notify property owners that their lights weren't in compliance.

Flagler also has a lighting program aimed at keeping property owners in line with a county ordinance designed to prevent distractions to turtle hatchlings to comply with the federal Endangered Species Act.

County officials routinely try to educate beachfront property owners and have worked with the Sea Turtle Conservancy to coordinate grants for properties to correct lighting violations. But despite these efforts and the rules in place for more than a decade, dozens of violations are found each summer.

And, hundreds of sea turtle hatchlings are reported disoriented by volunteer monitors who sometimes find them in the morning or see the trail where the hatchlings trekked along the beach before finding their way to the waves.

This summer has been a busy one for sea turtles, with record numbers of females digging nests and depositing eggs along the beach. More than 1,480 nests have been counted on Volusia and Flagler beaches north of Canaveral National Seashore, and officials say more than 50,000 eggs have hatched in Volusia alone.

Disorientation events also have increased.

By the end of August, of the 582 nests that were evaluated on Volusia beaches so far, more than 1,450 hatchlings from 36 nests have been disoriented, Winters reported. In Flagler, turtle hatchlings have wandered away from at least six of the more than 260 nests that have hatched so far, said Beth Libert, of the Volusia-Flagler Turtle Patrol.

In the last several weeks, dead hatchlings have been collected on State Road A1A in Daytona Beach and Flagler Beach.

Each event prompts a visit from Winters or a colleague. This summer the county has about 185 open lighting cases as it tries to enforce the ordinance and monitor the lights that can disrupt the turtle hatchlings or lead them to their deaths.

Many property owners along the beach have voluntarily complied with the ordinances over the years, said officials in both counties. Other property owners just turn off offending lights during the season. And others play a cat and mouse game, leaving non-complying lights on until they hear from the county. Sometimes, lighting problems occur when properties are sold and new owners take over.

"It's frustrating," said Winters.

One formerly brightly lit location on the beach has had a makeover and now sports a new low light profile. The Ocean Walk Resort Condominium Association just completed a major retrofit project to redo all of its lighting along the beach and pool area, installing new shielded light fixtures and lower wave length and/or amber colored lights instead of incandescent bulbs.

On a recent Friday night, Winters walked the pool deck area there with Anne Delude, the on-site community association manager, and Karen Shudes with the Sea Turtle Conservancy. The project was accomplished in part by a grant the conservancy administers.

"I'm so thrilled with the final product," Delude said. "I couldn't have envisioned this."

It's better for guest safety and better for the turtles, she said. Residents and guests can see better and the ambience improved.

Delude said the association "couldn't have done it" without the Sea Turtle Conservancy, which administers a BP grant program, funded by the sale of crude oil recovered at the site of the company's Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

A first round of the grant program helped pay for improvements at Volusia County's Marine Science Center and other sea turtle rehabilitation facilities around the state. A second round of funding was used to help pay for lighting retrofits at facilities along East Coast beaches most frequently visited by nesting sea turtles.

The conservancy also has worked with the Coral Sands Resort and Cottages and the Indies House in Ormond Beach and Sea Coast Gardens in New Smyrna Beach.

The grant to the Ocean Walk paid about half the cost of the $50,000 retrofit, said Shudes.

The Friday night walk was Shudes' first look at the final project and she was happy with the end result.

"It's my hope that other adjacent properties will follow suit and we continue that stretch of darkened habitat for nesting sea turtles and hatchlings," she said.

Hotels and condominiums can achieve the candle requirements for keeping their pools open at night, she said. "We're hearing positive feedback from property owners and guests."

Both Delude and Shudes said guests find the amber-colored lights more soft and pleasing, she said. "It kind of reminds them of candlelight," said Shudes.

"It was actually harder to see with the brighter lights because your eyes were adjusting from really bright light," said Shudes. "Your pupils allow more light in so you can use your adaptive night vision."

Guests can see better and there are fewer shadows, Delude said. "That's the key to guest safety and security."

Shudes said other facilities along the coast are finding that the 70-percent more efficient LED lights are "extremely energy efficient."

Elsewhere along the beach in its other lighting cases, Volusia County is working with property owners to resolve problems, Winters said.

Cases that can't be resolved are sent to the code enforcement board for follow up and enforcement, including fines.

Not everyone is happy with the county's approach. Turtle advocates would like to see the county take a more hard-line approach to pursue violations of the ordinance.

For example, Shirley Reynolds, who once sued the county on behalf of sea turtles, routinely calls the county to task for failing to do enough to enforce the lighting rules.

Others say the county staff is stretched too thin to adequately address the problems. At times in the past, the county had two full-time staff devoted to enforcing the lighting ordinance. This summer, the one position allocated for that task has been vacant and Winters and a colleague are sharing the work.

Winters said they hope to hire someone to fill the position shortly.

Facts

Volusia's Lighting Rules

Light fixtures shall be designed, positioned, shielded or otherwise modified such that the source of light and any reflective surfaces of the fixture shall not be directly visible by a person who is in a standing position on the beach. With the exception of a small area of the beach in downtown Daytona Beach that is exempt from the regulations, any source of light or reflective surface of the fixture visible from the beach is a violation (regardless of color).

Lights shall not directly or indirectly illuminate the beach during the sea turtle nesting season. County officials advise using long wavelength (red or amber LED) lights or low wattage bulbs along with shielded fixtures to reduce beach illumination. Light trespassing onto the beach is beach illumination and is a violation of the ordinance.

Tinted glass, or any window film applied to window glass which meet the shading criteria for tinted glass, shall be installed on all windows of single- or multistory buildings or structures within line of sight of the beach in the regulated boundaries.

Lights illuminating signs shall be shielded or screened such that they do not illuminate the beach and the source of the light shall not be visible by a person who is in a standing position on the beach.

Search for Fiji petrels nest continues

Encouraging signs, but no nests yet - Courtesy of Birdlife
August 2012. It looked like ‘just another forested hillside' but Bob and Tar - the Fiji Petrel detector Dogs proved otherwise - they found the first significant colony of Vulnerable Collared Petrels to date.

‘Detector dogs'
It is extremely hard work quartering the steep forested hillsides of Gau with the detector dogs and where the dogs go, the handlers have to follow. Eleazar O'Conner and Poasa Qalo have taken the dogs up hills and down slopes which show no signs that anyone has ever been there before. But all the forest on Gau Island has to be methodically checked for nesting petrels. 

Collared petrels, but no cigar
Nearly four months of searches had so far produced 8 burrows either occupied of being excavated during nocturnal visits by their owners. All were known or considered to be Collared Petrel nests.

Burrowscope
Delaisavu, an unremarkable hillside above the village of Navukailagi in the north of the island didn't look very special. But the Bob and Tar proved otherwise. Loosely scattered on the steep slope, 25 burrows have been found and registered in the database - the world's first ever well-documented colony of the Collared Petrel. Each burrow is inspected with the ‘burrowscope' - but not all reveal their owners as some of the burrows are more than the two metre length of the burrowscope and others have right angle bends that the burrowscope cannot get round. So there is still much to be learned. It is quite possible that one of the burrows could belong to a Fiji Petrel.

For Eleazar and Poasa, the find could not have come at a better time - a great reward for an enormous amount of effort. For the dogs, Bob and Tar, finding the burrows reinforces their training and the congratulations and attention showered on them after each find, helps to keep them searching hard for more. For the Fiji Petrel Project, this is tremendous progress and the possibility of finding a Fiji Petrel nesting burrow, after nearly 30 years of intermittent research is looking like a distinct possibility.

Fiji petrels

Fiji petrels are one of the world's least known birds. First recognised in 1855 from a single specimen found Gau Island, and only seen recorded just a few times since, Fiji petrels are considered Critically Endangered. Their nesting grounds have never been found, but it i sthought that Gau is the most likely spot.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/fiji-petrel-nest.html

Tropical Storm Debby's pounding waves wiped out turtle nests as well as beaches – via Herp Digest

By Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer

In Print: Saturday, June 30, 2012

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Tropical Storm Debby did more than just wipe some of Pinellas County's beaches off the map. The storm's pounding waves also destroyed scores of sea turtle nests, potentially ruining what had been a record-breaking nesting season.

"Obviously there's a lot of devastation," said David Yates of the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, which coordinates sea turtle nesting surveys on most of Pinellas' beaches. "We were having the best year in 15 years, and now we've had a substantial washing away."

Sea turtle guardians still are compiling the numbers to chart the losses, but early estimates are that they will be large. Fort De Soto Park supervisor Jim Wilson figures about one-third of the nests there were wiped out.

David Godfrey of the Sea Turtle Conservancy, the world's oldest sea turtle research and conservation group, said that along the gulf coast up to the Panhandle, "so far we're hearing that as many as half or more were lost."

However, state sea turtle biologist Anne Meylan said those estimates may be based on the loss of nest markers, not the nests.

"Losing your stakes isn't the same thing as losing the nests," noted Meylan, who works for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg. As a result, she said, "It's premature to have any estimate of an impact."

She also pointed out that several months still remain in turtle nesting season, so, "We still have time to make up any losses."

From May until September, thousands of female sea turtles — loggerheads and other species — crawl up on Florida beaches, dig a hole and drop in a clutch of eggs, then cover it back up and swim away.

The turtles that lay the eggs are returning to the beaches where they themselves hatched out some 30 years before.

Until this week, volunteers roving along the state's beaches were reporting record high nest numbers, Godfrey said. And the nesting had begun earlier than usual, too, he said.

But then Debby arrived, producing record rainfall and pounding waves that washed away beaches, as well as the nests beneath them.

"Up to that point, we were way ahead of last year," Meylan said.

South of the Tampa Bay area, researchers from Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota checking on the 1,367 nests they had marked before the storm between Longboat Key and Venice found markers remained for only 244 nests. That means as many as 82 percent of local nests lost the yellow stakes placed for identification — although it does not necessarily mean the nests are gone.

State biologists have been charting sea turtle nesting for more than 20 years. During that time, the nesting of loggerheads — the most common sea turtle species, but still rare enough to be classified as "threatened" — has been going downhill. The decline has been steepest since a high of 59,918 nests were counted in 1998.

Last year, however, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission documented a record-high nest count for green turtles. Leatherback turtles also had a high number of nests. Loggerhead nesting was close to its five-year average.

Apes' Simple Nests Are Feats of Engineering

When they are ready to snuggle up at the tops of trees, great apes make themselves cozy "nests" in which to rest for the night. New studies of these one-night nests reveal their incredible complexity.

"They are almost as complex as a man-made shelter you might make," study researcher A. Roland Ennos of the University of Manchester, in the United Kingdom, told LiveScience. "They know how the wood is going to break, and they have a feel for how strong they have to make it [the nest]. That shows the apes have intelligence and have a feel for the physics of their environment."

These nests are about 4 to 5 feet long and about 3 feet wide (1.2 to 1.5 meters long, and slightly less that 1 meter wide). The apes make them in the forest canopy, which can be between 30 and 60 feet (10 and 20 m) up, and it takes them only about 10 minutes to build. They use the nests only once, and then move on. The nests keep them warmer, away from insects and keep them safe, up off the forest floor.

http://www.livescience.com/19708-primates-build-sleeping-nests.html

Bigfoot nests found in Russia?

London: Experts from Russia, Canada, the US and Sweden went on an expedition to Siberia and reportedly found nests of the elusive Bigfoot or the legendary creature yeti.

The experts said they discovered "strangely twisted" trees in the remote part of Russia, which suggested that a creature was building nests in the same way as orangutans and gorillas, The Sun reported.

The trees had been twisted together by force to form an arch in the Kemerovo region, an area known for frequent sightings of the yeti.
"We didn't feel like the trees we saw in Siberia had been done by a man or another mammal. Twisted trees like this have also been observed in North America and they could fit with the theory that Bigfoot makes nests," said John Bindernagel, a 69-year-old biologist.

The ape-like yeti is believed to live in forests of North America and Russia. Sightings have also been reported in France. A similar creature is said to live in the Himalayas.

IANS

http://zeenews.india.com/news/eco-news/bigfoot-nests-found-in-russia_741830.html