Science – Page 42 – David Bradley

Birds of the Fen Edge Festival

The biannual Fen Edge Festival took place midsummer weekend 21-23rd June 2019. As ever, exciting but exhausting with lots of music and other events, stalls, etc. I side-stepped being an official photographer this year in favour of doing a bit more “musical” performance, but I still managed to get a few photos of the birds that The Raptor Foundation had brought along.

The Bataleur Eagle (Terathopius ecaudatus) is one of Africa’s snake-eating eagles. It’s a medium-sized eagle but up close and personal looks quite huge. Mainly black with distinctive white on the underside of its enormous wings. More distinctive still are its red face and feet. These are brightest when the bird is comfortable and happy, but it can withdraw the blood from these parts of its body when agitated leaving the face and feet yellow. This is presumably an adaptation that protects it from a snakebite. The blood being withdrawn from vulnerable exposed parts that might sucumb to venom.

The Bataleur that the team brought to FEF19 was a female called Captain Scarlet. The bird has a foreshortened tail which is an adaptation that allows it to walk backwards on the ground. This it does when hunting snakes. A snake will perceive another animal backing away as being vulnerable and likely prey.

The eagle backs away enticing in the snake and by this time it will have withdrawn the blood from its face and feet. It will strike the snake with its talons but if the snake tries to retaliate by biting the bird before its demise, there is no blood in the vulnerable extremities to carry the snake’s venom into the bird’s system. Once it has dispatched, the snake, the bird will eat it and in the meantime, the blood will flood back into its face and feet pushing out any venom through the puncture wounds!

The Raptor Foundation also brought along a European Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo) called Klunk. Its scientific name is one of those tautonyms I keep mentioning. The double of the scientific name like this means this species is the archetype, the type, of the family.

They brought with them a tiny Southern White-faced Owl (Ptilopsis granti) from Southern Africa, called, ironically, Goliath. Mrs Sciencebase and myself certainly heard this species in Botswana many years ago, but at the time they were known as White-faced Scops Owls.

There was a Barn Owl (Tyto Alba), and a Tawny Owl (Strix aluco). The female of this species is the one that calls out to the males “Too-wit” and the male replies “Two-woo”. You can usually then know if there are at least two Tawny owls, a male and a female around. Except, of course, confusingly the females also sometimes make the call back to themselves.

Pondlife Part VI – Adding more plants

UPDATE: 20 May 2020 – One night later in May saw five frogs roosting around the pond.

UPDATE: 4 May 2020 – Seen and heard two frogs for quite a few weeks after dark. Possibly two males, however, so no spawn. Mimulus in bloom as of ~1 May and a flag iris about to erupt too. The aquatic snails are thriving, we have dozens and dozens of both kinds now.

UPDATE 30 Jun 2019 – A frog made an appearance. Sat on the gravel pot while I went to get a camera and then promptly hopped back in the water on my return.

It’s almost two months since I dug and refilled our resurrected pond. It has a couple of deep oxygenating plants, some reeds, and a margin plant or two. We’ve seen two or three frogs but also lots of mosquitoes and their swimming larvae. There are diving beetles and whirligigs, and similar in the garden. We see an occasional bird having a drink. It’s new, it’s settling.

Macro closeup of a Mimulus flower in the margin of our pond.

The water feature (basically some rocks, a hosepipe and an electric pump in the bottom of the pond) is keeping the pondweed and algae at bay and after several construction attempts makes a nice natural sound now rather than splashing on to the butyl rubber.

Added two new plant species a water lily, Odorate sulphurea, and a Mimulus luteus with the variant name Queen’s Prize. The water lily isn’t much to look at but will hopefully spread its pads and provide summer shade for the submerged amphibia. The Mimulus has lovely blood red and custard yellow flowers. Also, just acquired some Common Water Snails (Limnoea stagnalis) and some Great Ramshorn Snails (Planorbarius corneus) from a friend along with a spiky pond plant, Water Soldier, which are now in place.

The pond surroundings also now have some wildflowers – Red Campion, Foxglove, St John’s Wort, Wild Basil, and others as well as the unkempt and weedy patch of grass behind and plenty of nijer and sunflower seedlings growing from birdfeeder spillage beneath the apple tree. It’s not quite idyllic yet, but it’s getting there…

A green moth that’s almost white

TL:DR – There are numerous green moths, they have evolved to mimic leaves and so evade predators through a simple camouflage mechanism.

The Light Emerald, is a geometer moth (its larvae are inchworms, measuring the earth). It is a delicate green, but not always, sometimes the green is stronger, sometimes it’s almost not green at all, but you can still tell that it is Campaea margaritaria. I had a very pale specimen to the scientific moth trap in June 2019 and posted a photo along with other interesting moths that were drawn to the actinic light.

A colleague, Martin Honey, on the Moths UK Flying Tonight Facebook group commented that he was aware of chemical research into the green pigment in this species and how it is known to be a less stable compound than any of the green pigments in an entirely different group of moths that sometimes have green, the noctuids, also known as the owlets.

An almost white Light Emerald, it’s green pigment has degraded

The paper is from 1994 and explains the chemistry of the Light Emerald green: The chemistry and systematic importance of the green wing pigment in emerald moths (Lepidopera: Geometridae, Geometrinae). You can read about the research here. It’s definitely something I might have written about back in the day when I was doing weekly chemistry news for New Scientist magazine and others.

The green pigment in question is called geoverdin and it is the only green pigment the moth needs. Chemically speaking it was once thought to be a bile pigment, but it turns out to actually be a derivative of the green pigment from photosynthesising plants, chlorophyll, consumed during the moth’s larval (caterpillar) stage. The researchers in the paper cited used good-old thin-layer chromatography to give the elusive moth pigment a little TLC and discern its characteristics.

Unfortunately, the team does not show the structure in their paper and a search for any other reference turns up nothing. However, I did find reference to the original PhD thesis from which the research paper was derived wherein it suggests that geoverdin is derived from neither bile pigments nor chlorophyll. I’ve contacted one of the team to find out more and will hopefully be able to update this post soon.

Scientific binomials in biology

I’ve talked about scientific binomial nomenclature here before especially in the context of tautonyms, where each part of the binomial (or trinomial even) is the same word e.g Carduelis carduelis, Bufo bufo, Gorilla gorilla gorilla. The repetition lets you know the species in question is the “type of the family.

People often call these scientific names, the Latin name for a plant or animal. However, they’re rarely Latin, they are Latinised, made to look like Latin words, but they’re often derived from proper Latin, assimilated from Greek or simply faked. Heteropoda davidbowie is a good example of why these aren’t really Latin names.

Anyway, a point that I’d overlooked in recent years is that the scientific name for an organism has to be qualified by the name of the person that named/discovered the organism and the year that was first recorded. So, for example, the full name of the spider with the orange mullet should be as follows: Heteropoda davidbowie, [JÃ¤ger, 2008]. In printed works, the binomial should be in italic lettering and the name and year in brackets.

Now, that I’ve remembered this point, I’ve made a start updating the lists associated with my bio photo galleries at Imaging Storm: Lepidoptera,Â Birds, and other Wildlife to include the discoverer/namer and year. It’s going to take me a while so please just in enjoy scrolling through my photos for now.

Four Elephants on the Bottom Lime

Scientific moth trap haul was much improved during a wet but balmy June night: 105+ moths of 31+ species. My hunch had been right based on the activity I’d seen around the actinic light after midnight. Despite the drizzle, it was almost balmy.

Never thought I’d see so many HMs at once: 4 Elephant Hawk-moths and a Lime Hawk-moth. Also, had my first Ghost Moth (M), first Light Arches (2x), first Mottled Beauty.

Male Ghost Moth (Hepialus humuli, Linnaeus, 1758)

Light Arches (Apamea lithoxylaea, [Denis & SchiffermÃ¼ller], 1775)

Light Feathered Rustic, Agrotis cinerea

This is one of those moths that most readers will just think, “ah, yes, typical moth – boring, grey, brown, ewww”. And superficially, yes, it is not a lot to look at. But, it’s a bit of a rarity and it was drawn to my scientific trap on the night of 31st July 2018 and photographed in the trap the next morning. It’s only recently that my mothing and birding friend Ian was scanning through my Mothematics Gallery and noticed I’d labelled this as queried and not confirmed an ID.

I have now confirmed it as Light Feathered Rustic (Agrotis cinerea, Denis & SchiffermÃ¼ller], 1775). Indicators are that line about 1/3rd of the way down and also the finger-like projections towards the termen. However, August is well outside the moth’s usual May to June flying season. But, it is suspected of having a second partial brood later in the summer. Moreover, this is a rarity in VC29 (Cambridgeshire) and East Anglia in general.

I spoke to Bill Mansfield the County Recorder, he and others have said it’s definitely A. cinerea. Astonishingly, Bill’s last record for Cambridgeshire was in 1991. He also points out that the only time it was recorded in Huntingdonshire was 1951 and Northamptonshire has no record of it since 2004. He is checking with Bedfordshire.

The species is one of the family Noctuidae, colloquially known as owlets, little owls (Noctua is Latin for little owl). They’re generally night-flying species and their larvae (caterpillars) known as Â “armyworms” and “cutworms” are plant pests – they form destructive garrisons of larvae and cut the stems of plants. There are almost 12000 species of owlet moths around the world.

Almost full moon and Jupiter

Tonight’s almost full moon, with Jupiter to the right, you can just about see the planet’s own moons that landed Galileo in jail…

The Fenland Pearl – a local moth for local people

No spectacular Hawk-moths today, nothing even particularly brightly coloured or intriguing at all…except for this little creamy white one with two distinctive black spots and lots of speckles.

Fenland Pearl, Anania perlucidalis (HÃ¼bner, [1809]) — The Fenland Pearl, (Anania perlucidalis)

I couldn’t ID it so turned to Twitter and got an identification from lep expert Sean Foote within minutes – Anania perlucidalis (Huebner, 1809) and about the same time by Chris Knott on the Facebook group “Moths UK Flying Tonight“. The species only has an official scientific name, the modern common name is Fenland Pearl, and is not necessarily in the books. In fact, it’s not in my book at all under either name, which is perhaps why I struggled to find it.

According to the UK Moths site, it was first seen in the British Isles on a Huntingdonshire fen, just up the road from us here in Cambridgeshire. It’s a localised species, lives on fenland and coastal parts of East Anglia and the South East of England. The site says little is known about the lifecycle of this species although it is thought that the larvae feed on Cirsium and Carduus thistles. The Wikipedia is very terse but corroborates it as a June-July and August flyer depending on location and that the larvae feed on Cirsium.

I keep a log of all the moths drawn to the scientific trap as well as posting species new for me (NFM) or new for the year (NFY) in my Mothematics Gallery.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar at 50

It’s the fiftieth anniversary of George Dubya’s favourite childhood book – The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle…of course, Dubya was 23 when it was first published, which might explain a lot. I don’t think Trump had graduated to storybooks by that age.

But, I have some shocking news for you…to my eye, The VHC looks like a type of lepidopteral larva known as an inchworm or geometer, the type that measure out the marigolds…well…actually the earth, hence their name “geo-meter” – earth measurer.

Anyway, inchworms don’t metamorphose into beautiful butterflies as The VHC apparently does in Carle’s book…they, of course, transform into moths! Which of the 23000 Geometridae is represented in Carle’s book I cannot tell you. That said, have a look at the larva of the Peppered Moth, it’s close. Moreover, the Peppered Moth has a special place in natural history, you can read about its industrial evolution here.

Swallow Prominent, Pheosia tremula

Now…the brown and grey moths are not intrinsically boring, each is the pinnacle of millions of years of evolution. But, when you spot something in the scientific trap on a cold, wet morning that isn’t just one of the 25 Heart & Darts in there, nor one of a handful of Vine’s Rustics, Turnip or Cabbage moths, then it is something of a treat. The Puss Moth was a big highlight, and of course, the various Hawk-moths that have come along in recent weeks including Lime, Poplar, Eyed, Elephant, Small Elephant, and Privet.

But, there are some moths that seem so delicately marked as if dusted with charcoal and pastel powders. Take the Swallow Prominent, Pheosia tremula. Tremulous it is indeed, oscillating its wings all the while I tried to get a snapshot but with only a brief interlude somewhere cold would help with when a snappy shutterspeed would not suffice.

There is a Lesser Swallow Prominent, P. gnoma, which isn’t always lesser, or smaller, at all, and is distinguishable in the fully developed adults really only in the difference in one of those charcoal lines and the creamy, white wedges along its wings. In P. tremula the wedge is a thinner slice than in P. gnoma. I’ve had the former in the trap now, but not the Lesser, yet.

You can perhaps see why this moth, which is one of several “Prominents”, has that name for the tuft that sticks out, best viewed side-on, as in the upper of my two photos here. Now, the second half of that name…I reckon it’s to do with the fact that the larvae feeds on the leaves of the shrubby willow known as the sallow, and nothing to do with swallowing and certainly not the migrant birds. At some point, a “w” was added. Peter Marren corroborates this idea in his book on moth names, but doesn’t give any more of an explanation than came to my mind.

I had a look on the German and French entries in Wikipedia to see if there were any additional clues. The French call this moth “La Porcelaine”, which means “The Porcelain” (cowrie shell). In Germany it is “The Poplar Toothspinner”, its larvae also eat poplar leaves and that spinning tooth part refers to the toothy-looking tuft on its back. Toothspinner equates to the genus Notodontidae, of which all of the Prominents are members, including the Coxcomb, Iron, Pebble, and Pale, photos of which are in my Mothematical Gallery on my Imaging Storm site.