Lemur-Tracking Beetles | Ancient Egyptian Snakes | Long-Lost Flower | Dormice Diaries
How dung beetles can help track endangered lemurs
Analysing the DNA in the gut of dung beetles could provide a simple and accessible way to monitor critically-endangered lemur populations in Madagascar, scientists have found.
A group from the Finnish Museum of Natural History and their colleagues set out to confirm the diet of dung beetles in the island state.
They found that, as expected, dung beetles there now mainly eat human faeces (two-thirds of beetles analysed) followed by cattle faeces. But they were encouraged to see that the dung beetles were also still eating the dung of lemurs -- and they could pinpoint exactly which species of lemur these were, and which areas the lemurs had come from.
Data collected from the study showed that the critically-endangered diademed sifaka from eastern Madagascan rainforests had provided some of the dung the beetles were eating.
The scientists say their study confirms that Madagascar’s 300 or so dung beetle species are readily-available and low cost “biodiversity indicators” that convey rich information on habitats and the animals that live in them.
The technique also opens up the possibility of analysing the DNA inside preserved dung beetles in natural history museums around the world, to offer insights into the biodiversity of decades past and habitats now lost.
Madagascan dung beetle species: Helictopleurus giganteus | Bernard Dupont | Wikimedia
What snakes were biting the Ancient Egyptians?
What snakes were biting the Ancient Egyptians? That's a question that's puzzled Egyptologists for decades.
If you include the Egyptian cobra that is reputed to have fatally bitten Cleopatra, these days Egypt only has around eight highly-venomous snakes. That’s a significant drop on the 37 species listed on a world-famous papyrus used by Ancient Egyptian priests, whose job it was to recommend treatment for snakebite victims across the kingdom.
A group of scientists in the UK now believes that a guild of highly-dangerous tropical African snakes migrated out of Ancient Egypt as non-human-induced climate change eroded their favoured habitats -- and they’ve been able to identify what snakes these likely were.
The scientists, from Bangor University, used ecological niche modeling software to show that large swathes of Egypt around 5,300 BC most likely had the right amount of rainfall, grassland and tree-stunted savanna to host snakes like black mambas, puff adders, boomslangs and black-necked spitting cobras -- none of which are found in Egypt today.
They’ve been able to match these snakes -- and others -- with the descriptions given by the Priests of Serquet on their papyrus, which is known as the Brooklyn Papyrus (after the Brooklyn Museum where it’s kept today).
A black-necked spitting cobra in Afram Plains, Ghana | Lucy Keith-Diagne | Wikimedia Commons
Rare, ‘possibly extinct’ flower rediscovered in South Africa
The mini galaxy flower that blooms for only a few hours after rain, and had been thought to be extinct, has been seen in South Africa for the first time in over 40 years.
The bright yellow iris-like flower was last recorded in 1981. The plant — known to science as Moraea minima — has a tiny distribution near the southernmost tip of Africa.
It grows in a small area of threatened habitat known as Agulhas sand fynbos.
Before its rediscovery, the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) classified the mini galaxy as critically-endangered and “possibly extinct”.
The plant was previously only known from an area of Agulhas sand fynbos that had become overgrazed by livestock and invaded by alien plants, so the prognosis for its survival wasn't good.
But then a chance discovery of a single mini galaxy plant was made in August 2022 by conservation manager Eugéne Hahndiek, from the Nuwejaars Wetlands Special Management Area (SMA).
He posted a picture of the plant, which he found growing in the middle of a road in the SMA, on the iNaturalist website. He initially identified it as a midday clockflower, a common species that is closely-related to the mini galaxy.
The picture on iNaturalist eventually caught the eye of SANBI experts, who correctly identified it as the long-lost flower. You can see pictures of the mini galaxy flower here.
The persistence of the mini galaxy flowers is a testament to the power of preserving even small patches of endangered habitat. Nuwejaars SMA covers an area of just 47,000 hectares (116,000 acres). It comprises 26 farms whose owners have signed title deed restrictions, meaning half of the area’s land is protected for rare plants and wildlife.
In 2021 a group of herpetologists discovered a new population of critically-endangered Cape flats frogs – South Africa’s smallest frog species – in Nuwejaars’ wetlands.
Closely-related M. fugacissima growing near Cape Town | Mahendran Moodley | Wikimedia
Dormouse diaries: flying ant bonanza
I love the signs of life that emerge after the early summer rains: dozens of millipedes trundling along like tiny locomotives; paradise flycatchers announcing their return with a torrent of excited notes; common fireballs, also known as blood lilies, raising their luminescent red flowering heads from the leaf litter on thick green stems.
This month in Harare, after a heavy downpour finally broke the grip of a long dry season, termite alates (commonly known as flying ants) poured out of their holes like quicksilver and took flight.
Bulbuls and flycatchers and waxbills gathered for the feast. As the flying ants spiralled up into the air, it was a signal for another forager to emerge: our 11-year-old daughter, with a glass jar in hand.
More than a year ago she rescued three tiny dormice pups when their eyes were still shut. Two have survived, and the emergence of flying ants represents, in the words of her older brother, an “all-you-can-eat buffet” for the mice.
Our daughter caught dozens and put them in her jar. These were then released inside her butterfly net, which she had laid flat on her bed.
The dormice were allowed inside the net to take turns at the buffet.
I took a video of one of them as he chased down his prey. His eyes were bright with excitement. Once he caught a flying ant he gripped it between his front paws and nibbled away.
Our daughter says flying ants, especially their juicy abdomens, are like dormouse bubblegum. “The wings are like the bubblegum wrappers,” she says, “and after eating the juicy bits, they spit out what’s left.”