Wednesday, July 27, 2011

The first signs of spring, 2011

Finally, a chance to write my blog again! July has disappeared with work commitments, so I'm grateful to finally settle back into a more gentle rhythmn. Its deepest wintere here, and here is the view from our backyard to the Brindabella Ranges, 30 kilometers to the southwest. It stayed on the ground for a good week after I took this photo, with the last of it melting on 20 July. There is still snow on Mount Bimberi, the highest peak in the Australian Capital Territory, as I write this.

The Brindabella Ranges with freshly fallen snow. Left to right are Mount Gingera, Mt. Ginini and Mt. Franklin. The Drosera peltata site I visit is in the hills below Mount Ginini at Smoker's Gap (not visible).

Friday, July 8, 2011

Tree shrews, rats and Nepenthes rajah in pitcher perfect mutualism WITH VIDEO!

One of my science scanners picked up this absolutely wonderful article co-authored by Charles Clarke on mutualism between the magnificent Nepenthes rajah and two species of mammals. In summary, a species of tree shrew (Tupaia montana) and rat (Rattus baluensis) both defecate into Nepenthes rajah pitchers while feeding on sugary secretions produced on the underside of the pitcher's lid. This type of behaviour has previously been demonstrated for N. lowii (link one and link two to the original research papers for N. lowii).

The full article (and a .pdf of the research paper) is freely available from this link:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0021114

Also be sure to see the high-resolution image of Rattus baluensis feeding on a N. rajah pitcher here (a very high resolution, 9 MB .tiff file is also downloadable from this link).

As if the research article and photograph were not enough, Charles was also good enough to upload three videos of Tupaia montana in action on pitchers of N. rajah and N. macrophylla onto youtube. They are embedded below for your viewing pleasure.

Nepenthes rajah video one:


Nepenthes rajah video two:


Nepenthes macrophylla:



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