World and General

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In September 1995, alien spiders were found in Osaka, Japan, which resembled the notorious and poisonous Black Widow too much to feel comfortable. They were first sighted in a harbour where oil tankers from Sidney were discharging their payloads. Already in November, the same year, these spiders were confirmed to be a Black Widow, the Australian Red Back (Latrodectus hasselti). Immediately, measures were taken, for example, school children were taught that there is a new, sometimes deadly danger in their area.

Through the swift and sure identification of the spider, the taken measures prevented bites and sicknesses and thus lives were safed and medical costs reduced. How was that done?

All species of spiders are registered in catalogues since the 1950ties and the taxonomic information is regularly updated. This activity is continued today but exclusively on the internet, and so the latest taxonomic information is freely available to everyone and eight days a week (The World Spider Catalogue)!

As early as the 1960ties, an informal and thus efficient network of spider specialists exists, not only for single countries, but on a global scale (e.g. International Society of Arachnology, ISA). Particularly in Australia, researchers made strong attempts to catalogue all species and to make this diversity accessible through identification keys. The first result is the CD-ROM on ‚Spiders of Australia’ published in 2002.

Even back in 1995, the network of specialists was well established and the identification keys were advanced, and so the Australian Red Back was also identified in Japan. No easy task: this spider does not occur there but in a distance of several thousand kilometres across the Pacific Ocean.

In 2001 and 2003 local authorities of Osaka (Japan) and a specialist in Brisbane (Australia) met to discuss the situation. On this occasion it became apparent that the Australian Red Back was much more resistant to cold than it is in Australia homeland. In their new habitat, they survived temperatures below freezing for periods of 13 days healthily and even reached higher population densities compared to Australia.

Theses results are enormously important for preventive measures in countries with temperate climates! Generally it was assumed that these countries are safe against introduction and distribution of tropical, poisonous spiders. This incidence clearly shows that we cannot rely on the climatic safeguard.

Sound taxonomic knowledge combined with a world wide network of experts proved essential for swift, focused and efficient counter measures. Thus, the local people could were well informed, preventing mass hysteria and deadly accidents.

In many parts of Europe, the horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) is a popular urban tree. Over the last 11 years, a moth, Cameraria ohridella, spread over Eastern and Central Europe, starting from Macedonia, which significantly damages the horse chestnut. The larvae of this moth mine in the leafs of this tree, turning the leaves brown and the foliage is lost prematurely. This weakens the tree and may kill the tree in the long run.

The horse chestnut is a common tree in our European cities and so its disappearance would significantly change the cityscape and the quality of urban life. More: the dead trees would be exchanged over time with other trees, which would be a very significant financial burden for the communities, which already have significant financial problems. Some of them can hardly afford the simple but efficient control measure of removing the foliage under the trees.

In an EU project, CABI-Bioscience ('Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau International' in London, UK) tries to find classical, biological pest management methods, preferably predators or parasites of the home region of this moth. This, however, is not known and so expensive expeditions need to be undertaken to find the natural distribution of the horse chestnut leaf miner.

This is the moment where classical taxonomy helps. A phylogenetic study of Cameraria ohridella and closely related species, which are available in museum collections, will show with some probability where the pest moth naturally occurs. Closely related species often occur in a small range. This will diminish the search range for the Cameraria leaf miner significantly: a potential world wide distribution will decrease to areas such as China. If the ecology of the closely related species is known, then it follows that the pest moth will probably have a similar ecology. This, naturally, helps in the search. You have to search only in forests, beaches or mountain ranges and not everywhere.

A phylogenetic study can only be conducted by a biologist experienced in taxonomical techniques, based on the material available in museum collections. This material must be constantly collected. Incidentally, this is the only way to establish, if a species is new to a certain area, and where it occurs first. Without this information, no-one could have established that the horse chestnut leaf miner first appear in Macedonia in 1985 and spread all over Europe since then.

In comparison with the possible financial damage, which would be millions of Euro for Germany alone, the costs to employ a taxonomist are minor. The dismissal of this person might safe a little money in the short run, in the long run, quite the opposite would result.

Sources and Links:

Contact:

Dr. Fabian Haas, FRES Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde, Stuttgart, Rosenstein 1, D-70191 Stuttgart, Germany

In order to re-naturate waste land, scientist are convinced that only the profound knowledge of the biological and chemical processes in the soil is needed to succeed and increase crops. All this without applying large amounts of pesticides and fertiliser. Earth worms, termites and other soil-dwelling organisms are subterranean ploughs recycling the soil and bringing nutrients to the surface. They increase the water capacity, and so sterile soils are susceptible to drought and erosion.

An impressive example comes from India. Indigenous earthworms became extinct through the permanent and ample use of fertilisers in the tea producing region of Tamil Nadu in India. However, the re-introduction of the indigenous earthworms increased the stagnating crops by 300 %!

This success was based on the intimate, taxonomic knowledge of the local soil dwellers. Only if theses organisms are identified with certainty, the really important and beneficial ones can be selected, cultured and re-introduced. The waste land was too large for a simple ‚revitalisations’ by deploying live soil, which would probably include the introduction of pest organisms.

Source:

UNEP United Nations Environment Programme Annual Report 2002

Contact:

Dr. Fabian Haas, FRES Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde, Stuttgart, Rosenstein 1, D-70191 Stuttgart, Germany

In 1992 an unusual beetle was found in the forests of British Columbia (Canada). No expert was at hand, who could identify this species and it took one year to have it diagnosed as Buprestis haemorrhoidalis, a European Buprestid (also called wood-boring beetles, jewel beetles or flat headed borers). The delay in the identification gave the beetle decisive advantages for distribution: two reproductive cycles.

If one beetle has only 100 descendants, then after two cycles there are 100 time 100 i.e. 10.000 beetles, instead of only 100. All of them will distribute and reproduce and need control.

As a consequence of this delay, the extinction program had to cover a much larger area, thus increasing logistic problems in this impassable country and costs. Compared to these measures the costs for a specialist with suitable collection and museum dwarf in comparison to the multi-billion Euro timber industry in Canada. Furthermore the possible damage such an invasive species could cause is in the range of several million Euros, just because of one beetle in one year … A specialist could be paid for several decade with the same amount of money.

Source:

Systematics Agenda 2000

Contact:

Dr. Fabian Haas, FRES Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde, Stuttgart, Rosenstein 1, D-70191 Stuttgart, Germany

Many harmless plants and animals developed to important pest organisms once they were transferred to new areas and regions of the world. This was often done undeliberatly with world wide trade, or deliberately by settlers who brought these plants to the colonies as ornamental plant or kitchen herbs.

Plant completely harmless in e.g. Europe, proved to be aggressive pests rendering swaths of land unsuitable for farming. Examples are the Water Hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) from the Amazon, covering African streams today. Or the Whitetop or Hoary Cress (Cardaria draba) in North America. Or the Giant Hogweed or Cartwheel flower plant (Heracleum mantegazzianum) which is distributing with enormous pace along the high way system in Europe. Or the Himalayan Balsam (aka Policeman's Helmet; Impatiens glandulifera). The importance of these so-called ‚invasive species’ is underpinned by GISP Programme, the Global Invasive Species Programme, and by the Convention on Biological Diversity.

In order to counter these plants CABI-Bioscience tries to develop biological pest management, based on organisms, most often insects, from the home countries of the pest plants. The more specific these organisms are to the pest plant, the better.

This procedure is efficient with two prerequisites. You need to know where the pest comes from, it is only then that you can systematically search for the plant and its pests. This will also show under which climatic conditions the plant’s pest will prosper. Without that knowledge, which is often provided by the Natural History Museum in the form of regional floras, time and money consuming research is need to find that out, which in turn will further defer counter measures and thus increasing costs.

Further on, the new organism must prove its suitability to combat the plant in experiments. Seeds are needed to culture the plant and collecting them is not an easy task, especially when a substantial genetic diversity is required. The only institutions capable of providing a great genetic variability are botanic gardens and the herbaria – incidentally largely unnoticed by the public. This is why CABI-Bioscience has close relations to these institutions and regularly relies on their support in pest experiments.

This cooperation safes enormous money in developing pest managements, and lowers the costs for botanic gardens in real terms. Apart from that the botanic gardens do fulfil many other functions. Pest management without botanic gardens would be extremely expensive and hardly possible to develop.

An example for the close cooperation is an excerpt of the list of botanic gardens which collaborate with CABI-Switzerland:

Austria : Botanic Garden, Vienna

Belgium : National Botanic Garden of Belgium at Meise

Canada : Botanic Garden, Montreal

Denmark : Botanic Garden, Copenhagen

Finland : Botanic Garden, Turku

Germany : Botanic Gardens in Aachen, Göttingen, Karlsruhe, Leipzig and Marburg; Botanic Gardens of the Humboldt University of Berlin; Botanic Garden of the University of Konstanz

Italy : Botanic Garden of the University of Genua; Botanic Garden of Hanbury, Latta; Botanic Garden of the University of Padua ; Botanic Garden of the University of Palermo

Russia : Botanic Garden, Moscow

Slovakia : Botanic Garden of the University of Bratislava

United Kingdom : Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Source:

Annual Report 2002 of CABI-International Switzerland (CABI Bioscience Switzerland Centre)

CBD on alien species

GISP Global Invasive Species Programme

Contact:

Dr. Fabian Haas, FRES Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde, Stuttgart, Rosenstein 1, D-70191 Stuttgart, Germany

The Whitetop or Hoary Cress (Cardaria draba) is a perennial plant, distributing by vegetative root shoots and seed. It is an aggressive invasive species conquering fields, meadows, river banks, and is particularly common in perturbed and irrigated areas. Conventional pest control is not always effective and needs re-application over several years to ensure success.

The plant was introduced from Europe in the 19th century, and is ever since spreading in the western and northern USA. It is considered to be pest in 14 US states and three Canadian provinces. So a project was launched in 2001 to find a classical, biological pest management. This programme is co-ordinated with those of the USDA-ARS EBCL (United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research - European Biological Control Laboratory) in Montpellier, France, and the Montana State University, USA.

As a start, specimens from 100 locations in ten countries were collected: Armenia, Denmark, Germany, France, Austria, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey and Hungary. Naturally, the most efficient pest of the plant was searched there.

This would have not been possible without detailed knowledge of the habitats of the Whitetop. The habitats are established by thee classical taxonomic work of the natural history museums resulting (and published) in so called regional floras. This floristic knowledge now and suddenly proved essential for a possible biological pest management. Without the classical knowledge of the whereabouts of this plant, the swift and efficient, and thus cheap, collection at 100 locations would not be possible and would be delayed by several years until these data were collected.

The - cost-effective - work of the museums, the production and publishing of regional floras, pays off twice. There is no need for new research, and so no extra costs for CABI and other firms accumulate, and furthermore, the pest management is available earlier: damage is reduced earlier, again costs are reduced.

Source:

Annual Report 2002 of CABI-International Switzerland (CABI Bioscience Switzerland Centre)

Contact:

Dr. Fabian Haas, FRES Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde, Stuttgart, Rosenstein 1, D-70191 Stuttgart, Germany

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The indigenous Chamorro people of Guam historically have suffered an exceptional high level of a neurological disease, ALS-PDC (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-Parkinsonian dementia complex), which has striking similarities to Lou Gehrig's, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. The linkage of these three unrelated neuropathological diseases as manifestations of the same neurological disease in Guam may be “the Rosetta Stone of neurodegenerative diseases”.

Among the possible causes of ALS-PDC has been a neurotoxic amino acid, beta-methylamino L-alanine (BMAA), as well as the neurotoxic aglycone of cycasin, methylazoxymethanol (MAM) both isolated from cycads. There is only one species of cycads on Guam (Cycas micronesica in the C. rumphii species complex). However, the interest in cycads as a possible cause of ALS-PDC decreased as feeding cycad seeds to animals did not cause disease and as the recent decline in the occurrence of ALS-PDC in Guam could not be explained as caused by a decrease in the consumption of cycad seeds. Additionally, the Chamorro people is aware of the toxic nature of cycad seeds

Recently, Cox and Sacks suggested that Chamorro consumption of flying foxes may have resulted in sufficient cumulative doses of cycad neurotoxins to account for the high incidence of ALS-PDC because the indigenous flying foxes (Pteropus mariannus ssp. mariannus and P. tokudae) forage on cycad seeds. The Chamorro people eat flying foxes at weddings, village fiestas, and religious events. The preparation is very simple: wash and boil whole, and then eat the entire bat – wings, brains, fur and all.

Several lines of evidence support the link, among these, that incidence of the disease rose after people began hunting flying foxes for commercial trade and then dropped as the bat population fell. Due to persistent poaching P. tokudae is now considered extinct and P. mariannus ssp. mariannus very close to extinction on Guam.

To test the hypothesis of biomagnification skin tissue of three, approx. 50 years old museum specimens of Pteropus mariannus ssp. mariannus were analyzed. It was shown that consumption of a single flying fox may have resulted in an equivalent BMAA dose obtained from eating 174 to 1014 kg of processed cycad flour. Hence, traditional feasting on flying foxes is very likely related to the prevalence of ALS-PDC in Guam.

When young, otherwise healthy people in the remote Four Corners area of Arizona and New Mexico began dying of a mysterious acute respiratory disease in the spring of 1993, people were scared. Those who caught the disease got very sick, very quickly. Eventually twenty people died. At the time, some wondered if the disease was a biological warfare agent, a military experiment gone bad.

The Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sent scientists to the region to investigate. Tests of the victims' blood yielded a surprising result: the people had become infected with a previously undetected kind of hantavirus. Named after the Hantaan River in Korea, hantaviruses were known to spread from rodents to humans but until the Four Corners outbreak, the microbes had only been seen in Asia and Europe. Moving quickly, CDC investigators asked biologists at the University of New Mexico for help in collecting rodents and insects around the homes of people who had gotten sick. A likely suspect soon appeared when the infection popped up in one particular kind of mouse.

"The CDC called us and asked, 'What mouse is this?'," says University of New Mexico mammologist and museum curator Terry Yates, who also serves as co-principal investigator at the NSF-funded Sevilleta LTER site—so-called because the site's 230,000 acres are located within the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, about an hour south of Albuquerque. Yates told the CDC that the infected animal was a deer mouse, a close relative of the type of Old World mice that also carry hantaviruses and that transmit the disease through their droppings and urine.

Now the CDC knew what the disease was and how it was transmitted. But the investigators still didn't know why a disease carried by a common animal like the deer mouse seemed to be cropping up for the first time in North America. For answers, the CDC turned to what Sevilleta researcher Robert Parmenter calls "a bunch of rat trappers" who had been working on matters entirely unrelated to medical science at Sevilleta even before the site was admitted to NSF's LTER network in 1988.

The major research question at the Sevilleta LTER site was this: How do the Sevilleta's four major ecosystems (grassland, woodland, desert, and shrub steppe) respond to short-term and long-term fluctuations in climate? One way to address that question was to measure the population fluctuations of plants and animals. Climate changes affect vegetation, which in turn affect the amount and kind of food available to animals. Keeping track of the rodent populations was just one part of a multi-investigator project—but it turned out to be a crucial part of the CDC investigation.

Parmenter, who directs the Sevilleta Field Research Station, recalls being told by the CDC that "I could take all the time I wanted so long as [the rodent report] was ready by next Tuesday." He and his team of students and fellow professors "were gung-ho excited—working up the data, doing the analyses just as fast at we could."

Their conclusion? The hantavirus outbreak could be blamed on El Niño, a periodic pattern of change in the global circulation of oceans and atmosphere. Parmenter's team saw in their long-term data that massive rains associated with the 1991-1992 El Niño had substantially boosted plant productivity in the Sevilleta after several years of drought. A banner year for plants was followed by a banner year for rodents. Rodent populations during the fall of 1992 and spring of 1993 surged as much as twenty times higher in some places as compared to previous years. The same phenomenon likely occurred in the nearby Four Corners region. More mice meant that more humans stood a greater chance of exposure to infected rodents as the people moved among their barns and outhouses and did their spring cleaning of cabins and trailers.

Data from the Sevilleta also helped to determine that the deadly hantavirus wasn't new to New Mexico. Yates and his colleagues tested tissue samples collected from rodents prior to 1993 and detected evidence of hantavirus. In other words, the virus had been in rodents all along—it was the change in climatic conditions that triggered the fatal outbreak in humans. Such knowledge may have helped save lives in 1998, when a particularly active El Niño event prompted health authorities to warn residents of the American southwest to be careful when entering areas favored by mice. The events of 1993 continue to be felt directly at the Sevilleta LTER, which now counts among its studies one that aims to identify the ways in which hantavirus is spread from rodent to rodent.

Yates says, "This is a classic example of basic research done for totally different reasons coming to the rescue when a new problem arises."

In the late 1960's and early 1970's a new high-yield rice (Oryza sativa) varieties produced by IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) in the Philippines grown widely in Southeast Asia (the Philippines, Thailand, Sir Lanka, India, Malaysia, and Indonesia) became infested with a grassy stunt disease. This disease, carried by the brown planthopper (Nilaparvata lungens), had previously been of little significance for rice production. From 1974 to 1977 the disease lead to a loss of 3.000.000 tons of rice in Indonesia alone, enough to sustain a population of 9.000.000 people.

In the early 1970’s when the severity of the disease became clear to IRRI, a search for resistance genes was conducted by screening 5,000 accessions and 1,000 breeding lines – in vain. However, when the search was broadened to include the wild relatives of cultivated rice a resistance gene was found in three of 30 accessions of O. nivara collected in India in 1963. The relevant resistance gene was incorporated into IRRI releases, in particular IR 36, which was widely adopted following its release in 1976. However, within a decade, the resistance to grassy stunt conferred by O. nivara was breaking down and new varieties with new sources of resistance were replacing IR36.

From 2000 to 2002, intensive botanical and zoological inventory work, under the guidance of WWF and WCS-Gabon has been performed by many international and national experts including the National Herbarium of Gabon. A report has been provided on the most biodiverse areas in Gabon and presented to the president of Gabon. This report, together with the huge international attention Dr. Mike Fay received for his daring Megatransect (reports appeared I several issues of the National Geographic), lead to the surprising situation that the president, El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba, decided to protect Gabon’s national heritage and to stimulate ecotourism by creating a vast network of 13 National Parks covering 10% of the country’s surface (http://www.gabonnationalparks.com). At the moment, several governmental institutions, notably the newly erected Conseil National des Parcs Nationaux, assisted by NGO’s like the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) are in a process of formulating management plans for each of the parks. In order to accurately perform this huge task, botanical as well as faunal inventory work still continues. The Herbier National du Gabon is actively involved in these activities.

For more information on National Parks in Gabon click here ...