Snippets News from the Bridgend Group of the Wildlife Trust of South & West Wales - July 2015 Issue 3 Inside A Pain in the Schmidt, Wildlife Wobble, Photosynthesis, Reflections on Animal Life Ancient & Modern, Nature Notes, Solitary Bees, La Grande Briere, Loving the Lamprey, They Were All Yellow, 21st Centaury Nature Writing 1 50 Shades What’s inside Anon. Parc Slip Stunners The Parc Slip Water Rails have been putting on a good show this year. Mike Clark was on hand (as always) to capture this great image to share with us. 2 A pain in the Schmidt! If you have been stung by a wasp, you will know that it hurts, but maybe, just maybe, you wondered just how much it hurt and how much the bites and stings of other insects hurt (or maybe not!). During the 1980’s, a man named Justin Schmidt set himself the tough task of ranking the stings and bites of 78 different species of insects, in order of pain, in the name of science! Now, that's dedication! After a painful period of prodding, nudging and teasing insects to bite him, Schmidt came up with the ‘Schmidt Pain Index’. To help us get our heads around what it actually felt like he numerically awarded each bite/sting (a 5 point ranking from 0-4). A ranking of 0 was given where the insect failed to pierce his skin, the most painful sting being given a 4. Now, this is helpful in itself for any naturalist with masochistic tendencies but it fails to get across what it actual felt like. Fortunately for us, Mr Schmidt saw this flaw and added a nice little description of the pain involved. So, here follows a description of the performance of 10 of his test ‘subjects’ - - Duration short. Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. As if a tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm. - Duration 2-5 minutes. Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag pile carpet & reaching for the light switch. - Duration 4-6 minutes. A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek. - Duration 3-4 minutes. Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door. - Duration 4-10 minutes. Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue. - Duration 4-10 minutes. Like a match head that flips off and burns on your skin. - Duration 1-8 hours. Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail. - Duration 5-15 minutes. Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut. - Duration 3 minutes. Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath. Duration 12-24 hours. Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel. 3 The Wildlife Wobble On the 15th of August, the Bridgend Group will embark on a ‘Wildlife Wobble’ along the Glamorgan Heritage Coast. This is the first of what we hope will become an annual event for the group with the emphasis on socialising and making new friends (and catching up with old ones!). We will be meeting at the The Horseshoes in Marcross, Vale of Glamorgan at 12:00 then wandering around the coast path and quiet country lanes, enjoying the views and keeping a lookout for the local wildlife – see pics (regular buses available from Bridgend/Llantwit Major). The route conveniently passes some lovely country pubs (The Horseshoes, The Plough, The Lamb & Flag, The Star, The Fox & Hounds and The Pelican) at which we will be stopping along the way for refreshments. We will be passing through the villages of Wick and St Brides Major so if the walk is too long for you, you can finish at any point and make your own way home. We are aiming to make it to the Pelican for around 7pm which is next to the bus stop where you can travel back to Bridgend/Llantwit Major. We would encourage members to travel by local transport (timetable) but for those wishing to travel by car parking is available at Nash Point or Monk Nash. If you are feeling energetic, why not park at Southerndown and walk along the Coast to meet us at The Shoes for 12? Hope to see you there! Overheard @Parc Slip Good news about the Dipper, wasn’t it ? Yes, excellent news, how big was it? What do you mean? Well, was it a Big Dipper or a skinny dipper? (you had to be there!) Anon 4 Photosynthesis Back to school?................. Please do not stop reading here because this process is very interesting and can give us another insight into the internal workings of plants which are very familiar to us. The mechanism of photosynthesis took centuries to be unravelled …eg 1643 it was discovered that plants need water for this process; 1760 that plants produce oxygen; 1796 plants take up carbon dioxide and 1845 need chlorophyll to trap light energy, , we arrive at this summary. This just summarises photosynthesis but there are dozens of chemical steps involved. They were worked out in the 1950s by an American called Melvin Calvin. It is known as the Calvin cycle. He received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1961 for his work. We now know of three types of photosynthesis used by plants. These represent 95% of the world’s plant biomass. They are commonest in temperate regions eg deciduous and evergreen trees, and the crop plants wheat and barley. Most British plants are C3. Why C3? This is because Calvin found that the first substance made in photosynthesis- on the road to sugar- was a chemical called pyruvate and this contains three carbon atoms, hence C3. Now to a problem. To take in carbon dioxide into the leaves, plants have to open leaf pores in the DAY. This causes water vapour to be lost. This is usually not a problem if there is ground water, but could be a problem if the plant lives in an arid environment, so scientists have discovered that some plants have evolved to be :- This was discovered in the Crassula plant family. But it is now known in 40 other plant families eg Cacti, bromeliads, epiphytic orchids. 7% of the world’s species are CAM plants and they are mainly from the hot, bright, dry desert areas. These plants open their pores at NIGHT and close them during the day when water loss would be high. They take in carbon dioxide at night and store it as a chemical called malate. This is an acid compound hence the name Crassulacean acid metabolism… CAM .During the day, malate is broken down to make carbon dioxide and the plants can make sugar in their leaves with their pores closed so there is no water loss. A scientist in 1815 had noted that when he tasted the leaves of his succulent plant , they tasted bitter in the morning but sweet by noon! Now we know why. ( I have never done the tasting test.!) The Pineapple is a CAM plant 5 Two CAM plants in Britain are from the Crassula family are Biting Stonecrop or Wall Pep- per (Sedum acre) common in sandy rocky dry places and Navelwort (Umbilicus ruprestris) common on walls in Western Britain. 3) This group of plants is the smallest, just 0.4% of plant species approx. 260,000. These are the photosynthe- sis champions and perform best at very high temper- atures. It is no surprise that, because they are so efficient, they are grown as food crops, eg sugar cane, maize, sorghum and millet. Like the CAM plants, they open their leaf pores at NIGHT and close them in the day. The first chemical made from the carbon dioxide this time has four carbon atoms in it. - hence called C4 plants. The internal anatomy of C4 plants had puzzled botanists as there were unusual bundles of cells not seen in C3 or CAM plants. They discovered that they concentrat- ed the C4 chemical in these areas and when it broke down to give carbon dioxide in the day it was up to a hundred times as concentrated -hence higher photo- Section of C3 leaf (most temperate plants) and section of C4 leaf (eg maize). 6 Reflections on Animal Life Ancient and Modern Whilst cosmologists may speculate on the possibility of life on distant planets, here on earth we can rejoice in what Darwin called “endless forms most beautiful”. Of all these forms, the most numerous are those united by a common segmented body plan with a tough exoskeleton, a brain at the front end, and most tellingly two-branched, jointed legs. These are the Arthropods, the main groups of which are the Arachnids (spiders and their allies), Crustacea (crabs, lobsters, barnacles) and the Insects (flies, ants and bees, beetles, butterflies and dragonflies). The arthropods constitute about three quarters of the total world species count, and if one considers the total number of individuals within each species, as high a proportion of the earth’s biomass. Many years ago, the renowned biologist, JBS Haldane, is reputed to have responded to some disputatious theologians that “God has an inordinate fondness for beetles, for there is thirty million of them”. The story may be apocryphal but the numbers remain impressive. Both insects and crustaceans have representatives in nearly all possible habitats on land, in the sea and in the air, whilst spiders are predominantly terrestrial. From an anthropocentric point of view, crustaceans support a seafood industry and cuisine of major importance, whilst insects make a vital contribution to world agriculture in crop pollination.