Boots On The Ground Conservation

plant

Organic farming and natural enemy evenness

The basic reality of agricultural activity is that it reduces biological diversity, and these reductions in diversity potentially impact ecosystem services. But do some agricultural practices impact these services less than others? In a recent paper in Nature by David Crowder and colleagues, the question of how organic versus conventional farming affects predator and herbivore pathogen diversity and how this cascades to pest suppression. They show through a meta-analysis, that organic farms tend to support greater natural enemy evenness, and they hypothesize that greater evenness of enemies should better control pest populations, resulting in larger, more productive plants.

Local Genotype Seed - Can be too Local

A scientist from the University of Melbourne is the latest to call for a change in paradigm. If we want to maximise diversity and the ability of plants to adapt we should be encouraging mixing of ‘genotypes’. That is, including seed that has travelled a few miles may be better.

Plants Behave ... and Remember

“I think most people regard plants as being pretty unresponsive and stuck in one place,” laments ecologist Richard Karban of the University of California, Davis. “Now, animals, they’re interestingbecause they can change and act in response to their environment.” It’s a dichotomy Karban doesn’t accept for one second.

Smoke Produces Larger Seedlings

Ecologists have identified a second way in which smoke benefits fire-dependent plants.  We know that smoke induces seeds to germinate. Now it has been shown that chemicals in smoke called karrikins (after "karrik," the Noongar word for "smoke") makes plants more sensitive to lower levels of reddish light, and triggers seeds not only to sprout, but to grow with thicker, sturdier stems.

A chemical ‘smoke signal' enables seeds and seedlings to better ‘see' the light and to adapt their growth to the new conditions, according to researchers at The University of Western Australia.