The University of British Columbia

UBC Herbarium and Beaty Biodiversity Museum present:

3rd Annual Wilf Schofield Bryophyte Foray

17-19 August 2012

This year we will be based in Hope, BC, and will be exploring the surrounding areas.

We have reserved a meeting room at the Hope & District Recreation Center where we can set up our microscopes and key out the great finds that we make. There are quite a few motels in the area but the Park Motel has offered us a great deal on room rates. Reserve early because they only have 19 units. Please call and make your own reservations and mention that you are part of the UBC Herbarium group. There are plenty of campgrounds in the area if you would like to camp instead.

Schedule

Park Motel: Reservation No.: 1-888-531-9933

832 4^th Ave., Hope, BC

Hope & District Recreation Centre

999 6^th Ave., Hope, BC

Registration Fee: $30 (cheque payable to the UBC Herbarium)

Download registration form

Mail to:

UBC Herbarium

Dept. of Botany

University of British Columbia

#3529-6270 University Blvd.

Vancouver, BC, Canada

V6T 1Z4

For more information please contact ubc.herbarium@ubc.ca

The loss of the planet’s biological diversity is increasingly threatening Mother Nature’s ability to provide humans with goods and services like food, water, fodder, fertile soils, and protection from pests and disease, according to a sweeping review of 20 years of research by an international team of ecologists, including biologist from UBC and McGill.

“We’ve reached a point where efforts to preserve species and biological diversity might no longer be an act of altruism,” says Diane Srivastava, Professor with the Department of Zoology and the Biodiversity Research Centre at University of British Columbia and author on the paper.

Diane Srivastava, Professor with the Department of Zoology and the Biodiversity Research Centre at University of British Columbia, presents her findings, along with 16 other researchers, in the June 7 edition of the journal Nature. (Photo: T. Zulkoskey)

“This research review dramatically underscores the importance of strengthening -- not weakening or curtailing -- environmental assessment processes in order to stem the tide of the loss of species and diversity that so many humans benefit from and depend on. This is particularly true in economies heavily reliant on natural resources like BC’s.”

The balance of evidence reviewed in the study shows that genetic diversity increases the yield of commercial crops, enhances the production of wood in tree plantations, improves the production of fodder in grasslands, and increases the stability of yields in fisheries. Plant diversity also contributes to greater resistance to invasion by exotic plants, inhibits plant pathogens such as fungal and viral infections, increases above-ground carbon sequestration through enhanced biomass, and increases nutrient remineralization and soil organic matter.

The call to action comes as international leaders prepare to gather in Rio de Janeiro on June 20 for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, known as the Rio+20 Conference. The upcoming conference marks the 20th anniversary of 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, which resulted in 193 nations supporting the Convention on Biological Diversity’s goals of biodiversity conservation and the sustainable use of natural resources.

Source: UBC Faculty of Science. Read the full story here

In May 2012, Roxanne Hastings, Curator of Botany at the Royal Alberta Museum, led a two-day bryophyte workshop on the genus Grimmia, one of the most diverse and abundant groups of mosses to grow in western North America. In addition to a public lecture, participants attended a lab in which specimens were closely examined to help recognize key characteristics of the mosses, including previously unidentified specimens from the Beaty Biodiversity Museum.

(Above) Olivia Lee, Collections Manager of the Herbarium at Beaty Biodiversity Museum, examines a specimen under a dissecting microscope; (below) the lab is busy with bryophyte workshop participants consulting literature and worksheets against specimens.

Written by Eric B. (Rick) Taylor, Professor UBC Zoology and Curator of Fishes, Beaty Biodiversity Museum

The conservative government of Stephen Harper introduced several profound changes to Canada’s environmental legislation in its “budget” bill (C-38) of June 2012. Amongst these were changes to the federal Fisheries Act (FA), Canada’s longest serving and much envied¹ piece of environmental legislation. Here, I will outline the history of the Fisheries Act, how it has been changed by the passage of Bill C-38, and what it means for Canada’s freshwater fish biodiversity. I focus on freshwater fishes because the key change to the FA involves habitat protection, and habitat loss and degradation are much more series threats to freshwater fishes than for marine fishes^2,3. In addition, while there is often much focus on the diversity of marine fishes which is, undoubtedly, spectacular, consider that almost 40% of all fishes (some 33,000 species and counting) occur in freshwaters yet freshwater habitats make only 0.8% of the total surface area of the Earth! Per unit area, diversity of freshwater fishes is unmatched.

The current Fisheries Act received royal ascent one hundred and forty-four years ago in 1868, and replaced statutes regulating fisheries in the former Province of Canada and in New Brunswick that were even older. Despite its age and claims by some politicians that the FA is static and ripe for change, it is a living document that has been amended 17 times.

The Fisheries Act as it Used to Be

The purpose of the FA is not encapsulated in a succinct preamble to the act, but can only be appreciated by reading the entire document. Suffice it to say that the FA was intended to regulate and thus help protect fish, the habitats that sustain them, and the fisheries that depend on fishes and their habitats. The general goals of the FA were broad enough that they could even have implications for protection of human health.

One of the amendments to the original FA was included in the Constitution Act of 1982 where the key role of the federal government in regulating inland fisheries was established. The key, but not only, regulatory tool of the federal government to protect fish habitat was in section 35 of the FA, itself added in 1976. In particular, the original FA’s subsection 35(1) stated that “No person shall carry on any work or undertaking that results in the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat” (known as HADD). There are two key aspects to this wording:

1. The prohibitions are general enough to provide a broad-based protection of habitat because to demonstrate “harm”, ‘disruption”, or “destruction” is reasonably straightforward.
2. “Fish” are defined earlier in the FA as “parts of fish, or shellfish, crustaceans, marine animals and any parts of shellfish, crustaceans or marine animals, and the eggs, sperm, spawn, larvae, spat and juvenile stages of fish, shellfish, crustaceans and marine animals.” Again, the definition of fish is broad-based and clearly implies that all “fish” are of value and that this value includes aesthetic, cultural, commercial, recreational (including non-extractive use), and ecological aspects.

These two key features of 35(1) were its strengths from a biological and biodiversity conservation perspective – it recognized the key role of habitat in the persistence of fishes and the broad-based values of biodiversity that Canadians recognize^4,5. Since 1976, section 35(1) has played a critical role in protecting fish habitat (and all the ecosystem services that it provides) and the fish and fisheries resources that depend on habitat. Fisheries and Oceans Canada is the primary ministry that develops policies (e.g., the “no net loss” of habitat policy³) and investigates alleged violations and generates charges under the FA.

An indirect, but surely key benefit of the FA was that it acted to motivate individuals and corporations involved in work in and around fish habitat to think about how their activities might negatively impact habitat before such work took place and to make them pay (in time, money, effort, and public relations) if during, or after, such work fish habitat was damaged. It made people broadly accountable for the costs to fish and their habitat. Such specific protection of habitat (as opposed to protection of “lands” or “areas”, terms that are much more general) is vital for all organisms, yet is exceptionally rare in Canadian legislation.

Despite these positive aspects of the FA in habitat protection, right after 35(1) came 35(2) which gave the Minister considerable discretionary power to “authorize” any potential violations of 35(1) although the reasons for any such authorization are not stated. Consequently, despite the provisions in 35(1), subsection 35(2), plus limitations on enforcement and prosecutions, meant that there could be considerable doubt as to whether a violation of 35(1) would ever see a charge or a prosecution. In addition to 35(1), other subsections (e.g., 20 – obstructions, 22 - minimum water flow levels, 30 – screens on water intake pipes, 32 – killing fish other than by fishing, 36 – release of deleterious substances) also acted to protect fish and their habitats and some of these also had discretionary “wiggle room” provided by subsections of each (e.g., under certain conditions deleterious substances can be “authorized”).

Therefore, despite the rationalizations by some government ministers of the onerous nature of the FA, it helps to protect fish habitat, the actual number of convictions for fish habitat destruction are typically low⁶, and the FA was certainly not “watertight” to violations.

Small streams with complex habitats like this one in BC's Lower Fraser Valley are critical for sustaining freshwater biodiversity.

What the New Fisheries Act States

The new FA (passed in June 2012) has as its core a new subsection 35(1) that now reads: “No person shall carry on any work, undertaking or activity that results in serious harm to fish that are part of a commercial, recreational or Aboriginal fishery, or to fish that support such a fishery” (underlining added). They key changes made by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper are that:

1. All explicit references to fish habitat have been removed.
2. “Harmful alteration, disruption, or destruction of fish habitat” has been replaced by “serious harm to fish”.
3. General prohibitions against harm to fish habitat have been replaced by those that apply now only to fish that are important to a “commercial, recreational, or Aboriginal fishery” – in other words, only to fish that are of some economic or recreation value (which has its own considerable economic value) and/or of cultural value to a component of the Canadian population.

In the terrestrial world, this would be like making the federal Wildlife Protection Act (1973) applicable only to birds or other animals that are hunted or of some commercial value. Essentially, the new 35(1) is much narrower in terms of defining harm (HADD has been limited to “serious harm” which is defined as “death of fish or any permanent alteration or destruction of fish habitat” thus rejecting any sublethal or temporary effects on fishes), abandones the inherent value of biodiversity (it protects only fishes that are of importance to a “fishery”), and is biologically (and thus in terms of conservation of biodiversity) indefensible (it rejects the biological connection between the persistence of fish and the persistence of their habitats, as well as the interconnectedness of many waterbodies, i.e., a stream above a barrier with no fish of fishery value in it and which may be the focus of threats to its habitat from development could flow into a stream that does contain fish of fishery value).

Why the New Fisheries Act is Harmful

In addition to the vague and narrow aspects of the new 35(1), the newly-amended act will now leave most freshwater fishes with a much lower level of habitat protection and has eliminated a demonstrably effective way to “make the polluter pay”. To emphasize the implications of this, the reader is reminded that loss or degradation of habitat is the most important factor leading to at risk status for freshwater biodiversity, especially fishes, worldwide and in Canada^2,3. Further, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) has, since its inception in 1977, assessed 84 wildlife freshwater fish species at some level of risk in Canada (i.e., endangered, threatened, or special concern) using internationally recognized assessment criteria^7,8.

These assessments are forwarded to the relevant minister who then makes the decision (or not) to legally list endangered and threatened species as such under Canada’s Species-at-Risk Act (SARA) of 2004. Of these 84 species, only 33 (or 39%) could even potentially qualify as being the focus of a fishery and receive protection under the new 35(1) – the clear majority of Canadian freshwater fishes will now receive no habitat protection under the FA. I say potentially because the new act is also vague in terms of what how the definition of term “fishery” will be eventually interpreted. For instance, the rainbow trout is the most widely sought after recreational fish in British Columbia and it would seem obvious that this species (but not necessarily its habitat) would be protected under the new 35(1). Would, however, a remote lake that receives only 5-10 visits by anglers over a year and whose habitat is threatened by destruction from a proposal for mine tailings disposal automatically qualify as a “recreational” fishery and be protected?

If the government feels that all fishes and waterways should not be treated the same (as motivation for making changes to the FA), it is entirely possible that they will not treat all “fisheries” the same and that some will be considered of expendable while others will receive protection. Add to this vagueness, the still-existing and now enhanced discretionary powers of the Minister to allow the destruction of fish habitat inspires even less confidence that Canada’s freshwater biodiversity will be adequately protected.

 While freshwater fishes and their habitats can be the focus of protective measures under SARA, it is important to recognize that habitat protection under SARA applies only to the watercourse/body itself and to federally-owned land – it does not apply to privately-owned lands, activity on which can influence the physical and chemical characteristics of aquatic fish habitats. In addition, SARA prohibitions protecting fish and their habitat only come into affect after a species is in trouble (i.e., if they are already deemed Endangered or Threatened). Species that are assessed as “Special Concern” (i.e., vulnerable to becoming Endangered or Threatened in the near future) receive no legal protection under SARA.

Consequently, changes to the FA almost surely remove a primary motivation (i.e., through costs incurred from violations in terms of time, money, and public relations) to prevent species from becoming at risk. It is also bizarre that while SARA recognizes all species as an “integral part if our national identity and history” and that “wildlife, in all its forms, has value in and of itself and is valued by Canadians for aesthetic, cultural, spiritual, recreational, educational, historical, economic, medical, ecological and scientific reasons.”⁹ (emphasis added), another piece of federal legislation, the new FA, seeks to limit such value to commercial, recreational, and/or Aboriginal values.

Why We Should Care About These Harmful Changes to the Fisheries Act

Finally, why should we care about changes to the FA and its implications for freshwater fishes and biodiversity in general? I can think of three basic reasons.

1. Changes to the FA are at variance with our obligations agreed to under the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity of 1992 (Canada was the first country to ratify this agreement), i.e., the so-called “Agenda 21” (see http://publications.gc.ca/collections/Collection-R/LoPBdP/BP/bp317-e.htm). The Harper Government has just changed the FA in a manner that directly counteracts several of Canada’s commitments within this international obligation.
2. The new FA is an explicit rejection of the inherent value of biodiversity and replaces it with a purely utilitarian value. This rejection of the inherent value of biodiversity, despite the claims by Conservative ministers of what “Canadians want”, conflicts with surveys that demonstrate the value that Canadians place on all biodiversity – not just species we can make money from.
3. Finally, and perhaps most crucially, the passage of bill C-38 and, more specifically, changes to the FA violate, if not the letter, then the spirit of democracy in Canada at least as far as I understand it.

Yes, there was “debate” on the changes, limited to a brief period in the House of Commons, and many good comments were made by politicians of all stripes, but the outcome of these debates was never in doubt. What is truly disturbing was the complete lack of consultation by the Harper government with independent scientists (i.e., those not employed by government or by industries that would benefit from changes to 35(1)) in assessing the previous FA and in proposing any changes. No input or expertise was sought from the more than 2,500 Canadian academics who signed various letters to the Minister of Fisheries Keith Ashfield protesting the changes after they were leaked by a former Fisheries and Oceans biologist. None of the independent biologists with experience and expertise in assessing Canadian fish species at risk were consulted, and all indications are that the Harper government did not seek even advice from its own scientists in instituting changes to the FA.

No one would deny that legislation can be improved (as stated before, the FA has been amended 17 times already). At the same time, a truly responsible and inclusive government should have engaged in a broader-based consultation process with independent scientists when the changes impact such fundamental principles like the dependence of biodiversity on habitat. The changes to the FA are certainly bad for freshwater biodiversity and for the direct and indirect benefits that accrue to Canadians from this biodiversity, but they also signal a sad chapter authored by the Harper government in the development of policy of broad societal relevance.

Footnotes

¹Brohua, P. 1993. Emulating Canada: Recognizing existing aquatic and fish habitat areas as invaluable. Fisheries 18: 4.

²Dextrase, A.J, and N.E. Mandrak. 2006. Impacts of alien invasive species on freshwater fauna at risk in Canada. Biol. Invasions 8: 13-24.

³Quigley, J.T. and D.J. Harper. 2006. Environmental Management 37: 351-366.

⁴Haluza-Delay, R., N. Kowalsky, and J. Parkins. 2009. How Canadians Value Nature. A Strategic and Conceptual Review of Literature and Research. CSOP Research and Consulting, Edmonton, Alberta

⁵Rudd, M. 2009. National values for aquatic species at risk in Canada. Endangered Species Research. 6: 239–249.

⁶Favaro, B., J.D. Reynolds, and I. Cote. 2012. Science 1223269Published online 21 June 2012 [DOI:10.1126/science.1225523]

⁷http://www.cosewic.gc.ca/eng/sct0/index_e.cfm

⁸http://www.sararegistry.gc.ca/sar/index/default_e.cfm

⁹Species at Risk Act. S.C. 2002, c 29. Sept. 2010. Minister of Justice. http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca (page 1).

In our last few days in Borneo, Edy and I gave a public lecture at the Sarawak Biodiversity Centre, a research institute that specializes on bioprospecting potential pharmaceuticals from forest plants and other organisms, using both traditional knowledge and high-tech testing methods. It’s an impressive facility from a scientific perspective. I was so pleased to have the opportunity to tell the public directly about what we found. If I have any regret about this trip, it’s not finding more opportunities to tell the people of Sarawak about the great spiders they have. Well, the Internet and lots of photos will eventually solve that.

It’s time to say our thank-you’s for the expedition, and sign off. The Sarawak Forestry Department and the staff at Gunung Mulu, Lambir Hills, Kubah, and Bako National Parks offered their collaboration through permits and logistics, which made the entire expedition possible. The infrastructure available to us at our field sites was excellent. At Mulu, where we concentrated our sampling, our work was made considerably easier by the assistance offered us by Brian Clark, Jeremy Clark, and the other park staff. Andyson Laman was a great guide on our Camp 1 foray. Our work was made more fun by our chats with Syria Lejau Malang and Magdalena Sorger, though with the latter I will have to disagree about the beauty of salticids versus ants. Especially ants that bite.

Ch’ien Lee helped us arrange the expedition in the first place, and introduced us to the Bornean forest. I would like to thank most especially Alex Ang, who took a month off of his normal life in Kuching to accompany us into the forest. Alex made an important contribution to our success. I also can’t forget a big thank you to NSERC Canada, for the funding that enabled this expedition.

Sarawak was good to us in many ways. It was easy to get around, safe, with friendly people. We found professionalism, cleanliness and good organization everywhere.

Finally, and you might have seen this coming, I’d like to thank the spiders. I can’t individually thank all 175 species of jumping spiders that I estimate we found in Sarawak, but I will show you some of their faces. As you look at these, think about my previous post about the music of biodiversity, about variations on a theme. And, remember the eyes. That’s how you know it’s a jumping spider.

Agorius male

Bathippus female

Pystira male

Spartaeus male

Unidentified, possibly Ligurra, female

Myrmarachne male

Hyllus male

Orthrus female

And to you humans out there, thanks for following our expedition. Next time, look back at a jumping spider when she looks up at you.

Originally published at Scientific American, Wayne Maddison’s Spiders in Borneo Series

Plastic pollution off the northwest coast of North America is reaching the level of the notoriously polluted North Sea, according to a new study led by a researcher at UBC. The study, published online in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, examined stomach contents of beached northern fulmars on the coasts of BC, Canada and the states of Washington and Oregon, USA.

“Like the canary in the coal mine, northern fulmars are sentinels of plastic pollution in our oceans,” says Stephanie Avery-Gomm, the study’s lead author and a graduate student in UBC’s Department of Zoology. “Their stomach content provides a ‘snapshot’ sample of plastic pollution from a large area of the northern Pacific Ocean.”

A northern fulmar (Photo: Ashok Khosla, www.seabirds.com.)

Northern fulmars forage exclusively at sea and retain ingested plastics for a long period of time, making them ideal indicators for marine littering. Analysis of beached fulmars has been used to monitor plastic pollution in the North Sea since the 1980s. The latest findings, when compared to previous similar studies, indicate a substantial increase in plastic pollution over the past four decades.

The research group performed necropsies on 67 beached northern fulmars and found that 92.5% had plastics – such as twine, Styrofoam and candy wrappers – in their stomach. An average of 36.8 pieces per bird were found. The average total weight of plastic was 0.385 grams per bird. One bird was found with 454 pieces of plastic in its stomach.

Non-food stomach content found in a northern fulmar in the UBC study. (Photo: Stephanie Avery-Gomm, UBC)

“The average adult northern fulmar weighs 800 g,” says Avery-Gomm. “While 0.385 grams in a bird may seem inconsequential to us, it’s the equivalent of about 0.05% of their body mass. It would be like a human carrying 50 g of plastic in our stomach – about the weight of 10 quarters.”

“Despite the close proximity of the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch,’ an area of concentrated plastic pollution in the middle of the North Pacific gyre, plastic pollution has not been considered an issue of concern off our coast,” says Avery-Gomm, “But we’ve found similar amounts and incident rates of plastic in beached northern fulmars here as those in the North Sea. This indicates it is an issue which warrants further study.”

The researchers propose annual monitoring of trends in plastic pollution and the effectiveness of marine waste reduction strategies.

“Beached bird surveys are providing important clues about causes and patterns of sea bird mortality from oil spill impacts, fisheries by-catch and now plastic ingestion,” says co-author Karen Barry with Bird Studies Canada, a not-for profit organization that helped facilitate the study.

Source: UBC Public Affairs

With the field work done, our attention turns to handling all of the specimens. We have barely had time to glance at most of them. My curiosity to peruse them under a microscope is strong, as I want to figure out what we got, but that will have to wait until after we get home to the lab in Canada. Indeed, it will have to wait longer than that, as it will take weeks to properly sort and label the specimens. Patience, Wayne.

In the meantime, there is the preparation of the specimens for the flight home. After we catch the specimens, we preserve them that day in 95% ethanol. Traditionally spiders were preserved in 80% ethanol, which is better for studying their body structures (95% makes them brittle and prone to break), but 95% is much better for preserving DNA for modern phylogenetic analysis. Ethanol of that percentage is flammable and a problem to take on airplanes, which means that our primary preparation for travel is to drain the ethanol from the hundreds of vials. The specimens stay just wet enough to stay in good condition, and we’ll refill the ethanol right after arriving home.

Going through the vials, draining each one, gives me time to recall some of the amazing species we found. Some, strangely, look and act as if they were something other than jumping spiders. I have posted photos of some of the ant-like salticids already, but I want to show you one more. This is Agorius, a jumping spider that has its body constricted is several places, like extra waists. This makes its body appear to be divided like an ant’s body. It also holds its first legs up as if they were an ant’s antennae.

Some spiders look like beetles. Here’s one we haven’t yet identified, though we think it is near Ligurra and Simaetha. She’s got a stout body with a blue sheen, and she holds up her second pair of legs, perhaps to appear as antennae. Alex suggested she looks like a weevil, with the front legs held like the snout projecting in front of the antennae.

But perhaps the most surprising is Orsima. Back in the 1970′s, Jonathan Reiskind described its peculiar appearance and behavior: he noted that the back end of the spider looks like the head of an insect. The abdomen has a constriction, as if the neck of the insect, while the spinnerets –the little appendages spiders use to make silk — are held and jiggled as if they were the antennae and mouthparts of the insect’s head. The spider raises and lowers the abdomen rhythmically, and all in all it’s rather hypnotic to watch.

Now, I’m sure that natural selection led these salticids to appear to be things other than salticids. But, in my opinion, salticids look just fine as salticids.

Originally published at Scientific American, Wayne Maddison’s Spiders in Borneo Series

One big piece of news from Lambir is that we found more Hispo. I previously posted, with great excitement, the news that Edy had found a Hispo female in Mulu. I’m pretty certain it represents a species new to science, but even more exciting, it is the first adult hisponine anyone has found east of India. Well, at Lambir she found the male of the species, the first male hisponine known outside of Africa and Indian Ocean islands. Here’s the male — it looks pretty much like the female.

Fred Wanless, the last to publish studies of Hispo, noted that the Asian species are quite distinct from the African ones, but since no male specimens were known from Asia, he couldn’t make any firm conclusions. Structures specific to males are especially helpful in determining spider relationships. Associated structures in females are harder to study and interpret, and so are not as well understood. Now that we have found a male from Asia, we can finally understand the Asian Hispo species and whether they might in fact be an evolutionary lineage distinct from the African Hispo.

But, it didn’t stop there. I found a second species, apparently the species known from Sumatra, Hispo alboguttata. The Sumatran specimen is immature, as, alas, are the two specimens I found. One is photographed here. She’s a beauty.

Both Edy’s species and Hispo alboguttata were found on tree trunks. We looked at many tree trunks, but found only these few specimens. Even though we found no adults of H. alboguttata, it’s still invaluable to have these fresh specimens for study. And now, we think we have broken the mystique of Asian Hispo. With our observations on location and habitat, we think it will now be possible for other biologists to find more.

Originally published at Scientific American, Wayne Maddison’s Spiders in Borneo Series

Our lives at Lambir were more or less as at Mulu — breakfast by 8 and in the field by 9. Hike anywhere from a few minutes to an hour. Record latitude/longitude and other data. Sample intensely for 40 minutes, focusing on either tree trunks, foliage, or the ground. Record more data, and repeat for another 40 minute session, then again, then again, for a total of 6 sessions. Add time to take notes, have some lunch, wipe sweat, readjust gear, and it’s about 4 pm by the time we get back to camp.

We are overheated and absolutely exhausted, with barely enough energy to take showers. Then we have to process the specimens, which involves photography and preservation, usually until after 9 pm. We do have a break for dinner, but little time to relax otherwise. It takes a toll on us.

We structure our sampling by habitat to be able to standardize person-hours of effort in each habitat. This lets us quantify each species’ preference for habitat — for instance, we will recognize a species as a trunk-dweller by the fact that we find many more specimens of it per hour effort on trunks than we do on the ground. Learning about habitat preferences is key for us to get a very basic idea of each species’ ecology.

And, learning each species’ ecology is a key part of a big question we are asking with this study. I have characterized this expedition as one to find undiscovered biodiversity, and indeed that is a major goal. But we have another goal: we are comparing the basic habitat adaptations of jumping spiders in Borneo to those in South America. Back in the lab Edy will carefully measure body shapes to see if in general trunk-dwellers tend to differ from ground-dwellers and foliage dwellers — do they tend to be flatter and narrower and with shorter legs? — and whether any pattern is repeated in both the Sarawak and Ecuador samples.

A stunning portrait of an Agorius, a strange local salticid whose body looks like that of an ant. Credit: Ch'ien Lee

What makes this particularly interesting is that the Sarawak jumping spider species evolved largely independently from the Ecuador species. In an earlier post I had commented that biodiversity is local, and that in the case of salticids, large evolutionary groups tend to be local. This means that not only are individual species in Ecuador distinct from those in Sarawak, but the whole diversification of jumping spiders in Asia happened more or less independently from that in South America, like a separate evolutionary experiment.

Stephen Jay Gould once pondered the thought experiment, “if we could rewind the tape of the history of life, then play it again, would it come out the same way the next time?” (For the younger readers, ask someone older what is tape and why one would have to rewind it…) Gould’s expectation was that it would come out quite differently.

To explore this fundamental question about predictability versus contingency in evolution, we can’t rewind the tape. But sometimes, different branches of species lineages in the evolutionary tree of life were presented, separately, with similar challenges. Each of these lineages therefore played its own separate tape as its evolution unfolded. By comparing the histories of each lineage, we can see whether indeed the story had the same ending each time.

Because the Asian jumping spiders diversified independently from the South American ones, two separate copies of Gould’s tape were played, one on each continent. Are the stories the same? Do trunk dwellers show the same adaptations in Sarawak as they do in Ecuador? Are there as many trunk dwellers in both places? Did they take as many million years to adapt in both places? If not, why not? These are some of the questions we want to answer.

Originally published at Scientific American, Wayne Maddison’s Spiders in Borneo Series

A group of students and professors from Yale University have found a fungi in the Amazon rainforest that can degrade and utilize the common plastic polyurethane (PUR). As part of the university’s Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory educational program, designed to engage undergraduate students in discovery-based research, the group searched for plants and cultured the micro-organisms within their tissue.

Several active organisms were identified, including two distinct isolates of Pestalotiopsis microspora with the ability to efficiently degrade and utilize PUR as the sole carbon source when grown anaerobically, a unique observation among reported PUR biodegradation activities.

Polyurethane is a big part of our mounting waste problem and this is a new possible solution for managing it. The fungi can survive on polyurethane alone and is uniquely able to do so in an oxygen-free environment.

The Yale University team has published its findings in the article ‘Biodegradation of Polyester Polyurethane by Endophytic Fungi’ for the Applied and Environmental Microbiology journal.

Source: psfk