Today, I went on a hike around the James River. It was a beautiful day with just enough clouds in the sky to appreciate the sunshine. The water was warm, and wildflowers are starting to carpet the forest floor along the James. Here are some of my favorite shots:
Cut-Leaf Toothwort (Dentaria sp.) ?
Atamasco Lily (Zephyranthes atamasco)
Some flowers from a pawpaw tree (Asimina triloba). The pawpaw is a native tree that produces an edible fruit. Although the pawpaw is a temperate species, the fruit looks and tastes tropical. Pawpaws grow as understory amongst hardwood trees. I noticed that these flowers were being visited by ants, which are probably their pollinators. Pawpaw trees thrive along the James River and Richmond, Virginia.
Video: Tiny Desk Kitchen: What The Heck Is A Pawpaw?
Virginia Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica)
Image: A fairy wasp next to two unicellular organisms or two protozoans. According to Alexey Polilov, this is the “size of the smallest insect and two protozoans in comparison. (A) Megaphragma mymaripenne. (B) Paramecium caudatum. (C) Amoeba proteus. Scale bar for A–C is 200 μm.”
The fairy wasp is so small that is can lay its eggs inside the eggs of small insects. Indeed, they’re some of the smallest multicellular animals on the planet. In fact, at least one species is no bigger than some single-celled lifeforms such as amebas and parameciums, so this family of wasps “include the world’s smallest known insect, with a body length of only 0.139 mm (0.0055 in).” Apparently, they’re able to achieve their diminutive size because “95% of neurons in adult fairy wasps don’t have a nucleus.” More via Sir David Attenborough:
Via io9, Reddit.com, and Sciencedirect.com
Image via dinoboy on Flickr
The Surinam toad could either be considered remarkable or disgusting (or maybe both). This species of toad is a unique example of the extraordinary reproductive techniques that some species have evolved to help ensure the survival of their young.
During mating, instead of releasing eggs and sperm directly into their aquatic environment and abandoning the eggs to fate, the male and female toads, through amplexus and complex movements, manage to embed the fertilized eggs into the dorsum of the female, where they develop. Some time in between two to four months, presumably depending on environmental conditions, fully-formed toadlets emerge from the pockets of the female’s dorsum.
The Surinam toad also utilizes some remarkable camouflage. Both its coloration and the shape of its body are reminiscent of a dead leaf, which certainly helps it to avoid predation as it navigates its aquatic environment. More on the frog’s bizarre lifecycle via Wikipedia:
Surinam toads are most well-known for their remarkable reproductive habits. Unlike the majority of toads, the males of this species cannot attract mates with croaks and other sounds often associated with these aquatic animals. Instead they produce a sharp clicking sound by snapping the hyoid bone in their throat. The partners rise from the floor while in amplexus and flip through the water in arcs. During each arc, the female releases 3-10 eggs, which get embedded in the skin on her back by the male’s movements. After implantation the eggs sink into the skin and form pockets over a period of several days, eventually taking on the appearance of an irregular honeycomb. The larvae develop through the tadpole stage inside these pockets, eventually emerging from the mother’s back as fully developed toads, though they are less than an inch long (2 cm). Once they have emerged from their mother’s back, the toads begin a largely solitary life.
Video: A female Surinam toad with eggs embedded into her dorsum.
Video: This video shows toadlets emerging from their mother’s dorsum.
Video: This video, in Japanese, shows the complete lifecycle of the Surinam toad. The video also shows the horror of onlookers, or their hysterical reactions rather, as they watch the toadlets emerge from their mother’s dorsum.
Video: Another video that shows toadlets emerging from pockets on their mother’s dorsum.
Video: Toadlets emerge from a Surinam toad’s dorsum at the Audubon Zoo.
Neonothopanus gardneri image found here
A species of bioluminescent fungi, Neonothopanus gardneri, which hasn’t been seen in almost 170 years, has been rediscovered in Brazil. According to the USA Today, it is “one of the most strongly bioluminescent mushrooms known.” More via USA Today:
Glowing fungi aren’t all that unusual in nature, there are 71 known species. But “this one is incredibly bright for a luminescent mushroom,” says Dennis Desjardin, a professor of evolutionary biology at San Francisco State University who researches fungi. “It glows more brightly than almost all other luminescent mushrooms.”
While most glowing fungi are either tiny or faint, these mushrooms emit a greenish light strong enough “that if you were in a dark room and you put one on a newspaper, you’d be able to read the words,” says Desjardin.
The last time scientists encountered this specific glow-in-the-dark mushroom was in 1840, when English botanist George Gardner saw some boys playing with a glowing object in the streets of Vila de Natividad, a village in the Goiás state in central Brazil.
Gardner sent examples of it to researchers at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew in England. They confirmed it was an unknown species and named it for him, calling it Agaricus gardneri.
After that there were no more reports of it.
Brazilian chemist, Cassius Stevani first heard of the existence of these mushrooms in 2001 or 2002, he said via email from Brazil.
But it wasn’t until February of 2005 that he got more data, from scientists Patricia Izar from São Paulo University in Brazil and Dorothy Fragaszy of the University of Georgia in Athens.
They were studying a band of monkeys in Brazil’s Piauí State and their use of rocks at tools to break nuts. One day they returned to the camp where “they found some mushrooms growing on the base of palms,” Stevani says.
. . .
The group has been looking at the chemical pathways that allow these mushrooms to produce light, a mechanism that is still somewhat mysterious. The newly re-discovered mushroom also allowed them to make chemical comparisons between the four major lineages of mushrooms that are bioluminescent.
Scientists have been trying to understand whether the ability to glow evolved four times or just once, back when these distantly-related mushrooms had a common ancestor. Chemical analysis showed that they share much of the chemistry for producing light, “which suggests the pathway must have evolved early on ,” says Desjardin.
Only 71 species of fungi are bioluminescent, out of the 100,000 known species.
Why certain fungi glow in the dark is another unknown. One theory is that insects attracted to the glow help carry the mushrooms’ spores farther afield. Another is that the light attracts predatory insects that in turn eat insects that snack on the fungus.
One animal that doesn’t eat Neonothopanus gardneri is humans. It’s in a family of mushrooms known to be responsible for poisonings worldwide, says Desjardin.
Continue reading this article at the USA Today.
More images of other species of bioluminescent fungi from around the world:
Panellus stipticus is a cosmopolitan species of bioluminescent mushroom, which is found in North America and around other parts of the world. Image via
Panellus stipticus. Image via
A species of Mycena glowing at night in eastern Australia. Image via Smoken Mirror on Flickr
Image via Christina’s Play Place on Flickr
Image via Christina’s Play Place on Flickr
Mycena sp. Image via Smoken Mirror on Flickr
