Dear Readers, last night there was a random letting off of fireworks fairly close to my house in East Finchley – not as impressive as at New Year (when it always sounds to me as if the aliens have finally landed and are taking out great chunks of central London) but noisy enough to make me glance up. The cat was asleep in the armchair, and as the noise grew to a crescendo she stayed blissfully unaware, proof, if any was needed, that she is finally pretty much completely deaf.

I am taking her to the vet for a blood pressure check-up in a week or so, but we’ve been keeping an eye on her hearing, and her problems seem to be purely down to age. And having a deaf cat comes with some problems, but also some benefits. The cat seems much more relaxed now that she can’t hear foxes/other cats/fireworks etc – on 5th November she used to spend most of her time slinking along the floor or cuddled up between the two of us, but now she couldn’t care less. On the other hand, she is very easily startled, so we try to take that into account if we need to handle her (i.e. get her into her box for her trip to the vet). It’s quite possible to walk up behind her without her noticing, and then she has an almost cartoon-like reaction which involves leaping into the air athletically.

She is largely an indoor cat, with occasional trips out on to the patio (but only if we’re there) so there aren’t the usual worries about her being run down, or set upon by another cat that she didn’t hear approaching. What is interesting is that her miaow has changed – it’s much louder and more authoritative now, presumably because she can’t hear herself and so has no idea of the racket that she’s making. Sometimes she goes to the other extreme and does a very plaintive ‘silent miaow’, with all the facial expressions and urgency that you might expect from a cat who clearly hasn’t been fed for at least a year.

And so we progress along life’s journey, me with my dodgy ankles and occasional health scares, and the cat with her blood pressure problems and lack of hearing. We’re both adapting, and also refusing to let what’s happening limit us. I hear my mother’s favourite quotation (which she had on a laminated poster on the kitchen wall, behind the scales if I remember correctly) about having the courage to change the things you can change, the serenity to accept the things that you can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference. It’s such a cliché, but somehow that really does seem to be the challenge as we go forward through life.

Desert ants (Cataglyphis fortis) are experts at navigation (Photo by David Goldberg at https://www.flickr.com/photos/77764957@N00/17494697/)

Dear Readers, the life of a desert ant is a dangerous one. The species in today’s study, Cataglyphis fortis, lives on the salt flats of Tunisia, where temperatures are high and food scarce. There are predators everywhere, and it’s estimated that the life of an average adult ant is only 5 to 7 days. They can run at the equivalent of 600 km per hour, which helps to avoid the worst effects of overheating, but their big challenge is finding their way back to their nests, which have entrances which are only the size of a thumbnail, when their foraging trips can be up to 2 kilometres. Many animals navigate by using landmarks, but the saltpans are completely flat, so it was thought that this was not an option. So, how do they do it?

The Tunisian ants have been studied for over fifty years, and the first takeaway seems to be that the ants navigate by ‘dead reckoning’ – they keep a tally of both direction and distance, so that they can calculate their way home. Researcher  Rüdiger Wehner notes how the ants turn back to memorise the precise location of the entrance to their nest before setting out to forage. The ant seems to use the polarisation pattern of the sky, the wind direction and the Earth’s magnetic field as its compass, and it seems to be aware of the number of steps that it takes – when Wehner attached tiny stilts to the legs of ants (and goodness only knows how that was done) the ants ‘miscalculated’ because their stride length was longer. Wehner was so impressed that he wrote a book about the ants, called ‘Desert Navigator‘ which is available in English and with some fine photographs for all you formicophiles out there.

The latest news, however, comes in a study by Markus Knaden at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Germany. Knaden and his team noticed that the ants built mounds, both around the edge of the salt flats, where they were barely noticeable, and in the centre, where they could be up to 25 centimetres high. Could this be something to do with navigation? Like scientists do, they decided to remove some of the mounds and leave others alone. When the mounds were removed, mortality amongst these already beleaguered ants rose by between 250 and 400 percent, and it was noticed that the ants started rebuilding the structures as soon as they were destroyed. So, it appears that the ants not only have an inbuilt system of navigation but they build their own landmarks. Sounds a lot like tool-use to me. I find it amazing that not so long ago, we thought that humans were the only animals to use tools, and now it seems as if every class of animals has some variant on the process. Nature never ceases to amaze.

You can read about ants and their navigation here and their landmark building here.

Dear Readers, what a strange thing it is, after 9 months of slog and a couple of weeks of intense revision, to find that the exams are all over. Whatever did I do before every minute of the day was spent looking at mitochondria or genetics or natural selection in fiddler crabs? I am suffering from post-exam ennui, but I don’t expect it to last for long.

My second exam feels as if it went well, and I managed to upload it without incident this time, which is a big relief. But I have thoroughly enjoyed the courses this year, from putting out my dough balls for the magpies (who are now paying me back by nesting in the whitebeam and being mega-noisy at first light) to measuring the number of hairy-footed flower bees on my flowering currant. I have been astonished by the amazing complexity of cells, with a highlight being motor proteins that move things about in the cell. If you haven’t looked at it already, have a look at the animation of what they do in my post here.

So, with my level 2 biology courses done I am halfway through the degree. In the autumn I will be moving on to another environmental science module (I’m hoping to do half biology, half environmental science). You can read all about it here, if you are interested. I’m certainly very excited about it, though I’ll be glad of a rest over the summer – we’re planning to get back to Obergurgl in Austria, where we haven’t been since 2019. I wonder how much it will have changed? I’ll keep you posted.

An Ashy Mining Bee (Andrena cinerea)

Dear Readers, I was woken up at 5 a.m. by the magpie this morning, goodness only knows what s/he was on about but as I had an exam today I could have done without it for sure. Still, the exam went pretty well I think, even though at the end I managed to upload a blank version of my answers and had a very anxious hour while the OU sorted it out (Gawd bless them). Don’t ask me what I did, but at least I found it immediately – it’s so easy to assume that there’s only one version of something, when in fact there are several laying about waiting to trip you up. 

And then I wandered out into the garden to admire my climbing hydrangea, and look! There’s an ashy mining bee. I was only wondering where they’d gone yesterday, and now at least one of them is back. I wrote about them back in 2018, and there are some rather better photos of them here. How this little bee cheered me up! it reminds me of why I want to study science in the first place.

There are some rather pollen-covered bumblebees around as well, and lots of honeybees.

And then in the front garden, trying to pretend that she wasn’t conspicuous on the purple toadflax, was this crab spider. I think that the abdomen looks rather like a very small leather armchair. See what you think.

I wrote about these spiders recently too, so here I’ll just note that apparently they are most unsuccessful hunters (with a hit rate of only 3.5%), but that posing on a flower that is completely the wrong colour doesn’t actually worsen the situation. Last time I spotted a bright yellow crab spider, but this is the other common colour morph, so now I have a full set. It’s the little things that make me feel grounded and happy every time.

Not the most inconspicuous of spiders….

Dear Readers, I took ten minutes from my revision today to pop outside. Can you see what I saw? You need to peer behind the leaves right in the middle of the photo…

How about now?

And yes, the blue tits have fledged – they are hopping about all over the garden. What innocent, vulnerable little balls of fluff they are! Their parents are pretty much losing their minds, but so far they seem to be ok. The same can’t be said for the magpies – there was a right old kerfuffle the other afternoon, and this morning there were tiny black and white feathers behind the hedge. I suspect that one of the near-fledglings fell out, and that a cat made short work of the poor little thing. Still, I suppose the blue tits will be pleased, and the parent magpies are still up by the nest so I imagine someone is still alive.

There we go! Travel well, little one. May all your parents’ hard work come to fruition in the form of at least a few adult blue tits, to grace the garden next year.

Mayflies dancing – Photo by Mirjana Rankov at https://www.flickr.com/photos/eccolog/18865234038/

Dear Readers, I read the most beautiful piece in The Guardian today by Mark Cocker, one of my very favourite nature writers. You can read it at the link below.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/06/country-diary-an-eruption-from-the-river-like-a-fountain-of-sparks?fbclid=IwAR2jKiZwcW0aAgxink7k_zdQCUprQR89yHTjxVss8j9jr-Q8fTdvZ47dln4

You might remember my review of one of his previous books, Crow Country. And on my bedside table is his latest work, called ‘One Midsummer’s Day – Swifts and the Story of Life on Earth‘. I am really looking forward to getting stuck in, and will also probably be looking at Patrick Barkham’s new book, about the life of Roger Deakin – his most famous book was probably ‘Waterlog’ (he is credited with jump-starting the current wild swimming craze here in the UK) but I also loved his other books. So many books! So little time! And of course everything looks most desirable against a background of today’s revision, which included the many different types of photosynthesis and a quick look at water potential. Only one day to go!

And here is a piece that Cocker mentions, by John Clare. Clare was so clearly a man after my own heart. I have been known to greet an unexpected insect with much pleasure too, though I’m not sure I’d go as far as to share my sugar with them. I have cheerfully shared beer with wasps when I’ve eaten outside, though, putting it in a little dish just for them and lo and behold, they left everybody else to get on with their food in peace.

House or Window Flies
John Clare 1793 – 1864

These little window dwellers, in cottages and halls, were always entertaining to me; after dancing in the window all day from sunrise to sunset they would sip of the tea, drink of the beer, and eat of the sugar, and be welcome all summer long. They look like things of mind or fairies, and seem pleased or dull as the weather permits. In many clean cottages and genteel houses, they are allowed every liberty to creep, fly, or do as they like; and seldom or ever do wrong. In fact they are the small or dwarfish portion of our own family, and so many fairy familiars that we know and treat as one of ourselves.

And my ankle is much better, thank you for all the good wishes – the packet of frozen peas clearly did the job.

Holy moly Readers, no sooner had I ventured out for a much-needed haircut this afternoon when I found myself turning an ankle on the (admittedly very uneven) pavements outside my house. It was my right ankle (again) which I scrunched very thoroughly a few months ago, after I stood up from the sofa and keeled over because my leg had gone dead. What is going on here?

a) There is definitely too much time spent sitting hunched over a text book. Why o why do I never learn that I need to actually stand up and move about on a regular basis?

b) I need to redouble my pilates effort and get those ankles strengthened, though I suspect I’m hypermobile and so my joints are always going to be a bit of a problem. Still, nothing wrong with building up the muscles around them.

c) The menopause – apparently women have far more falls once they’re post menopausal. Whether it’s due to the change in hormones or a general tendency to become more sedentary later in life is unclear (though I do know many, many women who are way past the menopause who seem to be able to stay upright, so it’s clearly not destiny)

d) I was having some problems with numb feet, but this seems to have resolved itself over the past few months – I did lots and lots of walking in Canada and somehow it seems to have sorted itself out. There’s a hint there about what I should be doing to help myself, I think. I am still waiting for an appointment with podiatry on the NHS, but we all know that they’re struggling at the moment.

e) I hadn’t thought about it, but I should definitely get my eyes tested (though in truth I very rarely look where I’m going as, like Ronald Searle and Geoffrey Willans’s Fotherington Thomas, in the Molesworth books, I am often distracted.

Climbing hydrangea

Dear Readers, I am so delighted with the climbing hydrangea this year – it is absolutely smothered in flowers. A few years ago, some ashy mining bees discovered it, and spent every day gathering the pollen, but I haven’t seen them for a while. Still, by the end of this week my exams will be over (as my long-suffering regular readers know) and I’ll be able to pay a bit more attention to who is visiting it. In the meantime, I am just enjoying it.

The sparrows have now discovered my buddleia, with its banquet of blackfly, and are becoming regular visitors. They cheer me up as I raise my head from my Mann-Whitney U test ( a statistical test of difference where you don’t know if the data is normally distributed just in case you, like me, had never heard of it).

And in a corner of the back garden the mock orange is in full flower and the smell is amazing. The bumblebees enjoy it too, but they still seem few and far between. We’re due some warm weather for the next few weeks, so let’s see if things improve.

And, with apologies to anyone who thinks that these are weeds, here are some teasels. I don’t know why I love them so much – they are prickly and definitely a bit on the thuggish side. But the bees will love the flowers, and the finches will (hopefully) like the seeds, and in the meantime they look like enthusiastic little green people, dancing around with their arms raised and their hair on end.

I make no apology for including my favourite meme of all time. I can’t look at a teasel without being reminded of it. Enjoy!

Triphophyllum pelatatum, an African liana that’s a part-time carnivore (Photo by Denis Barthel assumed (based on copyright claims). https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=137455

Dear Readers, I am taking my nose out of my books for five minutes to talk about this very remarkable plant. I’ve long had a fascination with carnivorous plants (not entirely fuelled by Audrey the man-eating plant in ‘Little Shop of Horrors’) and in particular with those who seem to be on the edge of making the transition between purely photosynthetic and insect-eating. Recently, I read a study that suggested that teasel plants grew better when there were insects trapped in the little ‘baskets’ made by the juncture where their leaves meet the stems, and the scientific theory for a long time has been that when plants grow in nutrient-poor habitats, such as bogs they may turn to eating invertebrates to get what they need. 

The ‘pool’ at the base of teasel leaves

Now, surprisingly enough the soils in rainforests are often thin and poor (one reason why many tropical trees have such wide-spreading roots), and so there are a number of carnivorous plants there too, such as pitcher plants. But how about this liana, Triphyophyllum peltatum? What is interesting is that it puts out sticky leaves which entrap small insects, in the same way that the much smaller sundew does (to which it is distantly related). However, this plant only produces them in certain circumstances, with some plants happily getting on without them. Scientist Traud Winklemann of the Leipniz University, Hannover,  managed the difficult task of propagating the plant, and set out to see what it needed, and in which situations the carnivorous leaves appeared.

Bets were largely on nitrogen deficiency, as this is something that is a limiting factor in many environments. However, it turned out that what made the plant change its behaviour was a lack of phosphorous in the soil. Winklemann hypothesises that this is because phosphorous is one of the elements that is most depleted following the equatorial monsoon rains in September in West Africa, where the plant grows. Furthermore, as it grows on hillsides, the nutrients are regularly washed down the hill, away from the area where the plant lives. You can see how being able to access an alternative source of nutrients would be useful, although this would require the plant to use considerable resources in order to generate the ‘glue’. You can read the whole article here.

The ‘trap’ leaves of Triphophyllum peltatum – Photo by Traud Winklemann

I am always amazed at the adaptability of plants, and the many ways that they are able to use what’s available in their environment in order to survive. The fact that this plant is able to change its behaviour according to whether there’s enough phosphorous around or not is very impressive, and I anticipate a whole slew of future research on how exactly the plant manages it, and how it ‘decides’ that it’s time to produce a ‘trap’ leaf instead of a normal leaf or a leaf that enables it to climb through the undergrowth (this species also produces a leaf with hooks so that it can grapple its way up towards the sunlight). It often seems in science that every question that you answer opens the door for another dozen questions, but what fun to be continually learning!

I’ve revised growth hormones and cell membranes today, and my brain is so stuffed that I feel like those little guys from Mars Attacks!, a very strange film by Tim Burton. By the time that my first exam arrives I will be more than ready to let fly with some of those facts. Four more days to go!