Sexual Dimorphism - Golden Orb Spiders

One of my favorite tropical organisms are the orb weaver spiders, and Queensland has some spectacular ones. Here's an image of one that had woven a big web in the corner of the car port of our beach house. When pointing the beast out, the Phactor refered to it as a "her", and was chastised by family and friends as being unable to sex spiders, but in this case the big ones are always female because these spiders have a tremendous sexual dimorphism: huge females and dwarf males, spiders so small that they are generally not noticed if you don't know what you're looking for. The female spiders are locally refered to as "bird-eating spiders" and you do occasionally see a feather stuck in the web, but while the web can hang on to the stray loose feather, even these substantial webs seldom can hold a bird. Old Shelob here has a body 4-5 cm long and a leg span of 20-21 cm! So just maybe she could "eat" a small entangled bird, but not sure how reliable some of the reports of bird catching are. While running into one of their webs and tangling with Shelob is a bit creepy, she's actually harmless to people, at least big people.

This particular spider's orb was also inhabited by a male, shown here in an inset (upper right) at approximately the same scale (Did you notice?). Now you may ask why is there such a huge difference in body size? In answer, remember sperm are not very big, so even a small male can make quite a few. So how do you mate with such a big fierce predator? Answer: carefully. Presumably a dwarf male is so small he isn't going to be mistaken for a meal, or even a snack, very often. In many invertebrates, females are bigger for egg production, so you start with somewhat smaller males who after all only make the much cheaper gametes, sperm. Such systems evolve when males of various sizes have different reproductive success. If larger males more frequently get eaten by the female before mating, and smaller males more frequently succeed in mating, then the average size of males decreases because those genes are passed on to offspring more frequently. At some point selection will be such that there no longer is any advantage to being still smaller. The dwarf males make a living by scavenging tiny prey caught and ignored by the big female, or by sneaking meals from larger prey items.

Kitchen Garden Update

After 3 weeks of neglect, although a good neighbor did water once or twice, the kitchen garden has survived a hot, dry July and early August fairly well and this may be attributed to the paper and straw mulch. The plants look pretty good, especially the tomatoes, however most of the near ripe fruit is on the ground half eaten. This would suggest we have a free-loading possum or raccoon hanging around. Damn. Fortunately the golden cherry tomatoes are far enough up on a tall vine (indeterminate plant you know) so they are generally out of reach. For some reason the zucchini have been slow to grow so many are in still in a juvenile mostly male stage, but are showing signs of kicking into gear. Asian varieties of eggplant are doing pretty well except the flea beetles have really laced the leaves. Peppers haven't done much yet, but a couple of plants are keeping things from being a complete failure. If the weather breaks a bit, and some rain appears, some beans, snap peas, and salad greens will be planted for fall crops. Basil and parsley have grown well, and were generously used in a Thai salad for din-dins tonight. Cucumbers have been very successful so far having climbed to about 8 feet and seem in pretty good shape. Hope the beetles hold off for a bit and don't infect them with wilt. Notice that nothing was said about vegetable because most of the summer crops are fruits. So that's the way it is for us small time farmers. Maybe the season of tomatoes and zucchini will happen yet.

A nasty plant

My old friend Woody introduced me to this plant on our first trip to Australia 30 years ago for another botanical congress. “Stand next to that plant for a size comparison”, he said. Pointing to it, the Phactor said, “This one?” And the pointed finger was too close and a small hypodermic needle of a trichome (hair) slipped under the edge of my finger nail. The stinging sensation that resulted was something to behold because even though there was no visible injury at all, it felt like a hot ice pick had been shoved under my finger nail. The pain was severe and it just throbbed, and after subsiding 3-4 hours later, it would begin throbbing again every time my hand was in water. The rather innocent looking shrub that does this is Dendrocnide moroides, the stinging bush, one of the nastiest members of the nettle family. Another colleague tripped and fell into one, and the reaction and pain required a trip to hospital. Imagine how his showers felt after this! The fruit is a rather attractive red raspberry looking thing, but all those stinging hairs give you real pause about trying it. So visual ID of this plant is one of the first things you learn before doing field work in rainforests of Queensland. Slow learners will get a lesson they won’t forget.

Rainforest in the rain

Rainforest always looks its best just after a rain or during a light rain; in a real heavy rain you just can't see anything. Took our traveling companions of a field trip to see some rain forest in a light rain. This particular forest was in a national park at about 900 m above sea level. Here's a nice picture of the forest profile, a particularly difficult type of picture to get because you are seldom in the right place to see the forest like this. The primary vine in this forest is rattan palm, not one of the Phactor's favorite plants as it is forever trying to rip your head off. In just showing people the darned thing it ended up planting some of its grappling hooks in my hand. It's why the locals call it "lawyer cane" because once it gets its hooks into you it never lets go. Our temperate forests have fewer layers and are deciduous. Next blog another nasty denizen will be introduced.

Not quite cryptobotany - Annual Thismia Hunt

The holy grail of Lincoln-land plants is Thismia, a plant that has been MIA for nearly 100 years now, but every year people go looking for this midget in hopes of still discovering it alive, but the Chicago area has seen a little bit of development since it was last seen near Lake Calumet. Volunteers are always welcome to assist in the search, but the Phactor who spends all too much time on his hands and knees doing his own research, isn't up for this. This isn't quite cryptobotany since it once did actually exist, but it's close. HT to Get your botany on.

Tropical garden color

Even if UTF (ubiquitous tropical flora) is a bit over done at times, a number of its components are very colorful, very attractive plants, and the red powder puff (Calliandra haematocephala, a mimosid legume) is one of my favorites because its display is both gaudy and long lasting. The nicely landscaped beach house recently occupied use vegetation very effectively to be both attractive and to generate privacy. But the red powder puff inflorescences (note the heads of flower buds) generated even more color than its flowers here in far northern Queensland by attracting rainbow lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus) each morning providing them with some nectar for brekkies. As the generic name indicates they have brush-like tongues for swabbing up nectar. Took this picture from the veranda while having brekkies myself.

Home Again

At the great risk of complete incoherence, the Phactor reports his return home after a 30+ hour travel day after a night of less than 4 hours sleep. Nothing amiss happened; just the usual clueless, inconsiderate fellow travelers who add so much color to your travels. A few comments for those who fall into to this latter category: get luggage you can actually handle without assistance and that will actually fit into storage bins, please recognize that you are not alone on the aircraft, stop your kid from kicking my seat or leave it to me whatever you prefer, if you plan on asking your seat mates to move more than one or two times ask for the bloody aisle seat, patience is a virtue because everyone there has someplace to go, if you bump into me, trip over my luggage, or stop blocking my path one more time because you're more engrossed in your cell phone than walking the damned thing is going to get thrown down the concourse, have your travel documents ready and filled in before walking up to the immigration desk with 200 people waiting in line (looks really cannot kill it turns out). Love to visit places; hate to travel, if you understand what that means.

Very slow internet

Halfway around the world is no great distance for those little electrons to travel, but the interface available here in our tropical paradise is quite slow which is why no recent pictures have been posted and why so few blog postings. Reports from the tropics will have to be a retrospective. Uploading images is just out of the question. In a manner of speaking when you're in the tropics you shouldn't have access to newspapers, the internet, or underwear, none of which is very useful here. But soon, all too soon, the Phactor will be on the road again, returning to the great midwest, which surely will welcome us with milder weather.

Where do you publish and why?

Seeking a large number of illustrations for a book has been a very informative, but frustrating process. The lesson is simple. Not-for-profit journals published by scientific societies have in every single case given permission for use of the images from their publications, and of course, full attribution is given. For-profit journals have in every single case wanted payment for use of an image, even if the authors have given me permission. So the question is simple, do you want your research, your scholarship to be used or not? Of course, there is another tradeoff. Some of the most prestigious of scientific journals are for-profit publishers, and while it may indicate that your work is the latest and most important, and you may receive more notoriety for publishing in such venues, you work isn't going to be used as widely as you may wish. Now of course this is all because the publisher of my book is also an academic publisher and the budget for illustrations is basically nil, and no question about it, both the publisher and author hope the sales will result in some economic gain. So you begin to wonder what is fair usage?

Fern Envy

The Phactor's beach house is quite nicely landscaped for both attractiveness and privacy. And the selection of several plants shows a bit more imagination going beyond the typical UTF (ubiquitous tropical flora - Don't get me started!). So while sitting on the veranda enjoying the gentle (OK, a bit stronger than gentle) breezes blowing in off the Coral Sea, a fern catches my eye. Or at least my initial assumption was fern, but without any good reasons why. Several of the hanging baskets, of basket ferns and clusters of elkhorn ferns on tree trunks have long slender fronds hanging limply below, and it was clearly something different. The locals call it ribbon fern. Some of the long, slender fronds are dichotomously lobed apically, and then the whole thing became clear. There were fertile fronds with two rows of big fat sporangia fused basally to the fertile fronds, which leads you to the inescapable conclusion that even though this is a tropical epiphytic fern, there is only one thing in the world this fern can be which is a species of Ophioglossum, which turns out to be O. pendulum, a native of Queensland (sorry connection too slow to upload my images), and the Phactor is so jealous. Hope this fern is in the trade somewhere so it can be obtained in N. America.