Wild Things:
Life as We Know It
Bats' barotrauma, fallow deer, Tahitian vanilla, lucky dinosaurs
- By T.A. Frail, Megan Gambino, Jesse Rhodes, Abigail Tucker and Sarah Zielinski
- Smithsonian magazine, November 2008
Wooden trays hold brown vanilla beans drying in the sun. (Corbis)
In the same Guatemalan forests where Mayans grew cacao for chocolate more than 500 years ago, they also grew the orchids that produce vanilla. Now genetic research led by the University of California at Riverside suggests it was the Mayans who hybridized two species to make Tahitian vanilla, a variety prized by modern gourmets.
Additional Sources
"Neotropical roots of a Polynesian spice: the hybrid origin of Tahitian vanilla, Vanilla tahitensis (Orchidaceae)," Pesach Lubinsky et al., American Journal of Botany, August 2008
"Superiority, Competition, and Opportunism in the Evolutionary Radiation of Dinosaurs," Stephen L. Brusatte et al., Science, September 12, 2008
"Barotrauma is a significant cause of bat fatalities at wind turbines," Erin F. Baerwald et al., Current Biology, August 26, 2008
"Low Frequency Groans Indicate Larger and More Dominant Fallow Deer (Dama dama) Males," Elisabetta Vannoni and Alan G. McElligott, PLoS One, September 2008
"Mirror-Induced Behavior in the Magpie (Pica pica): Evidence of Self-Recognition," Helmut Prior et al., PLoS Biology, August 2008
Comments (2)
Only the ones that get too near a wind farm die from barotrauma. The bats dying from the fungus is a different problem. You probably heard of this recently because a USGS scientist (see http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2058) identified the fungus and published the news a few weeks ago.
Posted by Sarah Zielinski on November 13,2008 | 02:23 PM
Are all bats dying from "barotrauma"? I had heard that it was a fungus killing them. We saw very few bats this past summer.
Posted by Ellen Hood on November 10,2008 | 06:47 PM