What a Superb, Splendid Creature! #3

This posting concludes a three-part series which explores 'empty' (or at best unhelpful) but laudatory names of organisms. Why? Well, partly just for fun, and partly to meet some plants and animals which we may not otherwise have done. Interestingly mammals for the most part seem not to have inspired such names. 

For translations of these words I'm relying on my friend and colleague Jeannie Gray, co-author with me of Australian Bird Names, of which we're currently working on a new edition. I'm using her work in that book for nearly all of these names.

concinnus/a - elegant, neat

One of the beauties of such names for a taxonomist is that they can be applied as readily to animals as to plants!

Musk Lorikeet Glossopsitta concinna, Coles Bay, Tasmania.
The eucalypt was a street tree, Eucalyptus ficifolia from Western Australia.

Southern Pyrgomorph Grasshopper Monistria concinna, Kosciuszko NP, New South Wales.
Posing neatly on Prostanthera cuneata.

Red Comb Grevillea, Grevillea concinna, Cape Le Grande NP, Western Australia.

Trim Greenhood Pterostylis concinna, Calala, south coast New South Wales.

nobilis - noble

 And a change of tone now, to a more dramatic name.

Bismarck Palms Bismarckia nobilis, southern Madagascar.
Nothing too discreet about Otto von Bismarck, first Chancellor of the German Empire.

 

Christmas Bells Blandfordia nobilis, Currarong, south coast NSW.

Yellow Tails Ptilotus nobilis Family Amaranthaceae, far northern South Australia.

Bearded Mountaineer Oreonympha nobilis at Nicotiana flowers, Huaycarpay, southern Peruvian Andes.
This exotic tobacco tree seems to be helping sustain populations, which occur only in a very small
area of the Andes. Moreover some authorities believe the populations on opposite slopes represent
separate species, as is the case for quite a few hummingbird species-pairs.

 gracile - graceful, slender

Another more 'gentle' subjective adjective (though less subjective if the 'slender' translation is used). We have 'graceful' representatives of three different Kingdoms here!

Slender Pitcher Plant Nepenthes gracilis, Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.

Little Laughing Leek Orchid Prasophyllum gracile, Gathercole NR, Western Australia.
I think this little orchid needs all its 'grace' to bear that English name!

Smooth Cage, or Basket Fungus Ileodictyon gracile, growing in our front yard;
we assume that the spore came with mulch, but unfortunately it hasn't reappeared.
In this case it is 'graceful' by comparison with the other member of the genus, which is much chunkier.

Carlia gracilis Slender Rainbow-Skink, south of Darwin, Northern Territory.

Elliot's Storm Petrels Oceanites gracilis, Galápagos.
These undeniably graceful little birds are the only storm petrels in the world to regularly
feed in harbours, at least in the Galápagos, 'pattering' in the water to briefly anchor themselves
in place while they harvest tiny animals.

Grey Teal Anas gracilis, Jerrabomberra Wetlands, Canberra.
Probably the most abundant Australian duck, though unlike the more familiar
Pacific Black Duck it eschews town ponds and picnic areas.

Despite my comments above, quite a few 'graceful' mammals exist, most of them being small rodents and South American marsupials.

Well that's the terminus of our journey to explore some of the ways that taxonomists found to imprecisely express their admiration for organisms, and ever more importantly of course to celebrate the animals themselves.  Back next time for something completely different.

NEXT POSTING THURSDAY 1 NOVEMBER 

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Farewell to 2014!

Continuing an old tradition (well OK, 12 months old...), I'm going to celebrate the last day of 2014 by selecting just one photo taken in each month of the year. I never make any claims of artistry or anything beyond basic competence for my photos; these are chosen because they bring back particular memories (and to be honest in a couple of instances because I didn't take many photos in that month!). In general too I've tried to select photos I've not otherwise featured this year.

At a personal level it's been a good year - I'm at an age where I need to make sure that every year's a good one - and these photos reflect that. More broadly it's been a bad year to be Australian, having to take responsibility for a government which despises (and/or doesn't understand) science, has dumped on its head our self-image as a compassionate welcoming country to those in need, and which is insisting that the poorest members of society take brutal economic cuts so that big business need take no responsibility at all. This is not the time or place for a rant beyond that; just bear in mind that we're not all like that...

JANUARY

Yellow-billed Spoonbill Platalea flavipes, Jerrabomberra Wetlands Nature Reserve, Canberra.
Taken on a morning visit to one of my favourite local sites, where this beautiful bird had finished feeding for the
time being and was carefully cleaning and aligning each feather in turn.
Another favourite pic from January can be seen here, in the form of a lovely cicada.

FEBRUARY

Lowland Copperhead Austrelaps superbus, Bruny Island, Tasmania.
Our trip to Tasmania (just us!) was one of the year's highlights and I could have chosen any of dozens
of pics, but the detail of this, especially its air-tasting tongue, appeals to me, as does the memory of this attractive,
venomous but generally very amiable snake crossing a country road.

MARCH

Well OK, this is one month when I seem not to have taken many pics! (Perhaps I was busy working to make up for the holiday.) However this unusual aggregation of Meat Ants Iridomyrmex purpureus on a morning walk (a training session for volunteer guides) at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve did catch my attention.
I still can't really explain it, unless a nest had been flooded or otherwise destroyed.

APRIL

Rosy Rozites Cortinarius roseolilacinus, Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. Good memories of another walk at Tidbinbilla,
this one an evening stroll when fungi were abundant following good late summer rains. I could have offered a dozen
different fungi here from that walk but I love the colour (and the associated species name) of this, the soil still sitting on the surface from where it forced its way upward, and the tantalising nibble taken from the edge. My bet would be on a wallaby, but I can't be sure; whatever it was, it was clearly not inspired to finish the cap off!

MAY

Sunset on the domes of Kata Tjuta, central Australia, through flowering spinifex Triodia sp.
I am spoilt for choice of pics from May, as we took a tour to central Australia and these deserts inspire me
as few other environments can. I could have offered you many animal and plant photos, and
lots of other scenery, but I love watching the sun rise and set over these magnificent domes,
and spinifex hummocks are a key part of arid Australia.

JUNE

Australasian Bittern Botaurus poiciloptilus, McKellar Wetlands, Canberra.
This one was easy to choose (though I like some taken in the snowy Brindabellas too), as I can claim
it as the first photo taken in the ACT ever published of this very cryptic and threatened species.
('Published' in this case, on the Canberra Ornithologists' Group email discussion group line.)
The last sighting here was 70 years ago, so no living birder had ever seen one here.

JULY

Eastern Yellow Robin Eopsaltria australis, Deua National Park, New South Wales.
A common bird in this part of the world, but a wholly engaging one; this one was very much a part
of our now-annual getaway to a lovely little cabin (no electricity or phone available) on the edge of this
big wild park in the mountains between here and the coast. This stance is typical of this robin,
as it 'perch and pounce' hunts. It was quite uninterested in us sitting outside just a couple of metres away.

AUGUST

Platypus Ornithorhynchus anatinus, Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve.
The only half-decent picture I've ever managed of the marvellous monotreme;
the Sanctuary wetlands at Tidbinbilla are the local hotspot for them.

SEPTEMBER

Hoverfly, Family Syrphidae, at Grasstree, Xanthorrhoea glauca, Goobang NP, New South Wales.
One of my personal highlights of the year was being invited to be the after-dinner speaker at the
Fifth Annual Malleefowl Forum in Dubbo, 400k from here (no, the audience comprised people
who are studying the wonderful birds, not the Malleefowl themselves!). En route we drove through Goobang NP,
an important reserve in the Hervey Range. The Xanthorrhoeas were flowering profusely, huge
spikes two or three metres high, and pollinators were excited, especially the abundant hoverflies.
I've actually got a better pic of the fly perched on the flower, but I like the fact that
this one is doing what it does best - hovering.

OCTOBER

Anaconda Eunectes murinus, Napo Lodge, Yasuní NP, Ecuador.
A difficult month for which to select just one photo, as I spent it accompanying a group
of naturalists through Ecuador. However I'd never seen this superb animal in half a dozen visits
to Amazonia and this was a real thrill; it was estimated by the locals as 3-4 metres long
and was admired from a canoe as it rested on floating vegetation. Note the head in the centre.

NOVEMBER

Speckled Warbler Chthonicola sagittatus, Narrabundah Hill, Canberra.
This month provided the opposite problem for me, in that I hardly took any photos
in the four weeks I was home between South American trips. It's fair to say that this little chap
probably wouldn't have got a guernsey in other circumstances, but I'm glad it did. We went for a walk on our
local hill and were very pleased to see a pair of this pretty little threatened woodland species
(albeit it in exotic pines); eventually one paused for just long enough to enable me to get one snap in.
Currently it is regarded as the only member of its genus.

DECEMBER

Marine Otter Lontra felina (and lunch), Puñihuil, Isla de Chiloé, Chile.
Patagonia offers amazing scenic photography opportunities, but in the end I settled on this
fortuitous shot of a rare species from a small boat off the Puñihuil Islands.
Marine Otters are found along the southern west coast of South America and just around the corner
into Argentina. They are essentially a fresh-water otter which has evolved to a marine lifestyle;
they are not at all the same as the big Sea Otters of western North America.

So, that's one view of my year; I hope yours was as happy and naturally enriched. I thank you for taking the trouble to read some of my musings over the year; on Boxing Day I was astonished to note that 100,000 people have visited these pages over the past couple of years. I realise that this is a modest number by blogging standards, but I am humbled and amazed by it.

May your 2015 open brightly and happily, and I hope to share some of it with you.

BACK ON TUESDAY TO START ANOTHER YEAR!

Fifty Shades of Red

Not really one of my intermittent series on colours in nature - though I'll come back for another of those soon enough - but rather in the footsteps of an earlier posting wherein I explored some of the often ingenious ways that taxonomists have come up with to describe, or sometimes just imply, black in a name. The field would seem to be even more wide open with red, since there is technically only one black, whereas we use 'red' loosely to cover a range of shades or even colours.

In the illustrations I've used here, we can see that taxonomists have not only used a variety of ways to describe red and similar colours, but have often used the same word to describe what we would probably see as very different colours. However to be fair, basic Latin words for red, notably rufus and ruber, meant either red or reddish when used by the Romans too. For instance, Red Kangaroo Paw and Rufous Treecreeper share the same species name (allowing for gender endings), but are not at all the same colour.

Red Kangaroo Paw Anigozanthus rufus, south-west Western Australia.

Rufous Treecreeper Climacteris rufa, Porongurup NP, Western Australia.

Ruber likewise means either red or reddish; here are some examples from each of three biological kingdoms!

Starfish or Stinkhorn Fungus Aseroe rubra.Found throughout eastern Australia and much of the Pacific,
this species apparently mimics an open wound,
in smell as well as appearance, to attract flies which disperse the spores!

Escallonia rubra, Family Escallionaceae, Salto Petrohue, southern Chile.

Red-tailed Tropicbird Phaethon rubricauda, nesting on Lady Elliott Island, Queensland.
Here the species name means exactly the same as the English name.

And for hedging bets, it would be hard to go past the next one, whose name potentially at least means 'reddish-ish'.

Blushing Tiny Greenhood Orchid Pterostylis (Speculantha) rubescens, Black Mountain, Canberra.

The Greek equivalent is eruthros/erythros, which also appears in both plant and animal names.

Red Bloodwood Eucalyptus erythrophloia, Cooktown, tropical Queensland.
The allusion is, like the common name's, to the wood, literally 'red-wood'.
(This is not the only eucalypt referred to as Red Bloodwood by the way.)

Red-kneed Dotterel Erythrogenys cinctus, Diamantina River, far western Queensland.
This time it's the genus name containing red, in combination, thus 'red-kneed' like the common name.
(And no, it's not really the knee, but we can discuss that another time.)
This single-species genus evolved on the inland waterways as Australia dried out in the last few million years.

Other words used have more specific meanings in the original, though this hasn't always apparently reflected the organism described. For instance kokkinos is the Greek (in transliteration) for scarlet, generally agreed to be a bit on the orange side of red.

Notro Embothrium coccineum Family Proteaceae, Torres del Paine NP, southern Chile.

Scarlet Banksia Banksia coccinea Family Proteaceae, near Albany, Western Australia.

Both these examples are pretty fair renderings of the colour as we understand it, but this isn't always the case when the Greek phoenicius is employed. This is usually translated as purplish-red, or even violet, so these examples might seem surprising.

Flame Robin Petroica phoenicia, Namadgi National Park near Canberra.
Here the common name seems more appropriate.

Bottlebrush Callistemon phoenicus, Cape le Grande NP, Western Australia.
Perhaps this one is a bit closer to the intent.

Then there are names based on allusion or analogy. The Latin ferrugineus refers to rusty iron, and some of the applications of this one again seem unexpected.

Diplolaena ferruginea Family Rutaceae, Badgingarra NP, Western Australia.
I guess here it depends on whether the author was looking at the more obvious red stamens
or the definitely rusty sepals.

Pimelea ferruginea, Woody Island, Western Australia.
I find this one distinctly odd! (The name, not the delightful flower.)

Andean Ruddy Duck Oxyura ferruginea, El Calafate, Argentina.
This one seems pretty unequivocal.

Austral Parakeet Enicognathus ferrugineus, Chilean Patagonia.
While it might seem a little strange to name the entire bird 'rusty' for the tail, the colour seems convincing enough.
This parrot is found further south than any other, way down to about 52 south, at the tip of South America.

Likewise the implication of the Latin sanguineus, bloody or blood-coloured, would seem pretty unequivocal, but not so it seems.

Dark-banded Greenhood Orchid Pterostylis sanguinea, Perth.
Maybe dried blood?

However, in other places it has been much more obviously appropriately-used.

Scarlet Honeyeater Myzomela sanguinolenta, Cape Hillsborough NP, Queensland.
Here the derived word sanguinolenta implies 'blood-filled'.

Of course names usually tell us more about ourselves than the organisms, but it can be fun - and sometimes even instructive - to explore them. Not to mention an excuse to introduce you to some plants and animals you might not have been familiar with.

BACK TOMORROW FOR A BRIEF POSTING TO SHARE SOME NEWS WITH YOU, BEFORE A MORE NORMAL ONE ON THURSDAY

A Tale of Two (Ant) Cities

This is the story - or rather two stories - of two very different groups of tropical rainforest ants, in two continents, which have in common only that they do remarkable things with leaves, and are the basis of two pretty good yarns. 

Leafcutter Ants, Yasuni National Park, Ecuador.
There are over 40 species of leaf-cutters in the genera Atta and Acromyrmex, found from southern North America through Central America to much of South America; the differences between the genera (not to mention the species) are really only available to laypeople with a good lens and an immobilised ant!

Green Tree Ant Oecophylla smaragdina, Litchfield National Park, south-west of Darwin, Northern Territory of Australia.
This species (as currently recognised) is found across the coastal tropics of Australia and through south-east Asia to India. Only the Australian ants have the green abdomen; elsewhere they are known as Weaver Ants.
There is also an African species, O. longinoda.

Anyone familiar with the Australian tropics is very wary of Green Tree Ants; it is easy to inadvertently annoy them by leaning on their tree, and it's something you don't do twice. They don't have a sting, but they can bite hard enough to break the skin - after which they make sure they have your attention by spraying the wound with formic acid. It works too. On the other hand there seems to be no consensus about the stinging capabilities of the Leafcutters; different sources are equally adamant that they either do, or cannot, sting - perhaps it varies between species, or genera. There seems to be an agreement that they can bite however, though I've never had a problem with them, and the lodges in the Amazon which have trails of them on the paths don't see the need to warn guests about them.

They both utilise leaves, but in entirely different ways and for quite different purposes. The Green Tree Ants glue living leaves to make a magnificent nest. 

Green Tree Ant nest, Darwin. The 'glue' can be seen as white material at the bottom of the nest.

I've never seen the beginning of construction, but it's commenced by a few ants reaching across from one leaf to another to pull them together by sheer force. If the process looks like being a success, more ants join in - the more ants that are involved, the more likely it is that others will assist. If the gap between leaves is too wide the ants will form a living chain to bridge it. Once the leaves are in contact something even more remarkable happens. Other workers bring mature larvae, and with their antennae signal them to start releasing their silken threads from glands below their jaws; they move the larvae back and forth like glue guns.

A colony may number half a million ants, and maintain well over 100 nests in 20 or more trees. Green Tree Ants are voracious scavengers and hunters, streams of workers bringing back a variety of animal food for the queen and larvae; workers lay chemical trails to lead others to a good source.

Green Tree Ants dismembering a dragonfly, Litchfield National Park.

Leafcutter ants on the other hand do not eat meat - but despite the evidence of our eyes, they do not eat leaves either!

Leafcutter Ant trail, Manu, Peru.
These trails of ants carrying leaf segments above their backs as long as the sun lasts
are an integral part of South American rainforests.

Given their ability to cut leaves all day into manageable pieces, it's not surprising that they're reputed to be able to give a respectable nip if molested. The leaf material is taken to the nest, cleaned and taken to the underground fungus farm, where they are used to feed a remarkable species of fungus, which has lived in ant nests for so long that it has lost the power to produce spores to reproduce (according to at least one source anyway). The entire ant colony lives on the nutritious fungus.

Nor do all leafcutters restrict themselves to leaves!

Some plants produce leaves which are inimical to the ants, which avoid these trees. If they do bring an undesirable leaf home they are able to monitor the fungus' reaction and remove the offending greenery again.

The nests are enormous and may cover tens of square metres of forest floor, which the colony keeps clear of vegetation.

Leafcutter Ant nest, Manu, Peru.
A big colony can house millions of ants.

 When a queen leaves to start a new colony she takes a fungal sample with her to start the new farm. These young queens emerge in vast numbers, a resource large enough in Ecuador to attract the Quechua people to collect them, wrap them in leaves, and sell them in markets. 

Leafcutter Ant queen, Sacha Lodge, Ecuador.

I am always fascinated by ants, but the activities of Green Tree Ants and Leafcutters constantly astonish me, and they are one of the first things I look out for when I get back to the tropics. If you've met them, I hope this brings back good memories; if you haven't, that's something for you to look forward to!

BACK ON SUNDAY