Last year I was on an adventure exploring the concept of refugia. Many animals and cultures used to be widely spread, in the past, but today, can only be found sparsely. The Canary Island flora is an example of that: ecosystems like the laurel forest used to be widespread across Europe, but went extinct during the Ice Ages, thus becoming relict species. Similarly, many Pyrenees villages still have extremely unique toponyms. The names of these villages may be related to the Euskara language. Euskara, or Basque, is only spoken today in northern Spain, but used to be widespread across the Pyrenees before languages like latin or greek arrived. These basque-related names have survived to our days, but every other trace of that language in the region is long gone.
Category: Botany
Hornworts, or the nature of discovery
What is discovery made of? Which are the ingredients? And how are the different ingredients combined into “finding something new”? I’ll try to give some perspectives on this, through my personal experience with a botanical discovery (which lead to my first scientific publication). Losing the way is the way I guess most botanists/naturalists have a…
Art and science: navigating the maze in the 19th century
Let’s begin with a little quiz… Which historical character said… Classification is Ariadna’s thread in the Dedalus of nature. So concise and poetic. Any guesses? The answer is Aurore Dupin, better known by her pen name: George Sand¹. Aurore Dupin (1804 – 1876) was a French writer, socialist and feminist. Her…
The plants of Proxima Centaury
If there were plants inhabiting other planets, which colour would they be? There are no plants in space, but the discovery of exoplanets like Proxima Centaury B or Kepler-442b opens the door for similar organisms that can do photosynthesis. On Earth, plant colours are determined by the type of light emanating from the Sun, our star. In most cases, the best solution has been purple or green colours. In other worlds, with other stars, colours would be completely different.
Seaweed for sceptics: ammonoids and brown algae
Welcome to the next issue of the Seaweed for Sceptics series. The first post of the series explored the rough origin of the red algae, showing the genetic impariment that these seaweed suffer as a result of their extreme origins. In this second post we shall focus on one of these weird connections that crop…
Say it with leaves: a gymnospermic romance
Happy Valentine Day everyone! We would like to give our biological slant on this romantic date. The Internet is ripe with dating techniques and romantic proposals, ranging from original to pure nonsense. Here we want to show you yet another way to communicate your love for someone: say it with leaves! Johann Wolfgang von Goethe…
Greek mythology invades biodiversity!
When scientists create scientific names, they often unleash their creativity and honour people, locations or even gods. We go through the Greek God Pantheon and discover animals named after Greek Mythology, like the fish Zeus or the butterfly Hades.
Seaweed for sceptics (I): a rough origin for the red algae
Seaweeds are one of those things we might take for granted. Even many biologists would call this fleshy marine algae “dull” or “uninteresting” (we guess they’d be called seaweed sceptics?). One of the points of this blog is to show that life’s magnificence is to be found everywhere, if you are open to it….
On elephants and bacteria 