Month: September 2022

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Uncategorized

Wild bees!

16 September. We spent the night in Green Head, and this morning we explored the hens growing along the coastal walk. Rocky headlands that break into transparent waters with barely any waves. An osprey guards the shoreline, and then heads inland to collect branches for its massive nest on top of a manmade pole. No bees but honeybees this morning either. We have a nice chat with a cafe owner that invites us back to talk about bees to their local community. We exchange contact details to arrange a virtual talk once I’m back in Sweden.

Today we are heading inland to try to find wild bees along the area of Lake Indoon, where we see old eucalyptus trees that serve as home to birds and as food to parrots that tear down flowers after squeezing out the nectar and thousands of honeybees. The hum of the honeybees above our heads is impressive (later that night I dream of honeybees and beekeepers). No wild bees.

We push onward to the road near Lake Louge, and David suggests stopping on the roadside to check an area that has recently burn down and where wildflowers are making a beautiful display of oranges, reds and yellow. We pull over. On the margin of the road there is an old skeleton of a kangaroo, the vertebrae lined up and the skull laying in the gravel. As we walk away from the road we come to an incredible display of cat’s paws that extend as far as you can see, the short, yellow and red inflorescences of this bird pollinated plant poke their heads above the white sand. Among them there are carnivorous plants that place their traps above the ground in a vertical, miniature branch about 20 cm tall. The land is covered by Bchrred skeletons of Banksia that went up in flames when the land burnt but that have resprouted with a vengeance. There are few flowers, but in one of them we see some activity. They are wild Australian bees!

We finally have managed to find the elusive pollinators as the day warms up. We sample some miniature bees that congregate in dozens in the pink inflorescences of the Banksia. We also find a few large bees with black thoraxes and blue tinged abdomens (Colletidae?), and excited for the new discoveries we set up the mobile lab in the Buzz Bus. David takes the lead on the data acquisition controls in the computer, and I lasso the first bee and press it against the miniature accelerometer that will record its buzzes. A high pitch symphony of annoyed buzzes is swiftly recorded and we have our first data point!

We spend a couple of hours here seeking out bees, recording buzzes, and photographing their flower food. As the afternoon approaches, we pick up the mobile lab and start driving inland towards our next destination. We are headed to Coalseam to search for more bees and flowers. As the sun sets, the clouds begin to thin out, and we hope that the overcast cool days of the last week will finally yield to the sunny, warm skies that will get bees out of their sheltering hideouts.

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flowers Western Australia

The incredible plant diversity of Leuseur Plateau

15 September. Today ahs been one of the most amazing botanical days in my life! After leaving Karda campground, we head directly to Leuseur National Park. Arriving here, I quickly realise why David has been so insistent in including this place in the itinerary. This is a true heaven of botanical diversity. A series of flat-topped hills in a valley formed by hardened rock and filled with the sand of ancient shorelines, this relatively small place holds meter-by-meter more plant diversity than a tropical rainforest! The diversity of plants is such that 60% of the plant species found in Mount Leusueur (named by French explorers that noticed its flat top while sailing the nearby ocean) are not seen in Mount Michelle, a mere 1.5km away. What should be a couple hours of exploration, turns into a full day affair, as we cannot walk more than a few steps before discovering another bunch of amazing flowers that blows away even seasoned, local botanists. Among the many incredible species we find a few buzz-pollinated taxa. This is so exciting! Monocots and dicots y diverse plant families converge here in the typical Solanum buzz-pollinated morphology. I am certain that soon we will be finding a trove of buzz-pollinating bees. But the cool, windy weather has other plans for us. We search everywhere but, although we find hundred of honey bees feeding on the flowers of Eucalyptus and Banksia, we see not a single wild bee. We continue looking until the sun is about to set, and yet no wild bees at all.

–Do you have a plan B?, asks David.

I do not. I still have hope that when the weather turns (we have had a string of cool, overcast, or rainy days in what is supposed to be one of the sunniest places in the world, we should be able to find bees. Let’s see what tomorrow holds for the Buzz Bus.

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Western Australia wildlife

Buzz Bus Departure

14 September. Departure day! Today we leave Perth after a slow start with a stop at the supermarket to stock on food for the next days. David and I leave on a sunny morning headed north. We leave the city and soon hit the first Eucalyptus forests. Driving along Indian Ocean Drive, we pass Yanchep and later in the afternoon reach the beautiful Nilgen Natural Reserve, where we stop to look for bees. Although we only find honeybees, we had a first chance to see many cool plants in the wild, including spar orchids, Banksia, and Hakea, and many more!

The day is going by fast, and the next decision is whether to stop at the Pinnacles Desert. Although likelihood of finding native bees here is low, we agree that this is a stop worth taking and decide to do a whistle tour of this incredible place. We are not disappointed and soon become enchanted by this alien and magic landscape. Against a backdrop of yellow sand, thousands of stone pillars stand up in the long shadows of the late afternoon. The stone columns can vary in height from a few tens of centimeters to more than two meters. Their origin of these structures remains a mystery and hypotheses range from precipitation in subterranean rivers to the trunks of ancient trees buried in sand. Regardless of how they are born, David and I spend some time among their bizarre forms and search for shapes among the stones. Some remind us of wizards, skulls, animals and many more! In the sand, we come across the tracks of a kangaroo, and follow them for a while, tracing the, sometimes enormous jumps of what we assume was a large kangaroo. In the outskirts of the park, we briefly see an emu, rivalling in size and African ostrich.

It is getting late, and we push towards our first campsite at camp Karda. The night is starting to set but as we pull in the dirt road, I see my first live wild kangaroo. Soon we realise that many more are coming out as the sun sets, and see a mom and jockey that graze the vegetation not far from where we set camp. After a dinner in the cool and rainy night, the sky opens and we are treated to an amazing display of the milkyway high in the sky. We take some night photos of stars and planets and go to bed, exhausted but excited. Sadly no bees today, but maybe tomorrow we find them.

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Uncategorized

King’s Park

Today (13 September), we picked up the Buzz Bus! The campervan that will be our home for the next three weeks is very nice and with space to set up the lab to measure bees. After collecting the Buzz Bus, we drove to King’s Park in Perth where David and I met Ziggy, a researcher working at the Park studying the reproduction and population genetics of Australian plants. He had some great tips about plant watching and we had a ncie chat about the use of technology for studying pollinators. David and he work together in a cool project on a group of plants called Kangaroo Paws, and I learned that the Australian flora is particularly rich in bird-pollinated plants. Hopefully this doesn’t mean that bee pollinators will be hard to find! We spend the night in Perth, to prepare for the departure north the following day.

King’s Park is an amazing botanical garden. We spend way longer here than originally planned, but is impossible not to stop and admire the incredible collection of plants held here. Common and rare, small and enormous, the botanical garden has it all. My favourites include the baobab trees, the walking palms (Pandanus), and of course the beautiful views of Perth’s waterfront.

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Western Australia wildlife

Arrival to Perth

After a close call with the connection in London, and a 16 hour flight crossing Europe, the middle east, and (10 hours!) over the Indian Ocean I landed at Perth International airport. We were swiftly unpacked from the Spirit of Australia Boeing 787 Dreamliner. By some small miracle all my bags made it, and soon after I was on the cab of a taxi with a slightly confused driver that never ceased to be amazed how much the city had changed in the last five years, an explanation that he provided freely every time we took the wrong turn. I am staying in Joondalup, a satellite city to Perth, that reminds me of a small American city, but pedestrian friendly. But the wide streets, large shopping mall, and light traffic serve as a backdrop to my first encounter with Australian floral and fauna. David Field has kindly met me at my hotel for a little wonder in town, and after some Thai at the food court, we head to the Lagoon of Joondalup via Yellagoonga Regional park down the road from my hotel. As we walk, noisy lorikeets fly above us, and a large cockatoo stops by to take a rest in a large Eucalyptus in the street. As we walk by, a laughing kokaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), an enormous kingfisher-like bird that when in groups call with crazy laughter like sounds, inspects us from the balcony of a house before flying off to rest in the aerial of somebody’s home. The pace is slow as we stop to see Banksias growing besides the sidewalk, kangaroo paws that are pollinated by nectar-thirsty birds, and many other plants, almost all which I have never seen or heard of before.

In the Yellagoonga park, and after narrowly avoiding a speed-demon cyclist, we make our way though the warnning signs for posionous snakes and begin a short exploration of the wildlife wonders that even a city park in Australia holds for the first-time visitor. David is an excellent guide and introduces me to lots of cool animals an plants. From the common Red Wattlebird (Anthochaera carunculata) that feeds on the red inflorescences of the toilet-brush tree, and defends its territory from inquisitive crows, to the most amazing and colourful Rainbow Lorikeet (Trichoglossus moluccanus), whic quickly becomes my favourite bird. We also see a few Galah (Eolophus roseicapilla), a parrot with pink chest and a cheeky disposition, quite a few Little Corellas (Cacatua sanguinea) a white cockatoo with a feathery tuft that is raised inquisitively, and on the ground an Australasian Swamphen (Porphyrio melanotus), and a handsome Australian Wood Duck (Chenonetta jubata) that forage in pairs on the grassy flats.

The plant life is of course amazing. We are guarded by large grass-like Balga trees, Xanthorrhoea preisii that very much remind me the elephant-foot trees of the Tehuacan valley in Mexico. The beautiful and curious Banksia abound, some small herbs with their yellow inflorescences close to the ground, others trees like the Parrot Bush (Banksia sessilis) and Candlestick Banksia (Banksia attenuata), with its persistent inflorescences that when mature release their seeds through small, mouth-like openings, that appear to speak to the passerby. We also see Pelargonium, Golden Wreath Wattle Acacia saligna), and the wonderful cycads in the genus Macrozamia, a palm-like conifer with its male and female cones kept close to the ground.

…To be continued.

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back story

So, what’s the Buzz Bus?

The Buzz Bus is our version of a mobile set up or lab to study the mechanical properties of the vibrations that bees produce.

It is a simple set up that allows us to deploy sensitive equipment that captures vibrations, miniature piezo-electric accelerometers, away from lab settings. Our mobile lab enables us to work with live bees and measure their defence vibrations that bees produce when lightly pressed against a miniature accelerometer. The accelerometer is a small device connected to a cable that transforms vibrations into electric signals. Inside the accelerometer there is a small piece of a special type of material that when is deformed generates a very small amount of electricity. The vibrations transmitted from the bee to the accelerometer are transformed into electrical signals that can then be acquired and digitised using custom made software.

The set up doesn’t look like much but we have successfully used it in a previous expedition to western and northern Scotland to measure defence vibrations in bees and hoverflies. The results of those fun expeditions were published in 2021 in Journal of Zoology, and a picture of a bee-mimicking hoverfly we took in those trips made it to the cover!

We will use a campervan in Australia as a base that will enable us to cool down bees for measurement and provide electricity needed to recharge and run the equipment. The Bus Buzz will also be our home for the next three weeks.

But before meeting the Buzz Bus, I still need to make it to Australia. A small delay in arriving to Amsterdam and some unexpected airport chaos has left me stranded overnight here. The challenge this morning is to make it on time to catch the next flight in London. It will be a tight schedule!

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back story

Take off!

The two day trip to reach Australia begins, and thus the start of the Buzz Buz expedition! I’m in Arlanda airport, near Stockholm and Uppsala, waiting for the first of three flights that will take me to Perth in Western Australia. Somehow it still feels a bit unreal to start the trip that has been planned for so long. We first conceived of the idea of a mobile lab to study buzz pollination about three years ago when we put a team together and wrote the Explorer grant for National Geographic. The plan was to do this in 2020, but we all know how travel plans changed unexpectedly for everybody. What would have been part of a four month visit to Eastern Australia, slowly evolved into the Buzz Bus expedition that is finally happening in late 2022.

Taking the lab to the field

The idea of a mobile lab to do ecological work that otherwise needs a lab setting was probably planted in my mind many years ago when I was a graduate student at Duke University in North Carolina. Back then, we had a visit by Carol Goodwillie from East Carolina University, who mentioned, over lunch, that she wanted to equip a van with a fluorescent microscope and drive around testing plants for self-incompatibility. Self-incompatibility is a cool and widespread genetic mechanism that some plants have evolved to avoid self-pollination and the costs of inbreeding. Pollination can be a messy process and is common that plants end up receiving some of their own pollen. Because most plants have both male and female sexual organs in the same individual, receiving self pollen can end up producing inbreed seeds that have the same father and mother. It is well known that inbreeding can have negative effects on the survival and reproduction of offspring (biological fitness), and since Darwin, evolutionary biologists have been fascinated with the diverse mechanisms that organisms have evolved to avoid mating with themselves. In plants, this insurance against inbreeding can involve a genetic mechanism in which the maternal tissue of a flower can detect pollen that shares the same genetic identity, and triggers a series of reactions that prevent these pollen grains from reaching the ovary and fertilising ovules, thus preventing self-fertilisation. Carol’s idea was to use ultraviolet light to visualise the pollen tubes of flowers that had been manually self-pollinated. In some kinds of self-incompatibility, when a plant triggers the self-incompatibility reaction, the pollen tubes are blocked by plugs of a substance called callose, which fluoresces bright white under the right conditions. Her mobile lab would then allow her to test, on the go, plants for which we still didn’t know their self-incompatible status. The idea of taking the lab to the field stuck with me, and many years later I thought that this would be a neat way to study bee vibrations. When is not possible to take the organisms to the lab for studying, then we must take the lab to the field.

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travel

Preparing for departure

It is just a few more days to departure day! We are getting ready, finalising the details of the trip. The first stop will be Perth where I will meet @david-field to start our first leg of the expedition. Stay tuned!