Science & Nature

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DRAWN TO THE LIGHT

Cinnabar Moth (Tyria jacobaeae) Gillian Nash

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The vivid red and black wing colour of the cinnabar moth serves as a deterrent to any would-be predator and in flight, the solid red hindwings are also revealed. This colour combination gave rise to the colloquial name of ‘Pillar Box’ moth, certainly in this area and perhaps elsewhere.

Its most familiar common name ‘cinnabar moth’ refers to the colour of a red mineral ore of mercury. A rare yellow form is also sometimes seen.

The adult moth is easily disturbed from vegetation and sometimes flies in daylight. A rare aberrant form of the moth (f.coneyi), lacking any black markings, was reared by the lepidopterist P. Watson using selective breeding and named after his good friend and fellow naturalist Alan Coney. The form is occasionally still found to this day. Mr Coney taught at Sherborne County Primary school in the 1960s and is fondly remembered by many including myself, particularly as an inspiration for interest in natural history.

The larvae feed on groundsel and ragwort from July to September, having hatched from eggs laid on the foodplants during the adult moth’s May to August flight season. As they feed, toxins from the food plants build up in their striking yellow and black banded bodies – a clear warning that they would be harmful if consumed. In certain parts of the world, they are used as control for these plant species among crops as both leaves and flowers are devoured leaving the plant unable to produce seed. In its final stage of growth, the larva forms a pupa just below ground level where it will remain until the emergence of the adult moth the following year.

Common throughout most of the UK wherever its foodplants grow, habitat is varied, so the species may therefore be encountered in almost any situation, including both town and country gardens, well-grazed grassland, wild undisturbed places and wasteland.

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DORSET’S GREY SEALS

Julie Hatcher, Marine Awareness Officer, Dorset Wildlife Trust

In Dorset, we are lucky to find both British species of seal – the grey seal and the common (or harbour) seal. The grey seal is the larger of the two. Male greys can reach over 3 metres long and tend to have a darker coat and a large, Roman nose, unlike the paler, smaller females. Like all seals, greys have a dense coat of fur, which along with blubber beneath their skin, helps keep them warm in the cold sea. Grey seals’ fur, especially that of females, tends to be pale grey or silver in colour with dark blotches. The pattern of marks on each seal is unique and enables individuals to be identified. In Britain, we have just under 40% of the entire world population of grey seals. The majority of these are found in Scotland, with large colonies in Cornwall and on the east coast of England. In Dorset, individual grey seals are regularly spotted along the coast although there is no known breeding colony. However, these seals can travel large distances and it is probable that most of the seals spotted in Dorset are travelling through. In 2014, Dorset Wildlife Trust initiated the Dorset Seal Project, to find out if any of the seals recorded in the county were regular visitors. In fact, several individuals have been seen here a number of times, including one female which is recorded at the same place every year. Despite this, most of the seals in our photo ID catalogue have only been recorded once. We have also identified seals in Dorset which have been recorded in Devon, Cornwall or Hampshire, showing that these animals are widely travelled. To find out more about the Dorset Seal Project and how you can help, go to dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/seals where you can record a seal sighting, download the ‘Watch Seals Well’ leaflet, and discover more about Dorset’s seals.

• Although seals spend a lot of their time in the sea they regularly haul out onto land where unfortunately they are very sensitive to human disturbance. • They need to come out of the sea to rest, warm up and digest their food, to moult, give birth and suckle their young. • If seals are not able to relax safely on land, it can have a detrimental effect on their health and reduce their chance of survival

TURN YOUR GARDEN INTO A HAVEN FOR WILDLIFE

Peter Littlewood, Young Peoples Trust for the Environment

With the summer now upon us, it’s a great time to be able to use your garden. With insect numbers dwindling and lots of other species under pressure too, there are lots of things you can do to give wildlife a bit of a helping hand. Here are a few ideas:

Mow your lawn less often So your first action could actually be choosing to be inactive! You can help wildlife by not mowing the lawn. This is because longer grass gives animals more space to live in and more food to eat. By leaving more time between cuts and by adjusting your lawnmower’s cutting height so that the grass is left longer when you do mow it, you can really help wildlife to thrive. With the heat of the summer and the possibility of a drought on the way, especially with climate change, a lawn that’s mown less often is also more resistant to dying back, which means you’ll need to water it less often too!

Cut down on the chemicals Try to avoid weed killers and pesticides which can damage the balance of the soil as well as killing wildlife. In a lot of cases, what constitutes a ‘weed’ is a question of perspective: dandelions, for example, provide an important food source for bees, especially in the early spring. The same can be said for lots of other wildflowers too, so let them grow if you can.

Try some companion planting Companion planting means that you grow plants that benefit each other close together. For example, you might plant something with deep roots next to something with shallow roots, so that they can share different areas of soil. Comfrey has deep tap roots that help bring vital minerals to the surface, so it can really help your plants to thrive if you plant it in vegetable plots and flower beds. Nettles will attract ladybirds (and peacock butterflies, whose caterpillars love nettle leaves!) early in the growing season, so it might be good to have a patch somewhere in your garden. Be careful though, because nettles can spread quickly! You’ll be glad of the ladybirds because they will eat aphids, that otherwise might enjoy feasting on your roses and other plants.

Or, by growing garlic or chives under roses, you can help keep both black spot and aphids away from your prize flowers!

You could also head-off a slug attack by planting a row of lettuces along a border, especially for the slugs to eat. The sacrificial lettuces can enable you to keep slugs away from other plants and spot when they are coming!

Make a slug-proof barrier The sale or use of slug pellets was banned in the UK on 1st April 2022, but there are natural deterrents that you can try instead. Crushing up eggshells and placing them around plants has an effect akin to broken glass for slugs, creating a sharp surface they can’t crawl over. Eggshells are also fully biodegradable. Or you could spread coffee grounds around your plants, as slugs don’t like to travel over them. The coffee grounds make a good compost that will rot down and enrich the soil too.

Copper is supposed to help deter slugs too. You can buy special copper strips from garden centres, but you could also try winding copper wire around the tops of plant pots, or even putting copper coins around the plants!

Encourage natural predators Just as encouraging ladybirds into the garden can help cut down on aphids, you can try to encourage animals that eat slugs and snails into your garden. Hedgehogs love them and are losing a lot of their natural habitat, which means that they need places to live. Building hedgehog houses and making tunnels for them to access your garden is a way to help reduce pests and it helps protect hedgehogs at the same time!

Leave your leaves Not quite as good for the lazy gardener as not mowing the lawn, you could gather up fallen leaves and create a pile of them to rot down in a corner of your garden. Leaf litter is an important sanctuary for insects which in turn are essential food for birds and other wildlife, like frogs and toads. The leaf pile can also provide a great hibernation spot for toads, newts and queen bumblebees. And it’s a gift that keeps on giving the following year, with the rotted-down leaves making great worm food and compost into the bargain. If you don’t have space to have a leaf pile in the garden, use a green garden waste bin so that you can turn fallen leaves into compost that way.

Grow a wide range of plants Biodiversity is important in nature, but the same principle applies to your garden too. The more different plants you have, the more resilient your garden becomes to different problems like pests, diseases and drought.

So this summer, maybe try to do your bit for wildlife in your garden…

THE PLEASURES OF NECTAR

Paula Carnell, Beekeeping Consultant, Writer and Speaker

Iwas very grateful to have one of my naturopathic beekeeping students send me a recent article from Science magazine about how dopamine in bees generates a ‘wanting-like’ behaviour and perhaps even happy memories. Before I go any further, I shall share a little about what exactly dopamine is. As a neural transmitter, dopamine is made in the brain through a process where the amino acid tyrosine is made into a substance called dopa, and then into dopamine. It affects many of our functions, including sleep, moods, pain processing, and importantly motivation. When highly motivated, we are happy!

It was timely, as we observe an increasing number of bees making the most of nectar and pollen around our gardens and orchards. Co-author of the study, Martin Giurfa, a neuroscientist at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, said that ‘to show there is a wanting system in insects is generally new’. I found that an odd

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comment as there have been many studies showing that bees are very particular about selecting their nectar and pollen sources, even self-medicating, selecting specific plants for the medicinal properties that that colony may need. Interestingly, organisms need phenylalanine to produce tyrosine, and one of the richest sources is mustard seed. Many other herbs and spices, including poppies, dill and mints are also a rich source. When bees find a rich nectar source they return to the hive and perform a series of dances, famously observed by Karl von Frisch for over 50 years from the 1920s. The dances and ‘language’ of the bees was even used to construct the ‘bee algorithm’ for computer search engines. We know that bees communicate with each other. We also know that bees recognise faces, and wouldn’t those recognitions be based on emotional memories? Beekeepers certainly can confirm that bees have temperaments, and so is it such a surprise that they may experience happy memories?

The same day I received this article, I also listened to a podcast with TEDx speaker Dominic Price about human happiness. He has spent a time contemplating happiness, following his sister’s death, and a couple of weeks in Covid quarantine. Inspired by big corporations ‘quadruple bottom line’, which looks at a more holistic balance sheet of a business’s success, and a training exercise used by elite military personnel, he has come up with four aspects that we need to assess, in his opinion, to gauge, and then manage our happiness. He reflected on a habit that I myself established during my early bed- and wheelchair-bound years, focussing on what you can do rather than what you can’t. This was an important factor in my letting go of my career as an artist and embracing chronic illness, whilst also finding something positive in my life that I was able to enjoy right then, despite my disabilities. It was this mindset that started me with keeping bees.

Dominic lists four areas which can be measured to learn where our happiness is lacking or overflowing. For a balanced happy life measure Productivity and Profit, with People, Planet and Purpose on a scale of -1 = terrible, 0 = could be better and 1= perfect. If a colony of bees were to do this exercise, then ‘Productivity and Profit’ would be their honey production, and any surplus would be their profit. ‘People’ would be their fellow bees, how they get on with each other and as bees are they all working and living together as a supportive team. ‘Planet’, how does the colony interact with their environment? It’s easy to suggest that for a colony of honey bees to be in existence they must be scoring a +1 in each of those. (Ignoring the forced behaviours that humans inflict on honey bees, such as transportation and controlled breeding.)

Then we come to ‘Purpose’. This area is where the scientist who was studying dopamine levels in bees may have come unstuck. Karen Mesce from University of Minnesota who had collaborated with the study says: ‘Most of us don’t associate emotion with insects. Many neuroscientists are not convinced that bees are self-reflecting and have pleasurable states’. This, I believe, is a reflection of the foundations of modern western science. This science is based on a ‘no creator’ foundation. The Big Bang Theory. If we are to remove a God, mother nature, or nature spirit, we are left with a big bang and a whole series of random occurrences. Life on earth becomes a series of machines that when broken down to their component parts can be fixed, replaced or simply thrown away. There is no consequence, therefore, for our actions whilst alive. No karma or purgatory, let alone hell. Perhaps this method of seeing the world is what has helped accelerate its destruction.

Then coming back to bees, so many ancient texts including the bible and Quran, discuss bees with their special relationship between them and God. The Buddhist monks in Bhutan, as I have mentioned before, see the bee as the highest level of reincarnation. The Quran has an entire chapter called ‘The Bee’ and the readers are taught that God gave his wisdom to the bees to pass on to humans. With several thousand years of humans ‘knowing’ that bees express emotion and communicate with humans, flowers and other creatures, why would bees feeling pleasure or happiness be anything other than expected? The details of the study experimented with depriving bees of food and measuring their dopamine levels, as well as introducing a false dopamine to see what happens. The bees were tested as a colony (may have been sharing dopamine) and as individuals. All experienced high dopamine levels when seeking something to eat. I wonder if anyone has studied the happiness of bees used in such trials?

Returning to the month of June, when bees are at their peak, and most motivated to find nectar and pollen, William Blake reminds us that ‘The busy bee has no time for sorrow’.

Sherborne Science Cafe Lectures Rob Bygrave, Chair, Sherborne Science Cafe

THE HYDROLOGY OF SHERBORNE

Speaker: Dr Paul Webster

South Street following the storm of 30th-31st May 1979

Dr Paul Webster, a hydrologist, discussed the challenges of natural water systems and water resource management, highlighting features of particular interest within the Sherborne area. Paul’s expertise is within the fields of Physical Geography and Engineering Hydrology. He studied at Bristol, Imperial and Birmingham Universities and has extensive professional experience overseas, including in Africa, Pakistan, China, and Singapore. In addition, more recently, he has been a volunteer hydrologist for Dorset Wildlife Trust and the National Flood Forum. He has written numerous articles and published many papers on water resources and flood management and is Principal Hydrologist at Corylus (planning environmental consultancy).

Hydrometry is the monitoring of elements of the hydrological cycle such as rainfall, flow, evaporation etc. Monitoring is done mainly by the Environment Agency and data is available in real-time. The Met Office is another significant source, as are many individuals with private weather stations. The explosion in freely available data needs careful assessment; not all data is of high quality and care must be taken when considering its use in investigations. Some data is of considerable historical interest. A recent article in The Times noted that UK rain records back to the 1800s had been consolidated by a group of volunteers during the COVID lockdown to better inform of past rainfall. Hydrometric data also includes chemical analysis of water sources. Sherborne water, for example, is very hard (360.73 CaCO3mg/litre). Wessex Water looks at various solutes, such as Al and Cl, in its water and

Image courtesy of Sherborne Museum

publishes solute concentrations for various sites on its web pages.

To the north of Sherborne is the Coombe catchment area, drained by Coombe stream originating near to the golf course, which passes beneath the road at Newell. It once visibly flowed along the western side of Sherborne School and Abbey with sufficient flow to power a water mill. The Coombe catchment occupies an area of 3.7km2.

In May 1709 a prolonged, very heavy hail shower, blocked Coombe, adjacent to the Abbey, causing not inconsequential flooding in the building itself. Monuments and flood levels placed on buildings after extreme events provide items of useful historical data.

Adjacent is another catchment area draining into the lake at Sherborne Castle, representing a catchment area of 40km2 which flows into the River Yeo. Lake levels are monitored by the Environment Agency and provide another source of data which is accessible in (almost) realtime. The Agency maintains a large number of river level monitoring stations throughout the country providing 5 days of data and, in some cases a prediction of future flow.

As the Yeo flows downstream, contributory catchments become progressively larger. At Yeovil Pen Mill the catchment is 216km2, the next, the Yeovil/Ilchester catchment, is 319km2, the following Langport catchment is 764km2, and finally the Parrett (Bridgwater) catchment, being the largest, has an area of 1,200km2.

A comparison of catchment areas shows an upward progression in area looking downstream. From a resource management point of view, the connectivity between land and sea provides not only an indication of water flow but a hydrological pathway for transmission of pollutants. Phosphate pollution is of particular concern at the moment with planning requirements for new developments to counter this to slow contamination of the Somerset Levels.

Husbandry of freshwater is only part of the job of a hydrologist. Also of importance is flooding, of which there are several categories. Surface water flooding caused by a sudden downpour can be concentrated in particular areas, for example, near to the old Antelope pub in Coldharbour where surface water, during a heavy downpour, can deluge down Bristol Road. The good news is that generalised modelling is very good at capturing such flooding events, therefore, permitting better management of the problem. There was significant flooding in the town and its environs in 1979. A response to this can be seen in the Sherborne flood scheme by the railway close to the station. River flooding is another category of flooding which can be severe when a catchment area is primed by previous rainfall.

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In June and July, Sherborne Science Cafe is organising two one-day trips to Ryewater Farm to learn more about their re-wilding project. For details, please email sherborne.scafe@gmail.com

___________________________________________ Wednesday 22nd June 7.30pm Test Pilot A talk with author, instructor and test pilot Chris Taylor The Digby Memorial Hall, Digby Road, Sherborne