Flofana Magazine

nature & wildlife

NOV 2020

ISSUE #01

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Table of

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wwf.org

Contents 04

Editor’s letter, greetings from the editor

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Taming the wild, domesticating wildlife

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Enter the Anthropocene, impact of humanity

A study showed that 100 percent of tested sea turtles had ingested plastic which can cause death by suffocation,

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Ancient Swimmers, rediscovery of coelacanth

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Gold Dusters, meet the Earth’s pollinators

infection, and entanglement.

They are at risk of extinction.

Photo by Kendy Shirasu

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EDITOR’S LETTER We publish stories from the heart,

knowledge from the field, and ideas from horizon of a brave new world.

Made with love, Flofana x

Viona, editor-in-chief

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Taming

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the

WILD

Only a handful of wild animal species have been succesfully bred to get along with humans. The reason, scientists say, is found in their genes.

Photo / Nathan Anderson

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Lyudmila Trut

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TAMING THE WILD

Photo / L.N. Trut Archive

Photo / V. Koval

Text / National Geographic

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“Hello! How are you doing?” Lyudmila Trut

Mavrik, the object of Trut’s attention, is

says, reaching down to unlatch the door of a

about the size of a Shetland sheepdog, with

wire cage labeled “Mavrik.” We’re standing

chestnut orange fur and a white bib down

between two long rows of similar crates on

his front. He plays his designated role in

a farm just outside the city of Novosibirsk,

turn: wagging his tail, rolling on his back,

in southern Siberia, and the 76-year-old

panting eagerly in anticipation of attention.

biologist’s greeting is addressed not to me

In adjacent cages lining either side of the

but to the cage’s furry occupant. Although

narrow, open-sided shed, dozens of canids

I don’t speak Russian, I recognize in her

do the same, yelping and clamoring in an

Foxes bred through generations to be as human-friendly as dogs get

voice the tone of maternal adoration that dog

explosion of fur and unbridled excitement.

a boost from Lyudmila Trut and other staff at the Institute of Cytology

owners adopt when addressing their pets.

and Genetics, in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

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Except that Mavrik, as it happens, is not a dog at all. He’s a fox. Hidden away on this overgrown property, he and several hundred of his relatives are the only population of domesticated silver foxes in the world. And by “domesticated” I don’t mean captured and tamed, or raised by humans and conditioned by food to tolerate the occasional petting. I mean bred for domestication, as tame as your Labrador. These foxes treat any human as a potential companion, a behavior that is the product of arguably the most extraordinary breeding experiment ever conducted.

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they remind me a lot of golden retrievers, who are basically not aware that there are good people, bad people, people that they have met before, and those they haven’t.

- Anna Kukekova Cornell researcher

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TAMING THE WILD

It started more than a half century ago,

Miraculously, Belyaev had compressed

when Trut was still a graduate student. Led

thousands of years of domestication into

by a biologist named Dmitry Belyaev, re-

a few years. But he wasn’t just looking to

searchers at the nearby Institute of Cytol-

prove he could create friendly foxes. He

ogy and Genetics gathered up 130 foxes

had a hunch that he could use them to un-

from fur farms. They then began breeding

lock domestication’s molecular mysteries.

them with the goal of re-creating the evolu-

Domesticated animals are known to share a

tion of wolves into dogs, a transformation

common set of characteristics, a fact docu-

that began more than 15,000 years ago.

mented by Darwin in The Variation of Ani-

With each generation of fox kits,

mals and Plants Under Domestication. They

Belyaev and his colleagues tested their re-

tend to be smaller, with floppier ears and

actions to human contact, selecting those

curlier tails than their untamed progenitors.

most approachable to breed for the next

Such traits tend to make animals appear ap-

generation. By the mid-1960s the ex-

pealingly juvenile to humans. Their coats

periment was working beyond what he

are sometimes spotted—piebald, in scien-

could’ve imagined. They were producing

tific terminology—while their wild ances-

foxes like Mavrik, not just unafraid of hu-

tors’ coats are solid. These and other traits,

mans but actively seeking to bond with

sometimes referred to as the domestication

them. His team even repeated the experi-

phenotype, exist in varying degrees across

ment in two other species, mink and rats.

a remarkably wide range of species, from

“One huge thing that Belyaev showed

dogs, pigs, and cows to some nonmamma-

was the timescale,” says Gordon Lark, a

lians like chickens, and even a few fish.

University of Utah biologist who studies

Belyaev suspected that as the fox-

dog genetics. “If you told me the animal

es became domesticated, they too might

would now come sniff you at the front of

begin to show aspects of a domestica-

the cage, I would say it’s what I expect.

tion phenotype. He was right again: Se-

But that they would become that friend-

lecting which foxes to breed based sole-

ly toward humans that quickly… wow.”

ly on how well they got along with humans seemed to alter their physical appearance along with their dispositions.

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Driving those changes, Belyaev postulated,

Yet the process by which it all happened

was a collection of genes that conferred a

has remained stubbornly impenetrable. An-

propensity to tameness—a genotype that

imal bones and stone carvings can some-

the foxes perhaps shared with any species

times shed light on the when and wheree-

that could be domesticated. Here on the fox

ach species came to live side by side with

farm, Kukekova and Trut are searching for

humans. More difficult to untangle is the

precisely those genes today. Elsewhere, re-

how. Did a few curious boar creep closer to

searchers are delving into the DNA of pigs,

human populations, feeding off their gar-

chickens, horses, and other domesticated

bage and with each successive generation

species, looking to pinpoint the genetic dif-

becoming a little more a part of our diet?

ferences that came to distinguish them from

Did humans capture red jungle fowl, the

their ancestors. The research, accelerated

ancestor of the modern chicken, straight

by the recent advances in rapid genome

from the wild—or did the fowl make the

sequencing, aims to answer a fundamental

first approach? Out of 148 large mammal

biological question: “How is it possible to

species on Earth, why have no more than

make this huge transformation from wild

15 ever been domesticated? Why have we

animals into domestic animals?” says Leif

been able to tame and breed horses for thou-

Andersson, a professor of genome biolo-

sands of years, but never their close rela-

gy at Uppsala University, in Sweden. The

tive the zebra, despite numerous attempts?

answer has implications for understanding

In fact, scientists have even strug-

not just how we domesticated animals, but

gled to define domestication precisely. We

how we tamed the wild in ourselves as well.

all know that individual animals can be

The exercise of dominion over plants

trained to exist in close contact with hu-

and animals is arguably the most conse-

mans. A tiger cub fed by hand, imprinting

quential event in human history. Along

on its captors, may grow up to treat them

with cultivated agriculture, the ability

like family. But that tiger’s offspring, at

to raise and manage domesticated fau-

birth, will be just as wild as its ancestors.

na—of which wolves were likely the first,

Domestication, by contrast, is not a quali-

but chickens, cattle, and other food spe-

ty trained into an individual, but one bred

cies the most important—altered the hu-

into an entire population through gener-

man diet, paving the way for settlements

ations of living in proximity to humans.

and eventually nation-states to flourish.

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TAMING THE WILD

Photo / National Geographic

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TAMING THE WILD

This brown rat’s angry display at the photographer reflects 73 generations of breeding for hostility to humans. Scientists at Novosibirsk and in Germany are comparing the aggressive rat genome to the of rats selected for friendliness, attempting to untangle connections between DNA and behavior.

Photo / National Geographic

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TAMING THE WILD

Piebald coats like this one on this Holstein cow are a signature trait of domesticated animals.

An easy target for predators in the wild, piebald fur may have been selected for by humans to differentiate among livestock.

Photo / JacLou DL

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Oil transformed Dubai in the 1970s.

The city now boasts the world’s tallest building, giant malls, and some

Enter the Anthropocene

two million residents, who depend on desalinated seawater and airconditioning—and thus on cheap energy—to live in the Arabian desert.

AGE OF MAN It’s a new name for a new geologic

epoch—one

defined

by our own massive impact on the planet. That mark will endure in

the

geologic

record

long

after our cities have crumbled.

Photo / Jens Neumann

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ENTER THE ANTHROPOCENE - AGE OF MAN

The path that leads up a hill, across a

The stripe was laid down some 445 million

fast-moving stream, back across the stream,

years ago, as sediments slowly piled up on the

Kayford Mountain, West Virginia

and then past the carcass of a sheep. In my view

bottom of an ancient ocean. In those days life

it’s raining, but here in the Southern Uplands of

was still confined mostly to the water, and it was

Scotland, I’m told, this counts as only a light

undergoing a crisis. Between one edge of the

drizzle, or smirr. Just beyond the final switchback,

three-foot-thick gray band and the other, some

there’s a waterfall, half shrouded in mist, and an

80 percent of marine species died out, many of

outcropping of jagged rock. The rock has bands

them the sorts of creatures, like graptolites, that

As oil companies drill deeper for offshore oil, mining companies work 24/7 to level Appalachian peaks for coal, which supplies half of U.S. electricity. This summit vanished in a day. Some 470 have been erased since the 1980s; the waste often buries streams.

Mountaintop removal recovers just 6 percent of a coal deposit.

that run vertically, like a layer cake that’s been tipped on its side. My guide, Jan Zalasiewicz, a British stratigrapher, points to a wide stripe of gray. “Bad things happened in here,” he says.

Photo / Edward Burtynsky

South Belridge, California Discovered in 1911, this field pumped on as cities were rebuilt for cars and as ancient petroleum molecules were spun into household products such as plastics, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals.

no longer exist. The extinction event, known as the end-Ordovician, was one of the five biggest of the past half billion years. It coincided with extreme changes in climate, in global sea levels, and in ocean chemistry—all caused, perhaps, by a supercontinent drifting over the South Pole.

Photo / J. Henry Fair

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The word “Anthropocene” was coined by Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen about a decade ago. One day Crutzen, who shared a Nobel Prize for discovering the effects of ozone-depleting compounds, was sitting at a scientific conference. The conference chairman kept referring to the Holocene, the epoch that began at the end of the last ice age, 11,500 years ago, and that—officially, at least—continues to this day.

“Let’s stop it,” Crutzen recalls blurting out. “’We are no longer in the Holocene. We are in the Anthropocene.’ Well, it was quiet in the room for a while.” When the group took a coffee break, the Anthropocene was the main topic of conversation. Someone suggested that Crutzen copyright the word.

Way back in the 1870s, an Italian geologist named Antonio Stoppani proposed that people had introduced a new era, which he labeled the anthropozoic. Stoppani’s proposal was ignored; other scientists found it unscientific. The Anthropocene, by contrast, struck a chord. Human impacts on the world have become a lot more obvious since Stoppani’s day, in part because the size of the population has roughly quadrupled, to nearly seven billion. “The pattern of human population growth in the twentieth century was more bacterial than primate,” biologist E. O. Wilson has written.

Wilson calculates that human biomass is already a hundred times larger than that of any other large animal species that has ever walked the Earth.

In 2002, when Crutzen wrote up the Anthropocene idea

Rosignano Solvay, Italy

in the journal Nature, the concept was immediately picked up by researchers working in a wide range of disciplines. Soon it began to appear regularly in the scientific press. “Global Analysis of River Systems: From Earth System Controls to Anthropocene Syndromes” ran the title of one 2003 paper. “Soils and Sediments in the Anthropocene” was the headline of another, published in 2004.

The rock record of the present doesn’t exist yet, of course.

So the question was: When it does, will human impacts show up as “stratigraphically significant”? The answer, Zalasiewicz’s group decided, is yes—though not necessarily for the reasons you’d expect.

A Tuscan beach captures the textured drama of humans and the sea. The “tropical” sands aren’t natural; they’re whitened by carbonates from the chemical plant, which also discharged mercury until recently. The plant converts salt extracted from the sea into chlorine and other essential products. Fossil fuels power such transformations; worldwide, the CO2 from smokestacks and tailpipes is slowly acidifying the ocean, threatening marine life.

Photo / Massimo Vitali

ENTER THE ANTHROPOCENE - AGE OF MAN

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On the arid plains of southern Spain, produce is grown under the world’s largest array of greenhouses and trucked north. Greenhouses use water and nutrients efficiently and produce all year—tomatoes in winter, for instance. But globally the challenge is grain and meat, not tomatoes. It takes 38 percent of Earth’s ice-free surface to feed seven billion people today, and two billion more are expected by 2050.

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ENTER THE ANTHROPOCENE - AGE OF MAN

Almería Province, Spain Photo / Edward Burtynsky

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Dams tame floods, water crops (and people), and generate 16 percent of the world’s electricity, carbon free. They have also displaced 40 to 80 million people and destroyed river ecosystems. More than half the world’s large rivers are now dammed. Some, like the Colorado, are tapped out. Persistent drought has left a “bathtub ring” in Lake Mead, which supplies water to much of the Southwest.

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ENTER THE ANTHROPOCENE - AGE OF MAN

Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, Nevada Photo / Mitch Epstein

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Ship breaking delivers jobs to Bangladesh and a wealth of scrap metal—but also asbestos, PCBs, and other toxics. Though waste recycling generally is booming, so is waste production. In American cities in recent decades, the two trends have just about offset each other.

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ENTER THE ANTHROPOCENE - AGE OF MAN

Chittagong, Bangladesh Photo / Edward Brutynsky

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The coelacanth was thought to have gone extinct with the dinosaurs. Rediscovered in 1938, it is chronicled here in a

ANCIENT SWIMMERS

rare photographic account.

Text / Carolyn Butler Photo / Laurent Ballesta

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The coelacanth’s slow, graceful stroke is like no other fish’s. It moves left pectoral and right pelvic fins, then right pectoral and left pelvic fins—akin to the cross-step of tetrapods. When the expedition team visited in early 2010, the coelacanths ignored the humans, says photographer Ballesta, except the one above: “This is the moment he tried to smile to me.”

Named by a 19th-century naturalist, “coelacanth” comes from the Greek for “hollow spine”—a reference to the hollow spines that are part of its fin structure.

Photo / Colin Keates

It’s not every day day that a living fossil shows up in a fisherman’s net. But that’s what happened in 1938, when a South African museum curator named Marjorie CourtenayLatimer spied a bizarre creature with thick scales, unusual fins, and an extra lobe on its tail, amid an otherwise ordinary haul of fish. Though she didn’t know it straightaway, CourtenayLatimer had rediscovered the coelacanth, which was assumed to have died out at the end of the Cretaceous period but somehow outlasted many of its prehistoric peers, dwelling deep in the ocean, undisturbed—and undetected—for eons.

Since this chance sighting, Latimeria chalumnae have been found in several pockets in the Indian Ocean. No one knows how many there are—maybe as few as 1,000 or as many as 10,000. Because of the depth of their habitat, they have mainly been photographed by submersibles and remotely operated vehicles. Divers first documented the fish in 2000; in January and February 2010, a specially trained team dived deep to take pictures of a small colony in Sodwana Bay, South Africa.

ANCIENT SWIMMERS

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The expedition team made 21 dives to depths of 300 to 400 feet in South Africa’s Sodwana Bay area. Over the

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ANCIENT SWIMMERS

A crystal layer behind the coelacanth’s retina reflects light like a mirror, a boon in the ocean’s dim waters.

course of four weeks, they spotted coelacanths only six times. The nocturnal animals hide in underwater caves by day, then venture out at night, feeding on small fish, squid, and octopus.

Photo / Laurent Ballesta

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GOLD DUSTERS

They are the Earth’s pollinators and they come in more than 200,000 shapes and sizes.

Photo / Sandy Millar

Text / Jennifer S. Holland

Photo / Meggyn Pomerleau

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Spring fog drifts over a Pennsylvania apple orchard at sunrise. Each year, owner John Lerew rents 180 honeybee hives holding millions of bees to pollinate several hundred acres. Most large farms bring in managed bees like these. “For us,” says Lerew, “they’re a must.”

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GOLD DUSTERS

Row upon row, tomato plants stand in formation

Growers have tried numerous ways to rattle

Even nonflying mammals do their part: sugar-

inside a greenhouse in Willcox, Arizona.

pollen from tomato blossoms. They’ve used

loving opossums, some rain forest monkeys,

Green stems poke from coconut-fiber blocks,

shaking tables, air blowers, blasts of sound,

and lemurs in Madagascar, all with nimble

reaching toward the glass-paned sky. Lab-

and vibrators laboriously applied by hand to

hands that tear open flower stalks and furry

coated technicians on elevated electric carts

each bloom cluster. But the tool of choice in

coats to which pollen sticks. Most surprising,

meticulously prune the crop. Eurofresh Farms

today’s greenhouses? The humble bumblebee.

some lizards, such as geckos and skinks, lap up

harvests 130 million pounds of tomatoes a year

Give a bee access to a tomato flower, and she’ll

nectar and pollen and then transport the stuff

from these perfect plants, grown on 311 acres

glom on and quiver fiercely as she feeds, letting

on their faces and feet as they forage onward.

in buildings outfitted with miles of pipe to ferry

loose a cloud of pollen that hits the plant’s

Flowering plants—there are more than

water and a network of steel wire above to

stigma (the tip of the female anatomy) and also

240,000 species of them—have evolved in step

capture the climbing vines. The ripening fruit

sticks to the bee’s fuzzy body. She then ferries

with their pollinators, using sweet scents and

smells faintly artificial, all sweetness and no soil.

those particles to the next blossom. It’s called

bright colors to lure with the promise of a meal.

But there is a natural presence here too. It

buzz pollination, and it works like a charm.

Flower receptacles, like the animals’ transport

reveals itself as a low hum that settles deep inside

No surprise that nature’s design does

systems, are wonderfully varied, from tubes

the ears: a thousand bumblebees hard at work.

the job best. What’s astonishing is the array

and gullets to flaps, brushes, and spurs. Match

To reproduce, most flowering plants

of workers that do it: More than 200,000

the right animal and plant parts—long tongue

depend on a third party to transfer pollen

individual animal species, by varying strategies,

poked into narrow tube, furry face pressed into

between their male and female parts. Some

help flowers make more flowers. Flies and

sticky brush—and pollen is soon on its way.

require extra encouragement to give up that

beetles are the original pollinators, going

All that messy diversity, unfortunately, is

golden dust. The tomato flower, for example,

back to when flowering plants first appeared

not well suited to the monocrops and mega-

needs a violent shake, a vibration roughly

130 million years ago. As for bees, scientists

yields of modern commercial farmers. Before

equivalent to 30 times the pull of Earth’s

have identified some 20,000 distinct species

farms got so big, says conservation biologist

gravity, explains Arizona entomologist Stephen

so far, and about one-fifth of those pollinate

Claire Kremen of the University of California,

Buchmann, international coordinator of the

flowers in the United States. Hummingbirds,

Berkeley,

Pollinator Partnership. “The scale is different,”

butterflies, moths, wasps, and ants are also

pollinators. They were all around because

he says, “but consider that fighter pilots usually

up to the task. Snails and slugs smear pollen

of the diverse landscapes. Now you need

black out after half a minute at four to six g’s.”

as they slide over flower clusters. Mosquitoes

to bring in an army to get pollination done.”

carry pollen for batches of orchids, and bats, with diverse muzzles and tongues adapted to tap differently shaped blossoms, move Photo / Mark W. Moffett

pollen for 360 plants in the Americas alone.

“we

didn’t

have

to

manage

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GOLD DUSTERS

Industrial-scale farming, however, may be

It’s hard to tease apart factors and outcomes,

wearing down the system. Honeybees have

Pettis says. New studies reveal that fungicides—

suffered diseases and parasite infestations for

not previously thought toxic to bees—can

as long as they’ve been managed, but in 2006

interfere with microbes that break down pollen

came an extreme blow. In the U.S. and other

in the insects’ guts, affecting nutrient absorption

countries, bees in massive numbers began to

and thus long-term health and longevity. Some

disappear over the winter. Beekeepers would

findings pointed to viral and fungal pathogens

lift the lid of a hive to find only the queen and

working together. “I only wish we had a single

a few stragglers, the worker bees gone. In

agent causing all the declines,” Pettis says.

the U.S. a third to half of all hives crashed;

“That would make our work much easier.”

some beekeepers reported colony losses

As managed bees take a hit, so too

near 90 percent. The mysterious culprit was

do wild pollinators, whose work pollinating

named colony collapse disorder (CCD), and it

U.S. crops is worth about three billion

remains an annual menace—and an enigma.

dollars annually. Some notable bumblebee

When CCD first hit, many people, from The European honeybee, first imported to the

They’re not picky—they’ll spend their time on

Colonies some 400 years ago, has been the

almost any crop. It’s tricky to calculate what

domesticated pollinator workhorse in the U.S.

their work is truly worth; some economists

since people began trucking them up and

put it at more than $200 billion globally a year.

down highways in the 1950s. Now at least

visible and less valued than the big-money

of the USDA Bee Research Laboratory, “we

honeybees, have been monitored long term.

do find more disease in bees that have been

a

virus

finishes

the

insect

off.

more efficient on a per-bee basis at pollinating certain fruits, honeybees have bigger colonies (30,000 or more bees per hive), forage over longer distances, and tolerate management and movement better than most insects.

Photo / Dimitri Houtteman

with

fields was to blame. Indeed, says Jeff Pettis

before

mason bees, for example—are five to ten times

anymore,

few of the scores of native pollinators, less

instance, might pummel a bee’s immunities

farms. And although other species of bees—

seen

our slathering of chemicals on agricultural

Poor nutrition and chemical exposure, for

beekeepers raise and rent out to tend to big

rarely

others becoming increasingly scarce. But

But CCD likely involves multiple stressors.

almost entirely on managed honeybees, which

are

agronomists to the public, assumed that

exposed to pesticides, even at low levels.”

a hundred commercial crops in the U.S. rely

species

Photo / Caroline Sellers

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GOLD DUSTERS

You can’t move the farm, but you can diversify what grows in its vicinity: along roads, even in tractor yards. Not only is better for native pollinators, but it’s just better agriculture.

- Claire Kremen

What to do? Give pollinators more of what they

Pesticide-free

adds

Fortunately too, “there are far more generalist

U.S. almond growers, who provide 80 percent

need and less of what they don’t, and ease

Buchmann, would also bolster populations

plants than specialist plants, so there’s a lot

of the world’s crop, employ a third or more

the burden on managed bees by letting native

of useful insects such as blue orchard

of redundancy in pollination,” Buchmann says.

of the country’s commercial beehives during

animals do their part, say scientists. Reduced

bees—an extremely effective pollinator of

“Even if one pollinator winks out, there are

the growing season—a bee extravaganza

reliance on chemicals in agriculture is part of

almonds in California. Native bumblebees

often pretty good surrogates left to do the

that’s been called the largest pollination

the solution, says Buchmann, since all animals

in Wisconsin aren’t as finicky about cold,

job.” The key to keeping our gardens growing

event on the planet. That too would fizzle.

need their immune systems in top shape to

wet weather as honeybees, so managing

strong, he says, is letting that diversity thrive.

“We wouldn’t starve,” says Kremen.

combat

environment.

the landscape for their benefit would mean

Take away that variety, and we’ll lose more than

But without the birds and the bees (and the

Meanwhile, habitat loss and alteration,

more buzz in the orchards in early spring.

honey. Many flowering plants would disappear,

bats and the butterflies), what we eat, and

he says, are even more of a menace to

Even in the busiest cities, pollinators

and with them apples, peaches, pears, and

even what we wear—pollinators, after all,

pathogens

in

their

wildflower

havens,

pollinators than pathogens. Claire Kremen

can

creativity.

a host of other crops. Without pollinators

give us some of our cotton and flax—would

encourages farmers to cultivate the flora

Recent studies show that bees off the farm

there’d be no raspberries, blueberries, or

be limited to crops whose pollen travels

surrounding farmland to help solve habitat

have a healthier and more varied diet than

even milk on your cereal (cows feed on bee-

by other means. “In a sense,” she says,

problems. “You can’t move the farm,” she says,

those making the commercial-crop rounds.

pollinated alfalfa and clover). No coffee or

“our lives would be dictated by the wind.”

“but you can diversify what grows in its vicinity:

Rooftop beehives in New York City help urban

chocolate. No canola, a biofuel crop. No more

along roads, even in tractor yards.” Planting

gardens and Central Park foliage flourish.

summer watermelon or Halloween pumpkins.

hedgerows and patches of native flowers that

And ecologists are now transforming part of

bloom at different times and seeding fields with

what was once a 2,200-acre landfill on Staten

multiple plant species rather than monocrops

Island into a flowering meadow to give native

“not only is better for native pollinators,

pollinators a sugar boost. It’s a fairly simple

but it’s just better agriculture,” she says.

calculation. If there’s habitat, they will come.

be

coddled

with

a

little

Photo / Neil Harvey

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GOLD DUSTERS

With a vigorous quiver, an Arizona sweat bee “buzz pollinates” a deadly nightshade flower. Its vibrating body shakes free the golden dust that will feed the larvae back in the nest—and promise the plant’s DNA a future.

Photo / Mark W. Moffett

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A Madagascar ring-tailed lemur, here gnawing a non-native cactus, ably carries pollen for native plants on its muzzle and hands.

Photo / Mark W. Moffett

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GOLD DUSTERS

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GOLD DUSTERS

An ornate day gecko laps nectar from tree blossoms on Mauritius. Rare pollinators, bug-eating lizards may substitute on islands where neither pollinators nor predators are plentiful—filling a niche held by others on the mainland.

Photo / Mark W. Moffett

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Cross-pollination isn’t ensured when an ant picks up pollen off a pancake plant: The ant may then crawl to the ground or another species.

Photo / Mark W. Moffett

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GOLD DUSTERS

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