A Buzz in the Meadow: The Natural History of a French Farm by Goulson Dave

Author:Goulson, Dave [Goulson, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250065896
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2015-04-27T21:00:00+00:00

PART II

The Rich Tapestry of Life

The lives of the myriad creatures of the meadow are, as we have seen, fascinatingly varied, sometimes unexpected and often unknown. However, the greater mystery is how they all fit together. No creature lives in isolation – all are interlinked one way or another in a dynamic web of interactions that we are only just beginning to explore. The bedrock of meadow life is the plants, which capture energy from the sun and transform it into food that ultimately supports more or less everything else. The plants themselves compete for space, light, water, nutrients and pollinators, have mutualistic relationships with bacteria and fungi, and are attacked by diseases, parasites and herbivores. What determines how many species there are? What happens if species are lost, or new ones invade? Why are some animals and plants rare, while others are common? How many species are necessary to maintain healthy soils, and to ensure adequate pollination? More often than not we do not have answers to these questions.

Here I will explore some of the ways in which the creatures and flowers of the meadow interact with one another, focusing particularly on pollination, a process that underlies much of the diversity of both plant and insect life on Earth. Pollination might seem to be a simple, harmonious activity – bees buzzing from flower to flower, drinking nectar and carrying pollen – but look closely and a web of deception, competition and robbery is revealed. It is these interactions between species that form the rich tapestry of life.

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