Dudu Diaries

Greetings from Turkana in Northern Kenya. I recently visited one of the farms that I work with up here and was very pleased to find the coriander (cilantro) flowering. This plant is a common and delicious herb that is widely used in the cuisines of many different parts of the world…

Coriander flowers close-up

Many of us are aware of the role played by pollinators in producing fruits and other crops like beans, tomatoes, etc. However, even many of the spices that we grow are dependent on pollinators – and without them would not produce the seeds that are the basis of a valuable trade and make the food we eat much tastier and more nutritious!

The flowers of the coriander plant (called cilantro in America) are open and lay in flat heads called umbels. This means that they can be accessed by a wide range of pollinator species. Here are some of the insects that we found visiting and pollinating the cilantro flowers in Turkana.

A lycaenid butterfly and a cuckoo-wasp at the coriander flowers

The lycaenids are tiny butterflies, many of which are common in the drylands of Kenya. They can often be found visiting flowers where they sip nectar and check each other out…

Two lycaenid butterflies enjoying the cilantro flowers

Many different wasps were visiting the flowers. The Cuckoo Wasp was among the most striking with its bright green iridescent sheen…

Beautiful Cuckoo Wasp

Cuckoo wasps are named after their behaviour where (like the cuckoo birds) they lay their eggs in other wasps’ nests – they are parasites.

Of course the bees were among the most common and efficient pollinators visitors to the coriander flowers…

Braunsapis bee at the coriander flowers

The Braunsapis bees were the most common visitors to the flowers among the bees. They moved about a lot and we found them carrying lots of pollen too.

Happy Braunsapis busy on the flowers

A number of tiny Stingless Bees were also active – collecting pollen and nectar…

Stingless Bee at work...

All the hard work by the pollinators produces these beautiful seeds that we can flavour our food with!

Yummy coriander seeds thanks to the pollinators

More from the world of insects soon!

The forests and woodlands of Nairobi have been looking particularly lush and green for the last couple of months. This is all thanks to the more-than-generous ‘short rains’ that we experienced late last year. Nairobi is an interesting city for wildlife and nature as it has both forests and savannahs right next to traffic jams and high-rise buildings!

For those who have had the pleasure of visiting any forest or wooded area in Central Kenya over the past few weeks, a strange and beautiful phenomenon is on display.

Scattered here and there in the forests are isolated trees that are draped with shimmering silk. The trees marked in this distinctive way are Elaeodendron buchananii, a common tree of the dry evergreen highland forest and riverine woodland. This species also occurs in the Mara region and parts of Western Kenya.

Elaeodendron tree covered in silk

What makes them stand out at present are the beautiful sheets of silk that drape the trees, which can also be mostly defoliated. The silken sheets stretch over the entire tree, typically covering the trunk as well as the branches and what leaves/twigs are left.

The silk is spun by a veritable army of gregarious caterpillars of a group of insects know as ‘Tent Moths’. These moths, in the genus Yponomeuta, have their own Family within the Lepidoptera: the Yponomeutidae.

A view of the caterpillars enjoying their silk tent

The Tent Moths are distinctive in that they live in social aggregations and often completely cover the Elaeodendron trees in Eastern Africa. The caterpillars spin the silk from special glands and move about the tree within its protective confines. Elaeodendron trees are also poisonous and this no doubt confers some added advantage to the caterpillars.

The caterpillars are present on the trees for a few weeks and will then pupate in an aggregation, often sheltered by a branch or on trunk. Occasionally they may enter leaf-litter or shrubbery close to the tree. From these pupae a smallish grey moth with spots on its wings will eventually emerge and start the whole process over again by mating and laying eggs on the host trees.

Adult Tent Moth (Yponomeuta) (Photo by Martha N. Mutiso)

This phenomenon is really impressive and represents a massive investment made through the efforts of many tiny individual insects working together. Insects may be small, but working together they can have a big impact on the world!

More from the world of insects soon!

Dear All – many greetings from the hot, remote desert in Northern Kenya…

Lots to catch up on here but firstly I would like to thank everyone for reading this blog and sending in your kind comments.

A few days ago I visited the Kerio Valley in northwestern Kenya. It was a hot, sunny day so I decided to stop and rest in the shade of some giant fig trees by a stream…

A cool stream flows through the Kerio Valley

As I was sitting by the stream I noticed some of the rocks were covered with what appeared to be insects…

Who are these mysterious bugs gathered on the rocks?

Hmmm... What are all those little red knobs?

I took a closer look and was blown away by what I found – one of the most bizarre and wonderful insects in the world – the Stalk-Eyed Fly!

Bizarre and wonderful - The Stalk-Eyed Fly!

Yes, those are the flies EYES on the ends of stalks. This bizarre and wonderful arrangement is thought to be the result of sexual selection. Basically female flies chose males based on the width of their eyes. The wider the eyes, the sexier the fly seems. As a result, this amazing structure has come to be.

I watched the Stalk-Eyed Flies gathering on the rocks and leaves by the stream. There was a lot of jostling and showing off by the males…

"My eyes are bigger than yours..."

One of the Stalk-Eyed Flies eyed me as I was photographing it and rubbed it’s front legs together… (you can guess what happened next!)

Hmmm... you look tasty!

It landed on my knee and started licking the sweat off me! You can see it’s amazing mouthparts extended in the photograph below:

Oooh - that tickles!

It was joined a few minutes later by a larger fly (that did more than tickle) so I had to shoo them away…

A larger fly on my knee...

The fly returned to its perch on a leaf and posed obligingly for more photos…

Bizarre and beautiful Stalk-Eyed Fly!

Best wishes to all for the New Year and more from the wonderful world of bugs in 2012!

Dear All
Greetings – just back in Kenya after various travels. There is a sunflower on the breakfast table and I watched a honeybee visited it this morning in the dreamy African sunshine…

Sunflower in morning light

Honeybees love sunflowers!

The honeybee was after pollen – here is a close up of the anthers:

Anthers - the part of the flower that bear pollen

The honeybee lifts itself into the air and hovers, gently combing the pollen from it’s body into the pollen baskets on it’s legs.

Honeybee combing pollen into it's pollen baskets while hovering.

Without honeybees, the sunflowers would not be well pollinated and would not produce the sunflower seeds that are made into oil and many other useful and delicious things. The honeybees on the sunflowers are both beautiful to watch and also to know that they are making the sunflower seeds happen through pollination.

The honeybees collect the pollen for their own use. They feed it to their larvae, which helps them grow into healthy strong bees. The sunflower produces lots of pollen, and the honeybees spill it and rub it around as they move about the flower. This results in pollination. Both honeybees and sunflowers benefit from this arrangement. A truly balanced partnership (or love affair!) from Nature.

More from the world of bugs soon!

Dear All. Many greetings. One of the truly wonderful things about teaching as a scientist is working with students. Good students can help catch more bugs, run around in the sun and ask new questions that help further both science and conservation. While working in Turkana recently, I had three students from Hillcrest Secondary School (Elleni, Nekesa and Tashi) visit and volunteer with me in the field for a few days. Here are their thoughts and first impressions of bees and the environment in northern Kenya…

Setting off on an adventure

First Glimpses of Bees…

By Elleni Stephanou, Nekesa Morey and Tashi.

Students from Hillcrest Secondary School in Nairobi, Kenya.

What comes to mind when most people think about bees? Probably swarms of the common black and yellow striped honey bee that one finds on the pots of honey in a supermarket or perhaps the buzzing bumble bees seen flying around the garden or illustrated in many children’s books. In fact, this is a common misconception as there are over 20,000 different types of bees. It was only when we, three Hillcrest Secondary School students, Elleni, Tashi and Nekesa, spent a week up at Turkana Basin Institute with entomologist Dr. Dino Martins, that we discovered the truth about bees.

Tashi and Elleni working in the hot sun - this was the first lesson - being patient!

Nekesa poised ready for a bee to visit the tiny flowers on the ground

Our first glance into the world of bees began on a farm developed by Ikal Angelei of the Friends of Lake Turkana and Turkana Basin Institute on the day of our arrival, where we encountered a variety of species ranging from the tiny stingless bees (Hypotrigona sp) who were attracted to our sweat, to the large bulky Carpenter bees (Xylocopa spp.) that were buzz pollinating the aubergine crops and the Leafcutter bees we saw slicing circles of capsicum leaves  for their hives. So far, around twenty different species have been sighted on the farm, none of which die after their first sting. After this unfortunate enlightenment, we tentatively attempted to catch and transfer them from net to vials for closer inspection in the lab.

A tiny stingless bee hovering near a flower

We were also surprised to discover that female bees of most species, unlike the males, are diploid, and only lay eggs of female gender if they happen to have mated with a male. The female bees that were most common on the eggplant flowers live in burrows up to 10 cm deep in the ground, while their male counterparts never return to a burrow once they have hatched from it.

A Ceratina bee visiting a desert flower

On our second day in Turkana, we were lucky enough to witness the second rainfall in over a year and a half. Although it only lasted about ten minutes, it led to a phenomenal influx in insect life. Our next challenge was to catch a few of the freshly hatched butterflies to add to Dino’s ever growing database.  We followed this up by catching butterflies on another site about an hour from the institute the next day, where we caught the same species for future cross referencing and DNA comparison.

Chasing butterflies is good exercise

Colotis butterfly visiting Cadaba flowers that blossomed after the rain

We thoroughly enjoyed this trip and look forward to future expeditions with Dino to different parts of Kenya where we will further develop our new interest in insect life. We would like to thank Dino and the entire team at TBI for hosting us and making this an exceptional experience. The one thing we learned is that Kenya is blessed with amazing insect diversity, even in the desert.

An Amegilla bee approaches a Cadaba flower

In the Mororot Hills taking a break from chasing bugs

For more information about Turkana, please visit the Turkana Basin Institute website:

www.turkanabasin.net

Yesterday Kenya and the world celebrated the life of Prof. Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmentalist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 who recently passed away. As part of the activities in her honour, across the country communities came together to plant trees. The Turkana Basin Field School students joined the Friends of Lake Turkana, Forestry Department officials, members of the IRC committee in Lodwar and students and teachers of the St Michael Kawalase Primary school in a tree planting exercise.

The activities were organized by Ikal Angelei, who is a leading champion for local social and environmental issues, as well as coordinating many of the activities of the Turkana Basin Institute. Ikal is a passionate and able spokesperson and activist leading the fight for a better environment, livelihoods and justice in Turkana. It was a great honour and privilege for the students and myself to participate in this humble and powerful exercise.

Ikal Angelei and the headteacher Mr Keem address the students, as Mr Kenyaman, the scoutmaster and a champion for tree-planting looks on.

We planted trees at two different locations: at the St. Michael Kawalase Primary School as well as at a camp for Internally Displaces People near Lodwar. Ikal noted how the example and life of Wangari Maathai had inspired people all over the world and how important trees were for human life and livelihoods in the drylands of Turkana.

Ikal plants the first seedling of the day at the school

Ikal carefully fills in the earth around the seedling

Then it was the Field School students’ turn to get their hands into the soil…

Hui gets her seedling ready for planting

Roy helps fill in some earth around the seedling

Elaine waters the first seedling planted by the TBI students

Sarah waters her seedling

Kait gets her seedling ready for planting

The Forestry Department helped plant several of the seedlings

After the seedlings were planted, the students thanked the school and community members for the opportunity to help out.

Wes thanks the students, teachers and tells the students the importance of studying hard

The humble act of planting and caring for trees is the first step towards making a better world for all of us.

More from the world of bugs (and people too!) soon…

Greetings from the remote reaches of Turkana in northern Kenya…

The Lake Turkana Basin, while being a hot and dry area, includes several river systems and the 6,000 km2 + Lake Turkana. Three rivers feed into the lake: The Turwel, Kerio and Omo. The Omo, from the highlands of Ethiopia contributes about 90 % of the lakes’ waters. The Kerio River comes from the south, from streams originating in parts of the Cherangani Hills and north-western Kenyan Highlands. The rivers and deltas close to the Turkana Basin Institute are home to a rich diversity of insect and bird life.

Pied Kingfisher preparing to dive into the water after a fish!

After a long journey through the dry country the Kerio reaches the lake. We visited the Kerio Delta to look at some of the freshwater ecology issues and biodiversity. To get to the water we had to walk through a thick green tangle of prickly Prosopis bushes.

A channel in the Kerio Delta where we took a boat ride

This is an invasive species that was first introduced to the area some 25-30 years ago. Prosopis, more commonly known as mesquite. A short tree/shrub, not striking in any aspect, has swiftly and silently colonized vast stands of Kenya, and indeed East Africa’s arid rangelands. Eight species are currently placed in the genus Prosopis, originating primarily from Central and South America (Prosopis alba, P. chilensis, P. glandulosa, P. juliflora, P. tamarugo), with P. africana native to the Sahelian margins and P. cineraria found in parts of Afghanistan, India, Iran and Pakistan. Several of the above species have been introduced and managed in different parts of Kenya over the last few decades. Of these, the main villain has proved to be Prosopis juliflora, originating in the drylands of the Americas. It is exceptionally drought tolerant, can live on the most marginal of soils, and tolerates strongly saline conditions as well as seasonal waterlogging. It is Prosopis juliflora that has taken over vast areas of the Kerio Delta at Lake Turkana.

Invasive Prosopis growing into the water

We found that the Prosopis is in the process of swamping the natural beds of Typha bulrushes and aquatic grasses that normally serve as nurseries for fish and help oxygenate the water. Beneath the Prosopis little survives as the trees rot and the bitter tannin-filled leaves fill the water. Managing the Prosopis will be a big challenge in the future especially as it spreads through larger and larger areas. Total eradication is not really feasible. Prosopis spreads rapidly into areas that have been overgrazed, a sad reality over much of Kenya’s drylands. Seed dispersal, an oft-overlooked aspect, is rapidly effected by browsing goats, other wild ruminants and hares. The thicket-forming growth habit and deep-roots make it extremely difficult to remove once established even over a few square metres.

Prosopis pods - seeds are dispersed by goats

The one thing that Prosopis does do is provide forage for many different bee species, including both wild bees and honeybees

Wild Ceratina bee visiting the Prosopis flowers

Where the Prosopis opened up to more natural rushes and reeds we started seeing interesting birds and insects. The most dramatic sighting was of a large, majestic Goliath Heron.

Goliath Heron, largest of the herons, takes to the air...

One of the most interesting insect behaviours that we were able to watch was mate-guarding by damselflies. We had discussed this in class and it was exciting to see how diligently the male Cherry-eyed Damselflies held on to their mates to keep them from taking off and mating with other males!

A pair of Cherry-eyed Damselflies - the male holds on to the female firmly!

More from the world of bugs soon, thanks to everyone for the kind comments!

A recent rainstorm has brought out the flowers in the desert of northern Kenya where I am currently based at the Turkana Basin Institute (TBI). I am here teaching an ecology module for the Turkana Basin Field School. A single rainstorm that fell a few weeks ago has also brought out a large number of insects. Like many of the plants, the insects are active and taking opportunity of the greenery to forage and breed. And like the plants they are all under intense pressure to complete their life-cycles. For insects this often involves several stages as eggs, larvae, pupae and finally adults.

Deserts and drylands are often mistakenly thought to be places of low diversity. However, they are rich in insect life, but most of this is hidden away awaiting the brief periods of flowering. As this time is now upon us, it has been very exciting for the students to glimpse some of the incredible bee diversity in this habitat. One of the groups of insects that are more diverse in drylands, especially in Africa, are the bees. These are wild bee species. Many people are surprised to learn that there are more than just honeybees. Bee diversity in this area is largely unexplored and no doubt many exciting new species and biology remains to be discovered.

A tiny bee, Nomioides, visiting a Tribulus flower at TBI

We started out watching and collecting bees on the Indigofera spinosa bushes within the TBI compound. A number of bees have been frantically visiting the tiny pink flowers. The students have collected several different bee species on the Indigofera. These include some large leafcutter bees who carry pollen on their bellies, which turns them bright yellow. Another common bee visiting the flower was a Pseudapis. Also visiting the flowers was a striking parasitic cuckoo bee species (Coelioxys) that is a brood parasite of the leafcutter bees. Just like the cuckoo bird, it lays its eggs in the nests made by the hardworking leafcutter bees!

Pseudapis - one of the most efficient pollinators of the Indigofera bushes

Leafcutter bee with its belly covered in pollen!

Cuckoo Bee (Coelioxys) visiting the Indigofera flowers.

We then travelled to a site in the open desert plains where a carpet of miniature flowers pressed close to the ground was busy with bee activity.

Students search for bees on the open semi-desert plains

Here we found several different bees that we hadn’t seen nearer TBI. These included a beautiful halictid or sweat bee with a bright orange abdomen.

Tiny, gorgeous halictid Nomiine bee

We also spent time catching parasitic wasps and bees that were tiny. These are so tiny that we had to use small bags and slip them quickly over the bees as they were foraging, as they could wriggle through the holes in the nets! The students worked hard and learnt a lot about bee diversity and how much work it is to study them!

Students hard at work looking for tiny bees and wasps

Student Hui poised ready to catch one of the zippy bees...

The students also collected data on visitation rates to flowers on the Indigofera bushes. This species is really important as it is the main browse for goats and camels which are the livestock species that people depend on in the drylands of Turkana. We found that solitary wild bee species are both the most abundant and the most efficient pollinators as they carry pollen between many different individual plants resulting in effective cross-pollination. The Indigofera bushes establish new plants from the seeds that only come about as a result of pollination by the wild bee species. So the bees feed the goats and camels indirectly!

Camel browsing on Indigofera from seeds made by bees

More from the world of bees and bugs soon.

To learn more about the Turkana Basin Institute, please visit their website:

http://www.turkanabasin.org/

Hello! While watching the eggplant flowers for pollinators in Turkana I noticed that some of the leaves of several nearby bell-pepper plants had neat circular pieces cut out from them…

Who is responsible for these missing circles?

I sat down to watch the plants, suspecting that the perpetrator would be back soon. A few minutes later an fervent buzzing zipped up to the plants and settled on one of the leaves. It was a leaf-cutter bee!

Leaf-cutter bee sinks it teeth into a leaf

The bee works rapidly to cut through the leaf in a near-perfect circle…

Leaf-cutter bee rapidly chews the leaf off

Then the bee takes off for its nest with the piece of the leaf held under it. It will use this to line the walls of the tubular next that it constructs for its larva. As these bees are also very good and efficient pollinators, they are welcome to use some of the crops’ leaves for their nests.

Leaf-cutter bee carries off the leaf to its nest!

More from the world of bugs soon. Thanks to everyone for the kind comments!

Dear All

Many greetings. I have been up in the hot and dusty reaches of Turkana in northern Kenya. Most people only hear about this region as a place of drought and suffering. Turkana is also a beautiful, biodiversity-rich and potentially productive place…

Field of eggplant and Doum Palms in Turkana

I recently visited a pilot farming project in a remote area south of the Turkwel River. This is where the Turkana Basin Institute has been established through the efforts of Dr Leakey and Stony Brook University. Ikal Angelei is an amazing young woman who is involved in many different things related to the environment, human rights and development in the region. Ikal is working with a local women’s group using simple and sustainable irrigation to grow and produce food.

Ikal and freshly picked eggplants from the pilot farm

One of the crops grown up here is the eggplant or aubergine (Solanum melongena). Eggplants have beautiful pale-purple flowers with fused yellow anthers…

Eggplant is an interesting species in that the flowers require a very special kind of pollination in order to set fruit and produce a yield. It’s called buzz pollination and this short video tells you more about it:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/vYcMQ2G1R1I" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

There were several different wild bee species visiting and pollinating the flowers. Here are some photos of them:

Solitary wild bee grapples with an eggplant flower

Wild Nomia bee bites the flower to 'buzz' the flower and release pollen

While most of the bees visiting the flowers were working hard to release the pollen, a few tiny stingless bees were ‘stealing’ pollen where it had been spilled by the efforts of larger bees. It does seem that even in nature there’s always someone ready to take advantage of others’ hard work!

Stingless bee on an eggplant flower - what is it not doing right?

Here are some photos showing the stingless bees taking advantage:

Nomia and Stingless bees come face to face!

Macrogalea bee and a stingless bee lurking...

Thanks to the hard work of the bees and women up here in the ‘desert’ there are beautiful eggplants to harvest!

Healthy, nutritious eggplant thanks to the wild bees!

More from the world of bugs soon!