There's this claim by animal rights activists that domestic honeybees are really bad pollinators and that native bees are pretty much always better. I don't immediately believe it, but I thought I'd ask you about it since you seem to know a lot about bees
Native bees ARE excellent pollinators! But honeybees are also very good at it. There are certain native flowers that ONLY certain native bees can pollinate, but on stuff like apple trees and goldenrod and many other native/imported plants, honeybees and native bees alike are both very good at pollinating.
Other native pollinators like butterflies, bats, hummingbirds, ect also do very important pollination work!
I’m coopting this post to remind folks that cacao trees are pollinated by mosquitoes who are also very very important if marginally annoying. Importantly, none of the species currently known to be carriers of disease, such as malaria or West Nile virus, have anything to do with chocolate. But there are mosquitoes that pollinate cacao trees.
I forgot about this! But yep! 10/10 excellent addition.
Ok I actually worked in a lab that dealt with the bee vs honeybee thing and compared them (worked with agricultural workers testing out the use of bumble bee hives vs honeybee hives.) We were really hoping to find that bumblebees were better, and like in theory they would be, since they’re better evolved to pollinate stuff in the blueberry family.
Thing is? Honeybees are overall more effective. Sure, on an individual level bumbles are more effective than honeybees, but bumblebee hives are so much smaller with so many fewer individuals that overall, even on a crop specifically evolved in a mutualistic relationship to be pollinated by bumblebees, using honeybee hives produced a significantly higher pollination rate. And that was with domestic bumblebee hives being used. If you had to rely on whatever wild bumblebees were around? Forget it.
Agriculture depends on being able to maximize yield (being able to produce more food per square foot of ground and gallon of water would actually be environmentally really helpful environmentally, because it uses fewer resources plus tillage actually releases huge amounts of CO2) and wild plants don’t. Wild fruit trees and bushes? Don’t have a problem with skipping a year of fruit, or having years every so often where they produce very little. It’s mostly an issue for us because we need a reliable food supply.
So yeah. As much as I would like to say we can leave it to the native bees, that’s just not the reality of what we need to do in order to produce the food we need while minimizing resource use.
The thing about knitting is it’s much harder to fear the existential futility of all your actions while you’re doing it.
Like ok, sure, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’ve made any positive impact on the world. But it’s pretty easy to believe you’ve made a sock. Look at it. There it is. Put it on, now your foot’s warm.
severus outed remus lupin as a werewolf, lost him his job and made it so he could basically never get work again and i’m supposed to forgive him for that bc he wanted to fuck lily potter lol alright
Imagine street lights that are self-constructing, self-repairing, self-replicating, solar-powered, and carbon-negative because they’re just bioluminescent trees
Imagine fibrous plants that grow super-strong spider silk. Plants that grow as fast as bamboo but as strong as steel
Imagine medicine coming in fruit instead of pills. Oh you want to transition? Here, take this HRT shrub. Put it on your windowsill, water it daily and throw some compost at it every once in a while, and eat one berry per day
Imagine crops that are more nutritious, disease- and pest-resistant, and grow in harsher climates and soil conditions, helping to provide more reliable food to impoverished peoples with no downside whatsoever oh wait we already have those don’t we
We can’t have rad forest cities full of dope biotech if we’re too scared to let people do the research that’ll lead to that. Science has spoken: the fear is unjustified, and GMOs are safe. Let’s embrace them!
From now on? I thought we already were! 😬
So here’s an interesting little bit of biotech that’s being worked on to help combat food insecurity…
Errr, first off, a little background? Plants have three different types of photosynthesis, based on the biochemical pathways the plant uses to capture CO₂ and make sugars for energy. The most common one is C3 photosynthesis, and it’s very old. This kind of photosynthesis probably evolved sometime in the mesozoic era, back when there were still dinosaurs wandering around.
Another type is C4 photosynthesis, which is a more recently evolved pathway. C4 carbon fixation is a lot more efficient, provides plants with more energy, and captures more CO₂. It evolved in environments with lots of light, so it’s common in warm parts of the world. In fact, C4 photosynthesis is so efficient that even though only about 5% of plants use it, they account for about 23% of the carbon fixation of all terrestrial plants!
C4 is the pathway used by sugarcane, which is what gives sugarcane one of the highest photosynthetic efficiencies of any plant. It’s also the pathway used by maize (corn) and sorghum (a popular grain in parts of Africa).
Anyway, that brings me to the genetic modification part.
The modified rice would theoretically be able to give higher crop yields, and do so using fewer nutrients and resources. As an added bonus, it would also help remove excess CO₂ from the atmosphere. The efforts are being coordinated by the International Rice Research Institute, who’ve received millions of dollars in donations towards the project – they’re the same organisation behind the golden rice project which was about making rice more nutritious for people affected by food scarcity.
Anyway tl;dr science is cool, genetic modification is a good thing, and it can be used to help end world hunger.
Ok, but… you said there are three types of photosynthesis. What’s the third?
CAM - it’s where the plant does the light dependent cycle by day, and the non-light dependent cycle by night. You see it mostly in things like cacti, because it’s a strategy for preventing water loss.
As we move into 2019 and presidential hopefuls start their campaigns, remember:
- DO NOT FORM POLITICAL OPINIONS BASED ON INFOGRAPHICS. Read source material. If a journalist is legitimate, they will not pass off their statements as fact without proof.
- DO NOT TAKE SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS AS TRUTH. Not even when they are made by someone you trust.
- DO NOT TRUST ANY SOURCE UNLESS IT IS CORRABORATED BY MULTIPLE OTHER CREDIBLE SOURCES.
There are already bots posting propaganda, actively targeting leftists, encouraging us not to vote in various ways.
Do not let them win.
This political system is heinously broken, but consider what evil still has to gain from silencing you before you allow yourself to be silenced.
And check the context on EVERY soundbite you hear. If you’re told, “Someone said X!” see if what they said takes on a different meaning if you hear what they said before and after it. Especially if it’s less than a full sentence. o.O
Anonymous
