Interview – Page 8 – Hoopoe

Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust: Q&A with Dr Tony Gent

The Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC) Trust is a charity dedicated to conserving amphibians and reptiles and saving the disappearing habitats on which they depend.

Dr Tony Gent, CEO of the ARC Trust, recently took the time to talk to us about the challenges faced by amphibians and reptiles in the UK, some of the charity’s success stories, and ways in which you can get involved with amphibian and reptile conservation.

Firstly, could you give us a brief introduction to Amphibian and Reptile Conservation and the work that you do?

Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC) is a national conservation charity dedicated, as its name suggests, to conserving frogs, toads and newts, snakes and lizards. ARC manages a network of over 80 nature reserves in England and Wales that cover some 2,000 hectares. These include a significant suite of lowland heathland areas that are home to all six native reptile species. The trust is also custodian for nationally important habitats for natterjack toads and pool frogs, plus sites established specifically to support populations of great crested newts.

ARC leads on recovery programmes, especially for more threatened species, including managing reintroduction and captive breeding programmes, direct engagement through site management and running national monitoring schemes. We actively engage with advocacy in the UK and further afield, to ensure that amphibians and reptiles are considered via legislation, policy, and funding streams. We also support and undertake research and run education and training programmes to promote amphibian and reptile conservation. Though UK based, we also work with partner organisations across Europe and in the UK’s Overseas Territories.

Our team achieves this through a network of volunteers, partner organisations, Governmental agencies and engaging with the wider public.

As for most groups of animals in the current climate, the factors affecting their populations are obviously complex. However, what do you consider to be the greatest challenge faced by amphibians and reptiles in the UK?

A number of factors are impacting on our reptile and amphibian populations including disease, climate change, pollution, drought and wildfires. However I consider the biggest challenge is ensuring that there is enough suitable habitat available for these species to maintain their populations and distribution across the country, given the vast pressures for alternative land uses.

Of our seven species of amphibian, comprising of three newt, two frog and two toad species, some such as the common frog are widespread, while others such as the natterjack toad are found in a restricted number of habitats and endangered. Similarly, the three species of lizard and three species of snake that make up our reptile fauna include widespread species, such as the slow worm, and other species such as the smooth snake and sand lizard that have much more restricted ranges. All, however, need certain habitat features to survive; reptiles in particular need generally open habitats with a good ground cover, while amphibians need ponds for breeding.

Smooth Snake – by Chris Dresh

The loss and degradation of the habitats on which these rare amphibians and reptiles depend has been a major factor contributing to their decline. Pond numbers in England and Wales decreased dramatically from an estimated 800,000 in the late 19th century to around 200,000 in the 1980s; this in turn has impacted on amphibian populations. Heathland, the only habitat occupied by all six of our native reptile species, has declined by over 85% since the late 18th century. The heaths that remain are highly fragmented, meaning that some patches are too small to sustain characteristic native reptile species.

As well as ensuring that areas are not lost to competing land uses, such as development or intensive agriculture, it is important that these areas sustain the features within them that allow amphibians and reptiles to survive. Having comparatively low mobility, we also need to ensure there are linkages between these areas to prevent populations becoming isolated and to allow for recolonisation if for any reason they become locally extirpated.

Our work securing areas as protected nature reserves can help address this, but we need to see action over a much wider area. ARC both undertakes and provides advice on habitat management on behalf of landowners, who are often steered by government directives. We therefore also lobby for more robust land use policies and funding mechanisms that encourage sympathetic land management. Agri-environment schemes, for example, protect land from the impacts of development, or at least fully mitigate any unavoidable damage that will occur. Underpinning this is the need for a greater awareness and regard towards the conservation of these animals, so that they are considered positively in decision making.

Within the UK, reptiles and amphibians are notoriously elusive – do you think that this affects the extent to which people are aware of them and the conservation issues that they are facing?

The elusive nature of these species makes it difficult for people to see them and therefore often misunderstand them.

In appearance they are neither feathered nor furry and lack the inherent universal appeal of some other animals. This has contributed to their negative profile in tradition and folklore which are often associated with evil, witchcraft and common ailments such as warts. Indeed, even Carolus Linnaeus, the great biologist and ‘father of modern taxonomy’, described reptiles and amphibians in his book The System of Nature as ‘These foul and loathsome animals are abhorrent because of their cold body, pale colour, cartilaginous skeleton, filthy skin, fierce aspect, calculating eye, offensive smell, harsh voice, squalid habitation, and terrible venom.’

This matters because people’s appreciation and negative perceptions of amphibians and reptiles are echoed in the low importance placed on their conservation, leading to their needs being often just not considered. This can range from direct persecution to simply over-looking their habitat needs, for example in tree planting programmes.

It is hard to appreciate something you cannot see; indeed many people are not aware that we even have reptiles in UK. However, once appreciated they then become important to preserve. That’s why at ARC we place great importance in getting people to see and to learn about the amphibians and reptiles in their area, and to learn how and when they can be seen.

The sight of frogspawn in the garden pond followed by tadpoles and the unmistakable sound of croaking frogs can offer a close-up experience of wildlife and, for some people, this has been the start of a lifelong interest in nature. We are also seeing an increasing fascination with our native ‘dragons’ and recognition of their cultural significance.

This past year has been unbelievably hard for charities. How has 2020 (and 2021 so far) differed for the ARC Trust and how have you dealt with the difficulties that Covid has created?

Covid shut the door on many of our activities, and especially face to face meetings with people including many educational training events and group activities. This has had a number of different impacts, including the amount of habitat managed, opportunities for us to show people reptiles and amphibians and our volunteer engagement. However we maintained work across all of the different areas of our activity – it just meant we had to do these in different ways and have gained from doing so.

As we saw home working and ‘Zoom meetings’ become the norm we were in a position to move many of our education and training events online swiftly. Over the year of restrictions we have developed free ‘bite sized training courses’ and have made some of our sites accessible virtually through virtual reserve walks, drone tours, Q and A panel sessions, quizzes, activities and classroom lessons for children. As lockdown continued, people became more aware of their immediate environments and we offered an opportunity for the public to undertake a home-based survey through our online Garden Dragon Watch survey in addition to our reserves remaining open throughout.

Our two major annual events, the scientific meeting that we co-host with the British Herpetological Society and the Herpetofauna Workers Meeting run jointly with ARG-UK, went online. We explored different platforms for these meetings and, while we couldn’t meet face to face, these meetings attracted larger audiences than we could have hosted through physical meetings, reduced costs and gave a voice to people who had not previously joined in before. This not only significantly reduced the carbon footprint of these events but actively engaged a wider range of delegates, networks and researchers. We will be looking at how we can integrate some of these positive outcomes into future outreach.

What would you consider to be your greatest success story so far?

Ultimately we aim to improve the conservation status of all 13 native species of amphibians and reptiles in the UK. Securing 80 sites into active conservation management, 25 of which we own, is something that we would not have imagined possible when the foundations for forming the charity were being laid in the late 1980s. In terms of conservation impact, our translocation work has truly brought species back from (and in one case beyond) the brink of extinction in Britain.

Sand lizards suffered significant declines across their range during the mid to late 20th Century, disappearing from Wales, seeing a huge reduction in the Merseyside populations and loss from huge swathes of Surrey, Hampshire and Kent. We have led conservation efforts for this species in Britain and in 2019 we released our 10,000th sand lizard as part of our long-term reintroduction programme which has restored sand lizards to 70 sites, restoring much of their former range. Similarly, the range of the natterjack toad dwindled over a similar time period and down to a single surviving heathland population south of the River Thames. We have been involved in reintroducing natterjack toads to 17 sites across the UK.

Perhaps our greatest species success story is the pool frog which was formerly considered to be non-native and went extinct from the UK in the 1990s. We worked in partnership to assemble evidence to indicate that they were in fact native and, through our reintroduction programme, we sourced pool frogs from Scandinavia and successfully reintroduced them to Norfolk, bringing the species back from extinction in the UK. Our latest Green Recovery Challenge government funded project will explore how we can restore the species range in East Anglia, by trailing outdoor enclosures.

Our greatest success overall is the combination of seeing the status of wildlife improve and the benefits that come to people because of what we do. In the course of working towards our primary mission of conserving amphibians and reptiles, we benefit many other species that share their habitats, such as birds, butterflies and dragonflies. We also provide benefits directly to our volunteers and the public who enjoy our reserves that tell us they benefit in terms of their physical and mental health, social lives, enjoyment, education and career development.

How can people get involved with amphibian and reptile conservation, particularly if they are inexperienced in terms of identification and/or field survey?

Reptiles and amphibians occur throughout the country, but the species that you may encounter will vary in different locations and habitats. There are a variety of ways you can get involved through ARC, and whatever your background, we welcome your support.

If you live close to one of our nature reserves or local projects you might like to join a habitat activity day. We run programmes of habitat management designed for teams of volunteers mainly through the winter months – It’s a great way to keep fit, make friends and get a personal insight into looking after your local nature reserve. ARC also offers opportunities to learn more about amphibians and reptiles through training, including online, field and class-based courses and events run in partnership with the Field Studies Council. We are keen to have more people joining in with our national programme of species and habitat surveys, which has various options for people with different levels of knowledge and available time. There is also an opportunity to take part in our Garden Dragon Watch (recording amphibians and reptiles in your garden), or if you have more time sign up to monitor species at a location near you, though the spring and summer months. The information volunteer surveyors supply is valuable in helping ARC to keep track of where amphibians and reptiles are found and how populations are faring.

ARC also runs a members’ scheme for people who wish to support the work we do, stay up to date with the ecology and conservation of amphibians and reptiles, gain discounts to events and conferences and claim a welcome pack containing an array of species identification resources.

You can find out more about the ARC Trust from their website and by following them on Facebook and Twitter.

Author Interview with Dave Goulson: Gardening for Bumblebees

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Garden Jungle and A Sting in the Tale comes the much anticipated Gardening for Bumblebees. Part identification guide, part instruction handbook, Gardening for Bumblebees is packed full of information and ideas on how to create pollinator-friendly spaces for all types of garden.

As well as an award-winning author, Dave is also a Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex and founder of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. We have recently had the opportunity to ask him some questions about his latest book.

Could you start by telling us how you came to write Gardening for Bumblebees, and how it differs from your previous book, The Garden Jungle?

Gardening for Bumblebees is a practical, full colour, nuts-and-bolts guide to encouraging bumblebees and other pollinators in the garden, including detailed sections on choosing the best flowers, creating meadow areas, building bee hotels, propagating plants yourself, organic pest control, and more. I hope that it will inspire people, and provide them with all the knowledge they need to turn their garden into a haven for wildlife.

In your book you mention several citizen science projects, such as BeeWatch and BeeWalk, both run by The Bumblebee Conservation Trust. What is the aim of these projects, and how are they beneficial?

If we are to effectively look after our bumblebees and other wild insects we need to know where they are, and how their populations are changing over time. Then we can target conservation efforts to the species and places that most need them, and see whether the things we are doing to help are actually working. Members of the public – “citizen scientists” – have an enormously important role to play here. The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme is a great long-running example, whereby the efforts of thousands of unpaid volunteers now provide a really accurate picture of how our butterfly populations have changed since the 1970s.

Your book is filled with fascinating facts about bees that I previously did not know. In your opinion, what have you found to be the most surprising discovery in regard to bees?

I first became hooked on studying bumblebees when I noticed how a bee in a patch of flowers will often fly up to a flower but then veer off without landing. I wondered what was wrong with these flowers. It took five years of research to find out that they were sniffing the flowers for the faint smelly footprint of a recent bee visitor – which would indicate that the flower is likely to be empty. Bees use lots of clever tricks like this to help them gather nectar and pollen efficiently. They are remarkably clever!

You mention in your book your fascination with bees from an early age. How do you think we can best encourage environmental awareness in young people?

We need to make sure that young people have regular opportunities to interact with nature, so they do not grow up regarding insects as alien, unfamiliar, and scary. I’d love to see every school having access to wild greenspace, and more support to help teachers themselves learn about nature so that they can enthuse the children. I’d also pair every school with a nature friendly farm, and provide support so that the children could visit the farm at least once or twice a year, to understand the connections between growing food and nature.

There has been much public concern regarding bees, pollination, and the future of our crops. With the increase in publicity and information on how we can make simple changes to help secure the bumblebee population, do you feel hopeful for the future?

It is great to see the growing public appetite for making gardens more wildlife friendly, and councils also reducing mowing and introducing meadow areas to parks. However, to really make a difference we need farming, which covers 70% of the UK, to move away from the current highly intensive approach, which is reliant on many pesticides. The new Agriculture Bill and Environmental Land Management Scheme might, if done properly, provide a mechanism for positive change.

Alongside the Buzz Club, a citizen science project that is focused on garden wildlife, do you have any other projects on the horizon you’d like to tell us about?

I have another book out in August 2021, Silent Earth. It is a blunt assessment of the dire plight of insects globally, but with suggestions as to how we could halt and reverse their declines. I hope it will help to persuade people that we are in a time of crisis, and that we need radical change.

Gardening for Bumblebees
By: Dave Goulson
Hardback | April 2021 | £13.99 ~~£16.99~~

An inspiring practical guide to creating pollinator-friendly spaces for all types of garden, no matter how large or small your patch is.

Discover other titles by Dave Goulson below.

The Garden Jungle

Paperback | £9.99

“An upbeat book about the wonders of the ecosystem in every garden.”
– The Times, summer reads of 2019

Bee Quest

Paperback | £7.99 ~~£9.99~~

“Dave Goulson […] has perfected the art of turning the entomologist’s technical expertise into easy-reading everyman’s prose. He also laces his stories with rich helpings of wit and humour.”
– Mark Cocker, Spectator

A Buzz in the Meadow

Paperback | £7.99 ~~£9.99~~

“Buy this book, give it as a present. It is required reading for being a human in the 21st century.”
– Matthew Cobb, professor of zoology at the University of Manchester, New Scientist

A Sting in the Tale

Paperback | £7.99 ~~£9.99~~

“Goulson has plenty of wondrous biological stories to tell, as well as the tale of his own struggle to return the short-haired bumblebee to Britain.”
– Patrick Barkham, The Guardian

All prices correct at the time of this article’s publication.

Author Interview with Andrew Painting: Regeneration

The Mar Lodge Estate in the heart of the Cairngorms was acquired by the National Trust for Scotland in 1995, and has since experienced landscape-scale restoration with outstanding results. Discussing conservation, rewilding and land management, Regeneration is an honest account of both the progress made at Mar Lodge Estate and the challenges faced over the last 25 years.

After studying Environmental Anthropology at Aberdeen University, Regeneration author Andrew Painting moved to Scotland to volunteer with the RSPB. Since 2016, he has been Assistant Ecologist at the Mar Lodge Estate, and has documented its slow recovery. He has very kindly agreed to answer some questions about his book.

Could you tell us a little about your background and where the motivation for this book came from?

I’m a lifelong naturalist, but it took me quite a while to take the plunge into working professionally in conservation. My first degree was in English Literature, so I’m glad I’ve finally been able to put it to good use! I’ve been working in the ecology team at Mar Lodge since 2016, when the fruits of two decades of hard work were beginning to show, and I instantly fell in love with the place. By 2018, all the graphs and reports we were producing were looking very respectable, and I realised we were sitting on a story that deserved a larger audience than it was getting at the time. 2020 was the 25th anniversary of the National Trust for Scotland acquiring the site, and one eighth of the way into the Trusts’ 200 year management vision for the land, so it seemed like a good time for a stock-take.

Of course, it’s never as simple as that. Mar Lodge Estate is not perfect (nowhere is), and as I got down to writing the book I realised that the social and political complexities of the ‘Mar Lodge experience’ were just as important to discuss as the successes.

Though far more is needed to keep up with the increasing levels of environmental destruction, you write of much hope for the future. What do you think is the current biggest challenge conservationists are up against?

Often, the biggest challenge to solving any problem is getting people to accept that there is a problem in the first place. Thanks to decades of campaigning from people from all walks of life, I think we are now at the point where there is broad agreement about the scale of the twinned environmental and climate crises, and the necessity of social change to address them. Politicians across the political spectrum are waking up to the fact that environmental conservation is both a vote-winner and also extremely good value for money, while the private sector is realising that nature-based businesses can be both highly profitable and enjoy high levels of public support.

So now I think that the challenge is to be bold and ambitious, and to make the most of this ‘unfrozen moment’. We need nature, not just in our National Nature Reserves and SSSIs, but also in our farms and seas, along roadsides, in our urban areas, schools and places of business. We now need to lobby those increasingly receptive politicians to instigate progressive policies that incentivise returning nature to these places. To that end, for me, the real power of Mar Lodge Estate is not in the amount of wildlife or carbon it holds, but in the example of ecological restoration that it sets to other Highland estates.

Could you talk about a particular conservation success story over the course of the project?

With any luck, in the years to come the landscape-scale restoration of high altitude woodland across the Cairngorms will become a ‘textbook example’ of an effective, large-scale and long-term conservation project. This habitat, a mixture of cold and wind-stunted birch, juniper, pine and montane willow species, has been almost lost from the UK. But we are beginning to see it return at a landscape level at Mar Lodge and much more widely across the Cairngorms and Scotland. In the Cairngorms, this has been facilitated by a really nice mixture of traditional conservation work, high-tech genetics work and landscape-scale partnership working. This is still very much work-in-progress, but what’s really exciting about it for me personally is that we’re really only at the very beginning of a journey which will play out over decades. So every time I head out into the high hills I’m excited to see what I will come across.

Has documenting this project inspired you to get involved in any other long-term initiatives?

There’s a lot to choose from these days! I’m originally from the West Country, so have fond memories of the Avalon Marshes and Steart – both of which are hugely exciting projects. I’ll never forget seeing and hearing my first cranes on a very cold winter day in the Somerset Levels. But for sheer size and ambition, there are few projects more exciting than the ones currently underway in the Cairngorms.

You talk about the well-documented value of nature for our mental health, while also questioning how to facilitate the means for people to enjoy and benefit from nature without harming it in the process. Do you think eco-tourism is beneficial to conservation?

It certainly can be! There are projects across Scotland which are highlighting the benefits of eco-tourism to local economies, from the Borders to Mull to Cromarty to Sutherland. But eco-tourism isn’t a silver bullet – areas which are dependent on a single industry or land use are incredibly vulnerable to social, economic and ecological change, so it should really be seen as part of a larger solution to environmental problems, rather than a solution in and of itself. I do feel that potential impacts of eco-tourism on sensitive habitats and species can generally be mitigated through good land management practices, better education and more awareness of our own personal responsibilities towards nature. And of course, for nature to really thrive, we need to remember how to live alongside it everywhere. Why should people be content to see charismatic wildlife only on their holidays?

This is your first book, and it is a great achievement. Do you think it will be the first of many?

Right now I’m just looking forward to getting back out into the field! I’m not sure about ‘many’, but I think I’ve got a couple more books in me. And of course, I’ll have to do another Mar Lodge book in 25 years’ time to check in on progress!

Regeneration: The Rescue of a Wild Land
By: Andrew Painting
Hardback | March 2021 | £16.99 ~~£19.99~~

“Deftly weaving through the social and political complexities of nature conservation in Scotland the Regeneration of Mar Lodge is testimony to the miracles that can happen when disparate interests come together in common cause.”

Isabella Tree, author of Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm.

Browse our selection of conservation and biodiversity books

All prices correct at the time of this article’s publication.

Author interview with Dean R. Lomax: Locked in Time

Dean Lomax digging up dinosaurs at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center.

Dean R. Lomax is an internationally recognized palaeontologist, author, television presenter, and science communicator. He is currently a visiting scientist at the University of Manchester and is a leading authority on ichthyosaurs. He is due to publish a remarkable popular science book, Locked in Time, that looks at what the fossil record can tell us about behaviours of extinct animals by way of fifty remarkable examples. Leading up to publication, we reached out to Dean and asked him some questions.

Could you tell us a little about your background and where the motivation for this book came from?

My passion for palaeontology stems from my childhood fascination with everything dinosaur. In high school, I was not very gifted academically and my grades were not good enough to attend university so at the age of 18 I ended up selling my possessions – including my cherished Star Wars collection(!) – to help fund a trip to excavate dinosaurs at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in the USA. That trip changed my life and formed the backbone of my career. Not only did it provide me with the necessary experience I needed to help build a career in palaeontology, but it is where the idea for Locked in Time originated. Whilst looking at the museum displays, one particularly outstanding fossil caught my eye. A trackway with its maker preserved at the very end – an animal that had literally been caught dead in its tracks. I had never seen anything like this fossil before, in books, in museums or in documentaries. This prehistoric story was preserved in time for all to see. I was hooked. It gave me that spark to discover more about prehistoric animals and their behaviours and I even ended up describing this particular fossil in the scientific literature.

In your introduction, you mention the field of palaeoethology (the study of fossils to infer behaviour). How big of a subfield is this in palaeontology? Are there specialised palaeoethologists, or is it more a case of palaeontologists contributing to this field whenever someone finds something?

Palaeoethology is a fascinating subject that allows us to explore the study of behaviours of extinct species through the evidence preserved in fossils. It is a small subfield of palaeontology, due mostly to the rarity of fossils with direct and reliable evidence of behaviours preserved. There aren’t necessarily any specialised palaeoethologists, but rather those palaeontologists who contribute to the field when something is found and described; however, palaeontologists may often be entirely unaware that they are actively contributing to the field because the idea of ethology/behaviour in the fossil record can easily be overlooked. Having said that, there are some palaeontologists that could easily add ‘palaeoethologist’ to their CVs, most notably those who work with amber which often preserve snapshots of behaviours in action. A real pioneer in the field of palaeoethology was Dr Arthur Boucot. He spent years searching for evidence of behaviours in prehistoric animals, writing numerous papers and academic monographs, and even introduced the term “frozen behaviour” for those instances where an extinct organism was preserved in the midst of some type of behaviour. Delving into his history and research was genuinely inspiring. As I have researched and published on multiple specimens and have written this book, I guess this probably qualifies me as a palaeoethologist too.

Ideas about behaviour are important to those who produce artwork depicting prehistoric lifeforms, i.e. palaeoartists. Do you find there is much of an exchange between palaeontologists and palaeoartists to try and depict behaviour in artwork according to the latest science?

The field of palaeoart has grown immensely over the last twenty years. In fact, several palaeoartists have become excellent scientists in their own right, including Bob Nicholls (the artist for this book), who has co-authored multiple scientific studies. Good palaeoartists stay informed of the latest scientific research and discoveries, with several often working very closely with palaeontologists to ensure their reconstructions are scientifically accurate. Subsequently, when based on the latest science, thoroughly researched palaeoart reconstructions are anatomically plausible. However, that said, practically all aspects of behaviour depicted in palaeoart are not based on direct evidence but assumptions. Usually, the best a palaeoartist can do is look at an extinct animal’s anatomy and environment and speculate about its lifestyle and behaviours. This is why fossilised evidence of behaviours, like those contained inside this book, are so precious and important to study and understand. These remarkable fossils tell us that prehistoric creatures were not movie monsters (prehistoric life, especially dinosaurs, are too often portrayed as roaring monsters!) but real animals that behaved in a variety of familiar and surprising ways.

What have technological advancements contributed to this line of inquiry? Are palaeontologists going back to old fossil material to reexamine them with new tools and finding new evidence of fossilised behaviour?

The use of flashy, high-tech computers, scanners and the like have helped to unlock an entirely new world of information contained in fossils. As a result, not only are newly discovered fossils subjected to this technology but much older fossil discoveries, where none of these technologies were previously available, can now be reanalysed with a fresh approach, breathing new life into old fossils as it were. This has led to some exciting discoveries of fossilised behaviours in specimens that have otherwise been deemed as having little to no research value.

Whether dinosaurs or early mammals, prehistoric organisms were faced with many of the same basic challenges as animals alive today. Has the fossil record revealed any examples of behaviours that were unique and now effectively extinct?

These types of questions are what get me excited about unravelling the mysteries of prehistoric behaviour. In many cases, “the present is the key to the past”, as geologist Charles Lyell famously introduced in the 1800s, and this definitely holds true with understanding behaviour. For example, on a basic level, we know that some groups of mammals live in herds today and that some extinct mammals also lived in herds millions of years ago (we have good fossil evidence for this). However, the natural world is filled with so many incredible acts of behaviour that you might expect the fossil record would reveal something unique. As such, perhaps one of the most unusual and apparently unique behaviours was recorded in an ancient roughly 430 million-year-old arthropod nicknamed the ‘kite runner’. The young of this arthropod were literally tethered to the parents via long spines. It appears to be the only known occurrence of this type of brooding behaviour known among fossil or living arthropods.

Rather than body fossils, past behaviour is often deduced from so-called trace fossils or ichnofossils. Nests, fossilised footprints, and trackways must be fairly easy to recognize. But what about the harder-to-identify traces? Do palaeontologists frequently encounter suspected ichnofossils where they don’t know who made them, how they were made, or perhaps even what they represent?

Yes, palaeontologists (or palaeoichnologists) frequently encounter mysterious trace fossils that are difficult or near impossible to identify or decipher. By their very definition, trace fossils represent evidence of behaviour, so we can say with confidence that an ancient animal made a nest, left its tracks or created a burrow, but they generally do not provide all of the tell-tale signs that allow us to identify what organism made it, how it was made or even what the trace might really represent. To find definite answers, we have to go a step further. In much rarer circumstances some trace fossils provide more than a ‘simple’ track or burrow and may be directly related with its maker, such that the body fossil is present inside the burrow or at the end of the track. In other examples, a track might show where the animal walked, stopped, sat down and then walked away, or a burrow might preserve evidence of scratch marks that could indicate how the burrow may have been constructed and by whom. These types of fossils provide much more information about specific moments (and behaviours) in deep time.

Were there any examples of fossilised behaviour that did not make the cut for this book but that you would have loved to include, or any noteworthy recent discoveries?

Having spent a substantial amount of time combing through hundreds of scientific papers and books, and examining specimens in museum collections, my initial plan was to tell the story of prehistoric behaviour through 100 fossils, rather than 50. It was incredibly tough selecting 100 fossils, so cutting this in half was much harder! I had to rank each of the fossils against one another, in terms of the type of behaviour, type of animal and so forth. This meant some really unusual specimens, like the aforementioned ‘kite runner’, did not make the final cut. One fossil that I would have really liked to include, and which has received worldwide media attention recently, is the so-called ‘Dueling Dinosaurs’ fossil, which appears to preserve a Tyrannosaurs and Triceratops locked in combat. I opted not to include the specimen as it has yet to be formally described, although I do make some subtle references to it. I’m very excited to see what research is revealed from this fossil, especially as only one fighting dinosaur fossil has been described, which inspired the book’s cover.

Finally, what are some of the biggest unanswered questions when it comes to fossilised behaviour? What would you love to find?

There are so many ancient groups and species that it would be easy for me to rattle off a list of some of the biggest unanswered questions about fossilised behaviour, but the reality is that we have only really scratched the surface. We have so much to learn when it comes to fossilised behaviour. After all, inferring and attempting to understand behaviour in long-extinct organisms is incredibly hard and is made even more challenging when evidence of behaviours are not preserved. It is also vitally important to remember that, by its very nature, the process of fossilisation is already an incredibly rare event, so to have any form of evidence for ancient fossilised behaviour preserved is genuinely astonishing.

Ooh, what would I love to find! I’m torn between several imaginary fossils, but if I was forced to choose one then it would have to be finding a dinosaur dead in its tracks. The thrill of following in the footsteps of a dinosaur only to find its skeleton lying at the very end of the track would be the ultimate dinosaur detective story.

Locked in Time: Animal Behavior Unearthed in 50 Extraordinary Fossils
By: Dean R. Lomax
Hardback | May 2021

Author Interview: Clive Chatters, Heathland

Heathlands are so much more than simply purple carpets of heather. They are ancient landscapes found throughout Britain that support a complex network of inter-related species and an immense diversity of habitats. They also possess a unique human history defined by the struggle between pastoralism and the competing demands of those who seek exclusive use of the land.

Clive Chatters, signing bookplates for Heathland — Photo by Catherine Chatters

In this latest addition to the British Wildlife Collection, Clive Chatters introduces us to Britain’s heathlands and has kindly taken some time to answer some questions concerning this important habitat.

Heathland might mean different things to different people; how did you go about defining ‘heathland’?

Heathlands defy ready definition. The diverse places that we call heaths are cultural landscapes which are overlain with the language of ecology. It is unnecessary to reconcile these different perspectives as both traditions offer a path to understanding what makes our heathlands special.

Heathlands are one of a handful of British landscapes that have been recognised by English- speaking people for as long as we have had a written history. Sadly, many of the places that early ecologists were describing had already been depleted of much of their diversity and wonder.

This book seeks to challenge those narrow definitions and to promote an understanding of heathland that would be familiar to our forebears, as well as respecting the experience of modern people whose livelihoods are bound up with the heath.

Literature and historical accounts have addressed heaths: these landscapes can also be found in literary works, in poems and romanticised histories. When did their ecological value start to be recognised?

There is a remarkable body of literature surviving from medieval England, with many references to heathlands. Narrative poems that pre-date the Norman conquest give us an indication of how heaths were viewed by Anglo-Scandinavian story-tellers.

Heathlands at the end of the Tudor period were places where people could gather on the margins of settled society and by the seventeenth century there are the beginnings of natural histories that go beyond the enumeration of commonable livestock or illusory wild beasts. The antiquarian John Aubrey gives an account of a lichen heath in his Natural History of Wiltshire. Herbalist, Thomas Johnson published two accounts of the flora of Hampstead Heath, which include over 120 flowering plants. By tabulating a sample of these records, and ordering them by habitat association, we can gain an insight into the character of a Southern Heath in the early seventeenth century.

Throughout history there has been people who have valued heaths as a source of their livelihood. It was not until the early twentieth century that ecologists started to describe heaths and then it took many more decades before their importance to nature conservation has been expressed by conservationists. In the meantime, we have lost so much of the diversity and wonder in British heaths. What my book sets out to do is explore those riches and consider what has sustained them, where they persist.

What are your primary hopes and fears for the long-term future of Britain’s Heathland?

It is not inevitable that the catastrophic losses of the recent past are the destiny of our remaining heaths. Whilst there are still significant challenges to overcome, we know enough about these habitats to secure their place in the countryside of the future, as an integral part of British culture and home to a wealth of species that occupy ecosystems of immense richness.

If we are to rejuvenate heathland as a commonplace element in the British countryside, then we need to be comfortable with knowing what successful rehabilitation looks like. The wildlife of our richest heaths is the fortuitous by-product of millennia of pastoral farming. Over the span of human history, it has been pastoralism that has provided continuity for ecological processes pre-dating agriculture and reaching back into evolutionary time.

If we are to have working heathland landscapes, with all the advantages they bring, then the pastoralists will need to be properly funded and rewarded.

A successful heathland needs to have scale. Heathlands are landscapes that can be remarkably robust in delivering the multiple objectives that we ask of them, but they must be measured in multiples of square kilometres rather than in tens of hectares. We need not be shy about seeking to create a new generation of heaths that are large enough to serve the needs of nature alongside the ambitions of the modern age.

Heathlands are so much more than ‘just’ heathers: could you summarise their importance for a diverse range of fauna and flora?

Heathlands are a great deal more than just carpets of heathers. A heathland landscape can embrace habitats as diverse as rocks and lakes and bogs, even temporary stands of arable and wartime concrete. The component habitats of a large functioning heathland are naturally dynamic, with species dependant on all sorts of habitat formations, from bare ground to the decaying of cowpats. The great antiquity of heathland ecosystems is reflected in the network of interdependent species, many of which are associated with large herbivores, fire and occasional gross disturbance of the soil. Whilst charismatic birds and reptiles have traditionally claimed the limelight, the biological wealth of the heath is better expressed through its invertebrates, lichen and wildflowers.

Until recently, the State implemented conservation initiatives; this is no longer the case and the withdrawal of central government from practical conservation management has placed greater demands on the work of local government. Has this had a significant impact for heathland?

Heathlands are not capable of sustaining ever-intensifying levels of recreational use, no matter how benignly intended. There are numerous examples of habitats that have been degraded and species that have been lost through the complex interactions of wildlife and informal recreation. Our affection for heathlands is no safeguard against them being loved to death.

Dogs, for example, are ecological proxies to natural predators but are present at much higher densities than would occur in the wild. And large heathland ponds are frequently developed for recreation with dire consequence for wildlife.

It is reasonable for people to expect a choice as to where they can go in the countryside; regrettably, in some heathland regions, the heaths are not used for recreation as a matter of choice but because they are the only greenspaces that are available.

This is your second book in the excellent British Wildlife Collection series; the other being Saltmarsh. After all the work researching and writing that and now Heathland what is next for you? Are there plans for further books, or maybe a well-earned rest?

There are germs of ideas for future writing which I hope will take shape in the next few years. Books are daunting ventures; ‘Heathland’ summarises forty years of study and took three years to write, maybe next time I’ll look at something a little simpler.

Heathland
By: Clive Chatters
Hardback | March 2021 | £27.99 ~~£34.99~~

In this latest addition to the British Wildlife Collection, Clive Chatters introduces us to Britain’s heathlands and their anatomy.

Most of our heaths are pale shadows of their former selves. However, Chatters argues, it is not inevitable that the catastrophic losses of the recent past are the destiny of our remaining heaths. Should we wish, their place in the countryside as an integral part of British culture can be secured.

All prices correct at the time of this article’s publication.

Author Interview with Jeff Ollerton: Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society

Professor Jeff Ollerton is a researcher, educator, consultant and author, specialising in mutualistic ecological relationships – in particular, those between plants and their pollinators. Now one of the world’s leading experts on pollinators and pollination, he has conducted field research in the UK, Australia, Africa, and Tenerife, and published a huge body of ground-breaking research which is highly-cited and used at both national and international levels to inform conservation efforts. Jeff currently holds Visiting Professor positions at the University of Northampton in the UK and Kunming Institute of Botany in China.

His recent book, Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society, provides a hugely informative yet accessible look at the ecology and evolution of pollinators around the globe, and discusses their conservation in a world that seems to be stacked against them.

In this article we chat with Jeff about his background, the book and the future of pollinators in an increasingly changing climate.

Firstly, could you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to write Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society?

Where to begin? Like lots of ecologists my interest started with natural history as a kid: poking around in rock pools, looking under stones, keeping tadpoles in jars, collecting fossils, the usual stuff that most people grow out of. I was born in Sunderland, close to the shipyards and coal mines that provided employment for most of my family. The grasslands and scrubby areas that developed on bombsites and after slum clearance were where I ranged free: my wildlife playground was the result of industrial development and decline. I also learned a lot from my dad who was a keen gardener, and plants have always been a passion. At school I didn’t do well – “easily distracted” said my reports – and only passed one A level (Biology). That was enough to get me into an HND in Applied Biology at Sunderland Polytechnic, then onto the second year of a BSc Environmental Biology degree at Oxford Polytechnic. My dissertation supervisor was Andrew Lack and he convinced me that I should apply for a PhD with him, looking at the pollination ecology, flowering phenology, and reproductive output of grassland plants in colonising and established grasslands. That was completed in 1993 (by which time the institution was Oxford Brookes University) and I went off to do some travelling and field work in Australia, funded by some small grants. When I got back I applied for numerous postdoctoral positions but the first job I was offered was a lectureship at Nene College of Higher Education in Northampton. At the time it was predominantly a teaching institution but they were keen to develop their ecological research. I originally planned to be there for a couple of years and ended up staying for 25! By that time it had transitioned into the University of Northampton. Throughout all of this the main focus of my research has been the ecology, evolution and conservation of plant-pollinator interactions, with field work in the UK, Africa, South America, and Asia. That’s a huge field of study, ranging in scope from molecular ecology to animal behaviour to agriculture and government environmental policy. A few years ago it struck me that there was a need to bring together these different strands into a single, coherent book that presented a state of the art account of why all of this was important, how the different topics fitted together, what we had learned so far after a couple of hundred years of research, and where the gaps and scientific disagreements lay. The result was Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society.

While it’s evident that habitat destruction and fragmentation have a huge role to play in the decline of pollinator species, you also state that rising temperatures may be a more significant factor, particularly for species such as bumblebees. Given the continual, and some may say unstoppable, rise in global temperatures, are you hopeful in any way for the future of pollinators?

Well, first of all, I certainly don’t think that climate change is unstoppable. We know what needs to be done and we know how to do it, though it’s not easy of course. But, yes, we are already seeing the effects of climate change on pollinators, particularly in relation to range shifts as insects move northwards in the northern hemisphere. Bumblebees are a particular concern because on the whole they are adapted to colder temperatures. However most other bees are adapted to warmer, drier conditions, and they may benefit from moderate climate change. The problem is that we simply don’t know enough about the natural histories of most of the 20,000 or so species of bees to say. Our knowledge of most of the hundreds of thousands of other species of pollinators is even less well developed. But I do have some optimism that pollination services to most plant species will be maintained under moderate climate change because we know from experimental work that we’ve carried out that the majority of interactions are relatively generalised and interchangeable: a range of pollinators can pollinate most plants, and vice versa. It’s the more specialised interactions that are likely to be less robust to climate change, especially in places like South Africa where I have been fortunate to work. The key to conserving pollinators, as it is for all biodiversity, is creation, restoration, linking-up, and protection, of natural habitats. As I argue in the book, we have to go far beyond “planting for pollinators” and putting up a few bee hotels if we are serious about conserving pollinators in our rapidly changing world.

While professional scientific research, alongside informed policy change, will obviously be key in directing the future of pollinators around the world, you also mention the importance of amateur naturalists and citizen scientists in collecting data and providing some of the legwork behind sustained long-term studies. What advice would you give to a non-professional individual who wishes to get involved with pollinator conservation? (eg. volunteering, donating to charities/organisations, lobbying for policy change etc.)

Yes, all of what you list there is important, and I would add that individuals can do a lot by thinking carefully about what they plant in their gardens and how they manage them (i.e. not using pesticides) and lobbying local councils about how parks and road verges are managed. They could also get involved in initiatives such as the UK Pollinators Monitoring Scheme. Similar schemes have been set up in other countries. Adding observations to iRecord is also important.

When hearing about the decline of pollinators, many people (fuelled by frequent media stories) will immediately be fearful about the future and security of our food production. Is there a valid reason for concern, and are there any precautionary steps that you believe the agricultural industry should be taking to deal with a potential collapse in pollinators?

First of all, I don’t think that pollinators are going to disappear from agricultural landscapes completely, that’s hugely unlikely. But there are a couple of things that should concern farmers and governments. There’s growing evidence that the yields of some crops, in some places, are limited by availability of pollinators, and that’s likely to get worse if pollinator populations decline. We also know that there are crops which, although they can self-pollinate, produce a higher quality of fruit or seeds if they are outcrossed by pollinators. So there’s a clear financial benefit for farmers to take pollinator declines seriously. Globally, most of the staple crops are either wind pollinated grasses (rice, wheat, etc.) or are propagated by tubers (potatoes, yams) so food security in terms of populations starving is unlikely to be a consequence of pollinator decline. However most of the fruit and vegetables that provide the essential vitamins and minerals in our diets need pollinators either for the consumed crop or, as in the case of onions, for the seeds that produce the crop. So food security in the sense of having a healthy diet is definitely something that we should take seriously. Things that farmers and the agricultural industry should be doing include the obvious such as restoring and creating natural habitat on their farms, not over-managing grasslands and hedgerows, and reducing the amount of biocides that they are using.

I discovered lots of interesting things from your book that I previously didn’t know – such as the fact that there are pollinating lizards! In all of your years of study, what is the most fascinating fact that you have learned about pollinators?

Oh, wow, that’s a tough one! Every research project that I’ve undertaken has turned up new information and observations that have intrigued and excited me, and even blown my mind. That’s one of the reasons why I do what I do, there’s so much still to discover. I estimate that we’ve got some kind of information about the pollinators of only about 10% of the 352,000 species of flowering plants that there are in the world. Even in Britain and Ireland the reproductive ecologies of most of the plants have hardly been studied. So there are always new things to discover. Citing a single fascinating fact is difficult, but if I had to choose one it would be the calculation that I made for a review article in 2017 when I worked out that as many as 1 in 10 insect and vertebrate species may visit flowers as pollinators. That did astound me and I had to double check my maths!

2020 was a year that was largely dominated by the Covid-19 crisis, a fact that you touch on briefly in your book. How has the pandemic affected your working life and, as a researcher who relies on time spent in the field, how have you dealt with the challenges of lockdown and restricted movement?

Ughh, yes, it’s been difficult. I was supposed to take a group of students to Tenerife in April for our annual field course and that had to be cancelled. It’s the first year since 2003 that I’ve not made the trip and it curtailed some long-term data collection that I’ve been undertaking. Perhaps the universe is telling me that it’s time to publish the data….? But on the plus side, once we knew that we’d be in lockdown for some months, I sent out an email to my network of pollination ecologists to suggest that we use the time to collect data on flower-pollinator interactions in our gardens. The response was phenomenal! It’s generated over 20,000 observations from all over the world. We’re writing up a paper describing the data set at the moment and we will make it freely available to PhD and early career researchers who were not able to collect data last year and whose funding and time are limited.

Finally, what are you working on currently, and do you have plans for further books?

So back in October I stepped down from my full-time professorship to work independently as a consultant ecological scientist and author – my new website has just gone live in fact: www.jeffollerton.co.uk. Although I will miss teaching students, I really needed some new challenges and wanted to work more closely at the conservation and advisory end of the field, and start to make more of a difference on the ground. I still have a Visiting Professorship at Northampton where I’m completing some externally funded projects and supervising a couple of PhD researchers. And I’ve recently been appointed Visiting Professor at the Kunming Institute of Botany in China where, vaccines willing, I will be spending part of the summer on a climate change and pollinators project. As for further books, yes, there are another three that I want to complete in the next few years. I’m talking with Pelagic at the moment about the next one and they are interested, but I’d like to keep the topic hush-hush for now – I’m referring to it as “Project B”! But it does deal with pollination, I can tell you that.

Species Recovery Trust: Q&A with Dominic Price

The Species Recovery Trust is devoted to preventing the loss of some of the rarest plant, insect and animal species in the UK, with their primary aim being to remove 50 species from the edge of extinction by 2050. With a team of highly skilled conservationists and passionate volunteers, the Species Recovery Trust has been doing targeted recovery work for the past 10 years, and many species are now showing an increase in their population numbers for the first time in decades.

We spoke to Dominic Price at the Species Recovery Trust about how the trust is working to save some of the most endangered species in the UK, some of their success stories, the challenges they face as a charity with COVID-19 and how you can get involved and support their work.

Could you introduce the Species Recovery Trust to us and summarise your main goals as a charity?

The Species Recovery Trust was founded in 2012 with the goal of saving some of the UK’s most endangered species. We cover a small number of species but base our work on a 30-year workplan, allowing us to plan work decades ahead, and start these species on the long and often slow road to full recovery. Our broader goal has been to develop the most cost effective way of doing this long term work, generating as much of our funds as possible through our own commercial activities (training and consultancy) which would allow us to de-couple from the larger funding streams and sustain the work, however bleak the funding climate may become.

One of your main aims is to remove 50 species from the edge of extinction in the UK by the year 2050. How did you choose which of the 900+ UK species that are currently under threat were the most critical to focus on?

With some difficulty! In essence we started with the IUCN red list and worked our way down from the top. It soon became clear that with certain species, like Atlantic Halibut, we were unlikely to be able to do much from our bases in the English countryside, so we started to focus in on terrestrial species with a limited distribution, and by researching the ecology for those we could see which species were likely to respond well to the sort of onsite habitat restoration work we specialise in. There was obviously a fairly significant political element, in not wanting to tread on any toes of people who were already carrying out established work. So there was much dialogue with other small NGOs and from there discovering the main species that have fallen through the gaps of others work. We currently work on 22 species and have three in development, so still have vacancies for another 25!

There were times when it can be deeply depressing looking at the Red List, with the sheer amount on there, but we knew we would always be a small player and it was just a case of picking a handful and then making sure we did the best possible job to save them, while trying not to feel too despondent about the current mass extinction and the number of species likely to be caught up in that.

What key environmental policy changes do you think would have the biggest impact on preventing species extinctions in the UK?

After 20 years of working in the sector I’m not the biggest fan on policy changes. When I started, the Biodiversity Action Plan (UKBAP) was the big driver. Borne out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit it was an ambitious and hugely exciting bit of work to be involved in. It then started to become clear that the vast majority of targets would be missed, but instead of examining why this happened and putting more resources into it, it was left to quietly die a death, and over the years has been replaced by a whole new raft of policies and goals. I know there’s people doing amazing work in Whitehall to keep lobbying and campaigning for better policies, but I feel for us as a charity the most meaningful work we do tends to be out in the field, with either a quadrat or a pair of loppers. It’s important to keep your eye on the bigger picture, but sometimes the best place to be is very much on the coalface in the exact location where these species are dying out. This has been also been a personal decision for the members of the team, as we all feel we’re at our best doing fieldwork and not stuck behind a computer!

The work of the Species Recovery Trust is obviously ongoing, but what would you consider to be your biggest success story so far?

When we started working on Starved Wood-sedge there were just 32 plants at two sites left in the wild. I had previously been involved with this species through Plantlife’s Back from the Brink programme and knew how perilously close we were to losing this plant from the UK (it went extinct in Ireland in the 1990s and is not faring too well in Europe). After eight years we now have four sites, and over 330 plants – it is still not ‘saved’ but it’s well away from the brink of extinction. Another great moment was when we took on the management of the last known site in Hampshire for Heath Lobelia. We spent three days with work groups clearing scrub off the site, thinking the most likely scenario was to repair the habitat with a view of one day re-introducing plants, and the following summer 660 plants came up where the seedbank had been regenerated. Sadly, following this disturbance the population has dropped back down to 40, reminding us that a species conservationist’s work is rarely done!

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected individuals, communities and organisations in a myriad of unforeseen ways. How have you been challenged this year and how have you coped with these challenges?

One of our strengths as a charity has been that we draw over half our funding from running training courses. It’s the best money as we can spend it on what we want when we want with no deadlines or funding reports, and if you book onto one of our courses your booking fee could be put to use within a week hiring contractors to manage a site, or paying the mileage for a volunteer to monitor a network of sites. We did have a contingency fund in case one year we couldn’t run as many courses, but never predicated a scenario where we had to cancel every single one of them, so this has obviously hit us hard. However, we are extremely lucky in that when we set the charity up we always tried to keep our running costs to virtually zero; we already all work from home and all of us do other jobs alongside our work for the trust, so in 2020 we were able to effectively batten down the hatches and with the additional help of the amazing furlough scheme we have managed to stay afloat. We’ve also had some incredible support from charitable trusts like the Halpin Trust and Hennock Law Trust, which has been a lifeline in these difficult times. But at this time no one is sure if training courses will be able to happen in 2021, and there are now so many charities desperately competing for the remaining funding sources, so uncertain times lie ahead.

Are there different ways that people can get involved with and support the Species Recovery Trust? (e.g. options for those with spare money but little time and vice versa).

We are always looking for species monitors – people who take on a site, preferably close to where they live or go on holiday and can do species counts for us each year, and lots of people gain a huge amount of satisfaction of being the person to keep these sites going. If you purchase a copy of the Field Guide to Grasses, Sedges and Rushes (and the hopefully forthcoming Field Guide to Bryophytes) 100% of the profit goes directly to our work. Alternatively, if you’re feeling generous you can sign up as a paid supporter (there’s a free option too) and you’ll get updates of all our work, as well as knowing your money is going straight to saving some of our rarest plants and animals.

You can find out more about the Species Recovery Trust from their website and by following them on Facebook and Twitter.

Author interview with William Eberhard: Spider Webs

Behavioural ecologist and entomologist William Eberhard is an emeritus scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and emeritus professor at the Universidad de Costa Rica. His research interests include sexual selection, evolution, and animal behaviour, and one group of organisms he has worked on in particular is spiders. Based on half a century of study, Spider Webs is an unprecedented and very large book on their biology, evolution, and diversity. Leading up to publication, we dipped into the book and asked him some questions.

As I was reading your book, it seemed all the spiders in my garden were out to build webs and I found myself barred from reaching my laundry one morning. How bad should I feel for accidentally destroying a web?

Out of consideration for my fellow inhabitants of the Earth, I always walk around webs rather than through them. But that is my own idiosyncrasy. Many spiders make a new web every day, so having a web knocked down is not a big disaster. Some move away from sites where their webs have been destroyed, so you might decide where to walk, depending on whether you do or do not want the spider to stay at the same site.

Spider webs are marvellous contraptions, even more so when you realise how they are made. You explain how spiders are virtually blind to their own web lines and that webs are often built at night. This implies an important role for tactile senses. Yet, construction starts by floating so-called bridge lines to distant objects, suggesting a role for vision. How good is spider eyesight and how much do we know about their visual acuity?

Eyesight has little and probably nothing to do with their floating bridge lines. Casting those lines down the wind constitutes a blind bet that maybe there is some object there that they will snag on.

You point out that the majority of published behavioural observations have been of mature females. What do we know about males and immature spiders? Is web construction specifically a female activity? Or have we just not looked hard enough?

In most spider families, mature males dedicate themselves nearly strictly to sex –finding receptive females is probably a tough job. They stop making prey capture webs and lose the glands that made the sticky silk in these webs. They also stop eating, except, in a few species, in which males occasionally temporarily appropriate a web from a smaller, immature individual. Immature individuals, both male and female, make webs.

A web is built from various different kinds of silk, and different parts have different functions, from structural support to prey capture. How do spiders control what kind of silk they release, especially given that some species can build a complete web in as little as half an hour?

Presumably valves in the ducts of different types of silk glands open or close to control which types of silk are extruded from the corresponding spigots. Even in a given orb, the kinds of silk that are used to cement lines together are turned on and turned off hundreds of times in an extremely precise manner during the construction of a single web.

You mention that orb webs are neither the pinnacle of web evolution nor necessarily the optimally designed structures that they are often claimed to be. Most organismal traits are a product of history and contingency as much as natural and sexual selection. I might be asking you to speculate here, but, in your opinion, are there any particular evolutionary thresholds that spiders have not been able to cross that would make a big difference for web construction?

There is a small section in the book (Section 9.8) where I discuss web designs that are possible but that have not arisen in spiders. In general, they have used radial rather than rectangular arrangements of lines; I do not know whether the widespread adoption of and ensuing variations on rectangular arrangements would have made a big difference or not.

Do you find that technological advances have changed the way arachnologists work and the sorts of questions they ask?

Yes, very much so. Important techniques that have begun to be used and that have produced new kinds of data during my lifetime include electron microscopy (especially scanning electron microscopy), molecular comparisons to produce phylogenies, digital movies, virtual sections (“micro-CT scans”), and large scale, computerized data analysis. At the same time, fads for using these techniques have led to less frequent use of simpler but powerful types of observations such as study of the details of behaviour.

Producing a book of this scope must have been a tremendous job, and you remark that a thorough, book-length review of spider webs had yet to be written, despite more than a century of research on spiders. With the benefit of hindsight, would you embark on such an undertaking again?

I seriously underestimated how difficult it would be. I had written two books previously, both largely concerned with ideas, rather than being attempts to review previous work as was the case in this book. My previous experience did not prepare me for the challenges of reviewing and evaluating – and in some cases arguing against (hopefully sympathetically and constructively) – conclusions from previous work.

You mention this book’s coverage is inevitably idiosyncratic. What lacunae remain in our knowledge that future authors could fill with further work?

My major deficiencies are in the chemical and mechanical aspects of silk – a field that is currently very active and that will undoubtedly eventually (perhaps soon) result in book-length treatments. A second major blank space that I hope will be filled with future work is linking web construction behaviour to the slowly emerging but very important field of animal cognition. The many advantages of orb webs for studying the details such as errors and other difficult questions in the behaviour in animals whose behaviour has a major innate component (and probably little in the way of learning) have yet to be exploited.

Spider Webs: Behavior, Function, and Evolution
By: William Eberhard
Hardback | November 2020 | £59.99

All prices correct at the time of this article’s publication.

Buglife Q&A with Paul Hetherington

Buglife is the only organisation in Europe devoted to the conservation of all invertebrates. Invertebrates are currently facing an extinction crisis.
Today, thousands of invertebrate species are declining and many are heading towards extinction. Worldwide 150,000 species could be gone by 2050 if we do nothing. We spoke to Paul Hetherington at Buglife about the work they are doing to stop the extinction of invertebrates.

Can you tell us a little bit about the history of Buglife and what you consider to be your main goals?

The conservation movement grew during the 1990s, but there was no organisation specialising in invertebrates. This was brought sharply into focus by the creation of the UK Biodiversity Action Plan in 1994, when no organisation existed to fly the flag for invertebrates – to make sure their conservation needs were being looked after. A Feasibility Committee was established to look at the details of setting up an invertebrate conservation body, and ‘A Statement of Need for a New Organisation’ was produced. Twenty of the leading conservation organisations (including the RSPB and Wildlife Trusts) acknowledged that the conservation movement lacked a major spokesman for invertebrate conservation, and welcomed the establishment of one. The result was the foundation of Buglife in 2000, the only organisation in Europe devoted to the conservation of all invertebrates.

Buglife’s aim is to halt the extinction of invertebrate species and to achieve sustainable populations of invertebrates.

We are working hard to achieve this through:

– Promoting the environmental importance of invertebrates and raising awareness about the challenges to their survival.

– Assisting in the development of legislation and policy that will ensure the conservation of invertebrates.

– Developing and disseminating knowledge about how to conserve invertebrates.

– Encouraging and supporting invertebrate conservation initiatives by other organisations in the UK, Europe and worldwide.

– Undertaking practical conservation projects that will contribute to achieving our aim.

In an ideal world where funding for conservation was limitless, what would be your top priorities for ensuring the survival of invertebrates and rectifying the damage that has been done to their populations and habitats?

Putting connectivity back into the landscape. Invertebrates are suffering from a plethora of issues: habitat loss, pesticides and herbicides, climate change, isolation of habitat. Connecting up the remaining good habitat is the single most important change for invertebrates as they can escape natural or human made disaster where they live and can migrate to avoid extreme climate change. This is the principle behind Buglife’s B-Lines project that has plotted a route for connectivity between the best remaining invertebrate habitats across the UK.

On your website you feature the famous quote by David Attenborough that concludes with the terrifying line: “…if the invertebrates were to disappear, the world’s ecosystems would collapse.” Do you think that in general we still place too much emphasis on saving what is often referred to as the ‘charismatic megafauna’ and do not value the smaller animals and plants that are the backbone and life support of our world?

A look at how money is invested in saving species reveals that larger mammals are by far the biggest beneficiaries at over £60 per species whilst invertebrates the worst funded at under 6 pence per species. A sad reflection on how humans fail to understand that if we don’t look after the small creatures the big ones will disappear too, bottom-up conservation has far more likelihood of long term sustainability. Yes, tigers and similar have cute cuddly eyes but without invertebrates the food chains that they depend on would collapse and with them the megafauna would go too. Too often we take the invertebrates for granted as something that is just there, small and ‘insignificant’ forgetting that in reality they are small but irreplaceable foundations for the whole web of life that supports the megafauna and people too.

2020 has been an extremely challenging year for most individuals and organisations. How has the pandemic affected Buglife and the work that you are doing?

The Covid pandemic has had a massive impact upon all of us and Buglife have had to be extremely careful with project organisation and financial controls, to ensure that vital conservation work has been delivered safely and that our staff resource has been retained in gainful employment. Ways of working have changed with the closure of offices and a shift to home working for all made possible through recent investment in new IT systems. Most engagement activities have shifted from face to face to online platforms as have meetings to influence policy and media. Some of these enforced changes are likely to have a long term beneficial outcome in reducing our organisational carbon footprint and finding new ways of delivering training and engagement that can reach larger audiences. A few of the impacts have meant works being delayed a year such as surveys for specific invertebrates that are only around for short periods. It should also be recognised that new ways of working can place extra burden on staffing resources as meetings flow on without breaks so we have also looked to bring in external supports for staff when needed. The biggest negative impact has been the closure of most project funders to new applications over the pandemic, making it impossible to establish all the new projects hoped for in 2021.

What would you consider to be your greatest success as a charity?

This is a really tough question as over the last 20 years Buglife has achieved saving many sites for invertebrates from developments, banning extremely harmful chemicals, persuading governments to adopt pollinator strategies, but for sheer scale, B-Lines mapping completed across the entire UK has got to be the number one achievement, as there is now a route map for future interventions to ensure the long term survival of the small things that run the planet.

Finally, for anyone inspired to get involved in invertebrate conservation, how would you recommend that they do this?

Practical experience of conservation work is as important as qualifications, a sound knowledge of a few groups of invertebrates is a great extra to have but equally important is experience of public engagement, volunteer leadership and above all else an ability to multitask.

You can find out more about Buglife and the work they do from their website and by following them on Facebook and on Twitter

Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust Friends’ Day 2020

British Wildlife’s Assistant Editor Catherine Mitson joins the supporters of the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust (ARC) for their annual Friends’ Day. With exclusive site visits and Q&A sessions on the agenda, this year’s Friends’ Day was set to be a great event. Here, Catherine shares with us some of the highlights.

Thankfully, with the existence of Zoom, the ARC Friends’ Day 2020 could go ahead, albeit not its usual format. The Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust planned a jam-packed Saturday afternoon to give their supporters the opportunity to see what ARC has been up to and to learn more about Britain’s native reptile and amphibian species.

Woolmer Forest is one of the most extensive and diverse lowland heathlands in Hampshire and home to 12 out of our 13 native reptile and amphibian species, including the rare Smooth Snake and Sand Lizard. Excitingly Blackmoor Heath, a 20ha site in Woolmer Forest, has become ARC’s newest nature reserve after a year-long fundraising appeal. Once introduced to the ARC team (most of whom were sporting fun animal-themed virtual backgrounds) the first video began, and we were taken on a virtual tour of the new reserve.

A priority at Blackmoor Heath is to reintroduce the Natterjack Toad, extending its range in Hampshire. Reducing tree cover and creating ponds are a few examples of the work being undertaken here to support a reintroduced population of Natterjacks. Not only is this vital management for Natterjacks and many other heathland species, this has also led to the exposure of bronze age barrows, or burial mounds – Blackmoor Heath is not only important for wildlife, but historically too.

Blackmoor – by the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust

Next, Field Officers Ralph and Bryony took us to Crooksbury Common in Surrey, an important breeding site for Natterjack Toads. Bordered by a pine plantation, one of the major tasks here is to prevent the encroachment of pine trees, which if left unmanaged, would soon smother valuable heathland habitat. In the hope to restore good numbers of Natterjack Toads, the ARC team are also busy creating and maintaining large shallow ponds, critical for Natterjack breeding and egg-laying, as well as providing shelter for Natterjack adults during the cold winter months. We were also shown key Natterjack identification features, such as the distinctive yellow stripe that runs down the middle of their back.

Moving away from heathlands, we suddenly found ourselves on the dunes of Aberdovey, Wales to discover all about the Connecting the Dragons project. ARC staff and volunteers have been working hard to create exposed sand patches on the dunes here (socially distanced of course) to provide the reintroduced population of Sand Lizards with basking spots and egg-laying sites, as well as making next year’s surveying much easier!

Perhaps not common knowledge to many, there are actually two races of Sand Lizard: the Northern dune race and the Southern heathland race. The morphological differences between the two races were described, highlighting the distinctive identification features. For instance, the males of the Northern dune race tend to be much lighter when they first emerge from hibernation compared to those of the Southern heathland race.

Image by the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust

The final site visit video took us to Dorset. Designated as a Special Area for Conservation and a SSSI, Great Ovens, an ARC nature reserve in Wareham Forest since 1996, is a truly special site. Similarly to Crooksbury Common, a surrounding pine plantation and the threat of scrub invasion means that a sensitive management programme is necessary to maintain the important mix of wet and dry heathland. This is not only beneficial for the amphibians and reptiles on the site, including Adders, Smooth Snakes and Sand Lizards, but also for other species such as Dartford Warbler, Silver-studded Blue, and Scarce Chaser. This was a common theme – habitat management for reptiles and amphibians will have a positive knock-on effect for other species, particularly in declining heathland habitats.

Great Ovens – by the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust

Finally, Public Engagement Officer Owain took us out to find the rare Smooth Snake. Owain was successful in his search, and was able to show us a male Smooth Snake curled up safely underneath refugia (note that a license is required to monitor or handle this species). Owain went on to describe ARC’s ambitious four-year long Snake in the Heather project. Working in partnership with landowners, site managers and wildlife conservation charities, Snakes in the Heather endeavours to conserve the Smooth Snake across its range in southern England, as well as the lowland heathland habitat on which it, and many other species, depends.

Smooth Snake – by Chris Dresh

Throughout the Friends’ Day there were many opportunities for questions during the Q&A panel sessions; we learnt even more about ongoing ARC projects, the management of ARC’s nature reserves and the ecology of UK reptile and amphibian species. Many of the attendees were keen to know what they could do to help Britain’s reptiles and amphibian species and the ARC team enthusiastically provided us with information on how to get involved.

If you’re interested in becoming an ARC volunteer, or would like to become an ARC Friend to support their fantastic conservation work, you can find out more on their website.