Kartering terrestrische Natura 2000 habitattypen; Botshol 2009

Momenteel worden voor de Nederlandse Natura 2000 gebieden beheerplannen opgesteld. Voor het formuleren van richtlijnen en maatregelen, alsmede om de ontwikkelingen rond de habitattypen en doelsoorten in de toekomst te kunnen evalueren, is het noodzakelijk om de uitgangssituatie ten aanzien van de habitattypen en doelsoorten goed te beschrijven. Ook de terrestrische vegetatie wordt door de grootste eigenaar in het gebied, de Vereniging Natuurmonumenten, met regelmaat beschreven, maar een eerdere analyse leerde dat de hiervoor gebruikte typologie niet eenduidig valt te vertalen naar Natura 2000 habitattypen. Daarom is in juni en juli 2009 een kartering van de terrestrische habitattypen uitgevoerd. De resultaten van deze kartering worden in dit rapport beschreven

Field testing and exploitation of genetically modified cassava with low-amylose or amylose-free starch in Indonesia

The development and testing in the field of genetically modified -so called- orphan crops like cassava in tropical countries is still in its infancy, despite the fact that cassava is not only used for food and feed but is also an important industrial crop. As traditional breeding of cassava is difficult (allodiploid, vegetatively propagated, outbreeding species) it is an ideal crop for improvement through genetic modification. We here report on the results of production and field testing of genetically modified low-amylose transformants of commercial cassava variety Adira4 in Indonesia. Twenty four transformants were produced and selected in the Netherlands based on phenotypic and molecular analyses. Nodal cuttings of these plants were sent to Indonesia where they were grown under biosafety conditions. After two screenhouse tests 15 transformants remained for a field trial. The tuberous root yield of 10 transformants was not significantly different from the control. Starch from transformants in which amylose was very low or absent showed all physical and rheological properties as expected from amylose-free cassava starch. The improved functionality of the starch was shown for an adipate acetate starch which was made into a tomato sauce. This is the first account of a field trial with transgenic cassava which shows that by using genetic modification it is possible to obtain low-amylose cassava plants with commercial potential with good root yield and starch quality

Biodiversity and pollination benefits trade off against profit in an intensive farming system

Agricultural expansion and intensification have boosted global food production but have come at the cost of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. Biodiversity-friendly farming that boosts ecosystem services, such as pollination and natural pest control, is widely being advocated to maintain and improve agricultural productivity while safeguarding biodiversity. A vast body of evidence showing the agronomic benefits of enhanced ecosystem service delivery represent important incentives to adopt practices enhancing biodiversity. However, the costs of biodiversity-friendly management are rarely taken into account and may represent a major barrier impeding uptake by farmers. Whether and how biodiversity conservation, ecosystem service delivery, and farm profit can go hand in hand is unknown. Here, we quantify the ecological, agronomic, and net economic benefits of biodiversity-friendly farming in an intensive grassland–sunflower system in Southwest France. We found that reducing land-use intensity on agricultural grasslands drastically enhances flower availability and wild bee diversity, including rare species. Biodiversity-friendly management on grasslands furthermore resulted in an up to 17% higher revenue on neighboring sunflower fields through positive effects on pollination service delivery. However, the opportunity costs of reduced grassland forage yields consistently exceeded the economic benefits of enhanced sunflower pollination. Our results highlight that profitability is often a key constraint hampering adoption of biodiversity-based farming and uptake critically depends on society’s willingness to pay for associated delivery of public goods such as biodiversity

The Emergence and Early Evolution of Biological Carbon-Fixation

The fixation of into living matter sustains all life on Earth, and embeds the biosphere within geochemistry. The six known chemical pathways used by extant organisms for this function are recognized to have overlaps, but their evolution is incompletely understood. Here we reconstruct the complete early evolutionary history of biological carbon-fixation, relating all modern pathways to a single ancestral form. We find that innovations in carbon-fixation were the foundation for most major early divergences in the tree of life. These findings are based on a novel method that fully integrates metabolic and phylogenetic constraints. Comparing gene-profiles across the metabolic cores of deep-branching organisms and requiring that they are capable of synthesizing all their biomass components leads to the surprising conclusion that the most common form for deep-branching autotrophic carbon-fixation combines two disconnected sub-networks, each supplying carbon to distinct biomass components. One of these is a linear folate-based pathway of reduction previously only recognized as a fixation route in the complete Wood-Ljungdahl pathway, but which more generally may exclude the final step of synthesizing acetyl-CoA. Using metabolic constraints we then reconstruct a “phylometabolic” tree with a high degree of parsimony that traces the evolution of complete carbon-fixation pathways, and has a clear structure down to the root. This tree requires few instances of lateral gene transfer or convergence, and instead suggests a simple evolutionary dynamic in which all divergences have primary environmental causes. Energy optimization and oxygen toxicity are the two strongest forces of selection. The root of this tree combines the reductive citric acid cycle and the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway into a single connected network. This linked network lacks the selective optimization of modern fixation pathways but its redundancy leads to a more robust topology, making it more plausible than any modern pathway as a primitive universal ancestral form

Grazing impact on butterflies in coastal dunes

International audienc

De vuurspindoder Eoferreola rhombica, een voor Nederland nieuwe spinnendoder, en haar bijzondere waard : de lentevuurspin Eresus sandaliatus (Hymenoptera: Pompilidae; Araneae: Eresidae)

In 1998 a female specimen of Eoferreola rhombica (Christ, 1791) was collected in a road-verge on the Veluwe. The nearest populations of this species are found in northern France and eastern Germany. It is possible that this insect was transported by traffic from one of these populations. However at the collection site a large population of the rare host spider Eresus sandaliatus (Martini & Goeze, 1778) is known to be present for many years. Therefore the presence of a population of E. rhombica cannot be excluded. Future observations have to reveal the status of this spider wasp in the Netherlands

Het behoud van wilde bijen in het landelijk gebied: is bloemen zaaien de oplossing?

De laatste tijd is er veel aandacht voor de achteruitgang van bijen. Er zijn inmiddels veel initiatieven om wilde bijen een handje te helpen, meestal door het inzaaien van bloemenmengsels. Maar profiteren wilde bijen hier wel van? Welke soorten hebben daar het meest baat bij? Bevordert dit ook de bestuiving van naastgelegen gewassen? En waar moet rekening mee gehouden worden bij het aanleggen en beheren van een goede bloemenstrook? Aan de hand van literatuuronderzoek is naar antwoorden gezocht