Death of a special tree
Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:00:00 +0700 (Link)
Over the last three years, we have often enjoyed watching the
silver leaf monkeys wake up in the sparse white branches of a
tall Ilex cymosa which we could see from the front room of our
house. They would jump around lazily in the weak morning
light, sometimes wreathed in faint wisps of mist. The tree
also supported the twining stems of a Bauhinia liana, which
always topped the tree with metre-long flowering stalks. This
morning the rasping din of a chainsaw started nearby and
within a few minutes a sickening, leafy crash and thud told me
that a tree had come down. I immediately feared for the Ilex,
and rushing to the window. Anger flared, quickly smeared with
nauseous despair at my inability to prevent the daily cutting
of trees around the valley, all in the name of `development.'
Yet the bole split
just metres above the ground meaning that it was useless for
timber. Finding my way to the crown, I saw that it was in
fruit, with tiny pink and purple berries filled with pale
seeds. Goodbye to a special tree, and to the wonderful sight
of monkeys in the dawn.
APGIII tree available in Phylomatic
Tues, 10 Nov 2009 10:00:00 +0700 (Link)
The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group has just released their third
version. This tree is now available in the phylomatic2 or
tree-of-trees database, and an APG3 derived megatree is now
the default base tree in the online phylomatic. Many thanks to
Steve Hovick and Ken Whitney for coding and checking the
subtrees.
Borneo is burning
Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:00:00 +0700 (Link)
Woke up this morning to heavier than usual smell of smoke.
Looked out and visibility was down to several hundred metres.
I couldn't see Gunung Peramas across the valley, and when I
walked down to the beach, I couldn't see from one end to the
other. There was little breeze and I guess the offshore night
winds had carried smoke from far inland. A bad year for haze.
I guess the planes will stop flying soon.
The long dry season may mean a mast. I was fortunate to be up at Cabang Panti a few days ago, and there are hints of one, with flowering in masting species (e.g., Alangium). It was wonderful to be up at camp, although things were grim on the walk in (we were defeated on the first day by a huge fire in the forest near Tanjung Gunung) and on the way out (two huge, free-standing figs had just been cut down... no timber, no reason; this is just evil). I also hear of a recent seizure by Park Rangers of hundreds of kilos of bushmeat, including hornbills and orang utans, hunted by a party from Sanggau... they said they had a big party coming up! Not good if hunters are coming from that far. In fact, it feels like bad news for Nature today.
More on turtles
Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0700 (Link)
More good news. On Sunday the water near Pulau Datok was perhaps
the clearest I have ever seen it. Perhaps 5 m vis. We seem to be
between seasons, moving into `musim selatan.' I saw a turtle
under the water, perhaps 75 cm long, with several large barnacles.
It went too fast for me to note features (I'm not a good
turtle-spotter). It moved off to the SW. The water here is only
ca. 4 m deep to the mud and sand sea bottom. I also saw a large
juvenile batfish, a striking, black-and-white juvenile sweetlips,
possibly Plectorhinchus chaetodontoides, a surgeonfish (possibly
Acanthurus grammoptilus), and a puffer. The
densest schools of large sweetlips were over an old wreck.
Turtles
2009-03-04 (Link)
One more bit of good news. A large turtle was recently found
on the beach. I have never heard of one before, in three
years of being here. It would be interesting to canvass the
memories of the elders in the village about when they last
remember frequent turtles on the beach.
Fish-filled reef
2009-03-03 (Link)
We took a boat out this Sunday to a small rocky reef about an
hour off the coast. I was amazed by the size of fish still
remaining in this very over-fished sea. The biggest pelagic
was a 80-100 cm queenfish, hanging out around schools of
spotted scats, black-spotted snappers and large (30 cm)
fusiliers. Two or three other species of trevally and
mackerel appeared momentarily. On the reef, I saw the largest
grouper I have ever seen. Perhaps 100 cm long with a gape of
20 cm. Dissappeared into a maze of tunnels formed by the rock
boulders and boulder coral. Also many blue-spotted
rays. There was a field of bright orange encrusting sponges,
and the reef was surrounded by numerous white, orange and blue
whip corals which cover the sandy bottom of the sea here at 5 m
depth. On another reef, I saw tomato anemonefish in an
anemone. And the whole trip I was shadowed by a juvenile
golden trevally or two.
Gibbon pair still here
2009-03-01 (Link)
I've been worried that the gibbons which used to inhabit the
scrappy forest behind our house had finally fled from the
creeping development and logging. This morning, however,
clear and loud, I heard the call of a pair of gibbons just 100
m or so from the house. Yes! Not sure how they can `make a
living' here, since most of the remaining trees are
dry-fruited Ixonanthes.
University of Indonesia Science Day (2008-12-16)
2008-12-15 (Link)
I'll be giving a talk entitled, ``Indonesian biodiversity
informatics and the `the flat world,''' at this event
sponsored by the Dept of Maths and nat sciences of UI. The
Vice President of Indonesia, Drs. H. M. Jusuf Kalla will be
giving a key note speech. I'll post my talk later.
JS-Kit for commenting
2008-12-11 (Link)
What a great tool! Every page and every blog posting can get
its own comment engine. Very well thought out and
implemented. I'm starting to sprinkle the ability to comment
around my site. Maybe someone will then leave a comment ;-)
Basic data organization
2008-12-07 (Link)
I had the pleasure yesterday of meeting a very gifted, young,
local botanist. He had been collecting plants and making
vegetation plots for an international NGO in the peatswamp
forest nearby. We had a great chat, and asked about his plans
to analyse and publish his data. He had done a great deal of
work but the data did not yet hang together well. What I have
realized is that organizing biodiversity data is not simple.
It only appears simple after years of trial and error! I
recommended to him a simple data schema based on four tables
(here in pseudo-SQL): table photos (photoID*, indivID
references indiv.indivID); table indiv (indivID*, plotID
references plot.plotID, info, morphoID references
morpho.morphoID); table morpho (morphoID*, info, newestID
references morpho.morphoID); table coll (collID, indivID
references morpho.morphoID); table plot (plotID, info); From
these, cross-plot synonymy can be resolved, and the summary
tables needed for basic community analysis can be generated
(unique(morpho.newestID) vs. plot.plotID, and plot.plotID
vs. plot.info factors). A short workshop just teaching
elements of data management would be very useful. I should
also work up a simple OpenOffice Base database to distribute
as a template.
2007 News moved
2008-12-07 (Link)
I have archived this news feed for 2007.
Demo of APweb2
2008-11-13 (Link)
APweb has become an invaluable tool for botanical research and
education. The current format of `flat' HTML pages however
limits its integration with other informatics tools, and we
are now exploring options for migrating to a more flexible,
web-service oriented model for APweb version 2.
How to Plant a Forest: a SE Asian forest restoration manual
2008-11-04 (Link)
A superb handbook from an amazing project. Available for
download as a PDF.
Wallace symposium in Makassar
2008-10-31 (Link)
The Indonesian Academy of Sciences will host a meeting on A R
Wallace, in Makassar (Sulawesi) 10-13 Dec 2008.
Jeffrey Neilson's Blog from the Malay Archipelago
2008-10-31 (Link)
``An expedition to revisit key Wallace collecting
sites in the Malay Archipelago''