Argh! It’s a hornet?! (No, it’s only a mummy potter wasp)

A student of mine was MSN-ing me questions about out module and when she finished told me about a recent incident in her house. A flying insect was building a nest in their home and they were nervous about it. After a few calls describing the nest, they were told it was a hornet’s nest. With her mum freaking out anyway, her dad closed the windows to prevent repeat visits of the insect and destroyed the nest. They found blue and green grub inside.

So she asked me about it and I told her about potter wasps. She sent me these photos and its identity was confirmed - a potter wasp mummy!

So I explained essentially that the harmless mummy wasp had been building each cell by harvesting little clay bits from around the estate - you can see where she dropped some bits. Two of the cells were complete and she was working on a third. She would have been hunting for caterpillars to paralyse with her venom and transport back to the third cell. This fresh meat is for the as yet unhatched egg she would lay later. The “blue and green grub” they saw in the broken down cells were probably the prey. Finally when all the cells are complete, mummy wasp will cement the lot up and fly away.

I pointed her to my old blog posts on potter wasps, including the one at my door in 2005. She found it fascinating! It was a pity she was not able to observe the process to completion - if successful, she would have eventually seen a tiny hole announcing the emergence of the young wasp. But she explained, harmless or not, her mum was freaking out anyway! It’s not an uncommon reaction for urban Singaporeans. Perhaps if she tells her mum the story, it might make a difference if a wasp ever visits again one day.

I’m waiting for a revisit!

Thansk to yels.

Talk to SCSC on the impact of marine trash

“Biodiversity in Singapore and the threat of marine trash,” by N. Sivasothi a.k.a. Otterman,
Coordinator, International Coastal Cleanup Singapore

Singapore Command and Staff College, SAFTI MI
Friday, 16th May 2008: 5.30pm.

About the talk: Singapore is still host to patches of coastal and marine ecosystems which are home to otters, dugongs, sea stars, octopus, dolphins, hundreds of species of fish, sea snakes, turtles and even the odd croc or two! Creatures new to science are still being discovered today and naturalists are regularly delighted by encounters with a variety of creatures. A supportive public is increasingly engaged and hear about the visitors who are still excited about Chek Jawa today.

A barrage of pressures threaten all of this - development, poaching and environmental accidents, and this is on-going. This talk examines an uncommon element - marine trash. Plastics are so impactful in the world’s oceans today that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced (2004), “Marine trash, mainly plastic, is killing more than a million seabirds and 100,000 mammals and sea turtles each year”.

For 17 years now, volunteers with the annual International Coastal Cleanup Singapore have removed up to 11 tonnes of trash annually in just 90 mins. The day’s categorisation of trash contributes to a global snapshot of the curseof our oceans. In Singapore, almost 90% of this is plastic with almost two-thirds originates from land. Abandoned nets amplify the impact by entangling and killing birds, snakes, crabs, horseshoe crabs and fish. In separate exercises, volunteers often remove 100 or more endangered horseshoe crabs from “ghost nets” in our mangroves.

We’ve had bright moments - after a decade of cleanups at the Buloh-Kranji mangroves, seedlings are now growing where plastic once choked the shores. More than 3,000 individuals from over 40 organisations have taken to year-round cleanups, and without invitation too! The global and local data has triggered further action by the media, groups, organisations and institutes.

About the speaker: N. Sivasothi, a.k.a. ‘Otterman’ is an instructor at National University of Singapore. The mangroves have been the backdrop to his research, education and conservation activities with the habitat, crabs and otters from the late 1980’s. He coordinated his first mangrove cleanup in 1997 and never stopped. The ICCS Otters, a team of volunteers, have emerged from the cleanups to assist in this continually growing programme.

Talk to public on the freshwater crab project, Sat 10th May 2008: 2pm

To celebrate Earth Day and World Biodiversity Day this year, NParks Conservation Division is organising a four-week Biodiversity Talk Series. Jeffrey Low goes first on 22 Apr 2008.

Biodiversity Talk 06
“The status and biology the Singapore Freshwater Crab, Johora singaporensis,” by N. Sivasothi.

Function Hall, Botany Centre, Singapore Botanic Gardens
10th May 2008: 2.00 pm

About the talk - True freshwater crabs have evolved to be completely independent of the marine environment and possess unique characteristics as a result. Many large freshwater streams are home to endemic species and Singapore Island is no exception. The freshwater crab diversity here has been well reported as a result of Peter Ng’s studies in the 1980’s. One crab in particular, was especially celebrated – the endemic Singapore Freshwater Crab, Johora singaporensis. Since that taxonomic examination, little else has been revealed about the crab, partly due to concerns about impacting the small but endangered population. In a recent study, aspects of the population biology, distribution and status of J. singaporensis were studied. This talk discusses the historical discovery, reports highlights of the recent study and discusses conservation implications for the future.

About the speaker – N. Sivasothi is an instructor at the Department of Biological Science more interested in otter and mangroves but Inadvertently spent a lot of time in freshwater and peat swamp habitats in the early 90’s on zoological expeditions with Peter Ng. This recent examination of the freshwater crabs in Singapore by both was due to the supervision demands of honours student Daniel Ng.

Notice the subtle swipe at Daniel? He has to be present so I’ll have to be polite.

STB using WildSingapore.com and Yesterday.sg feeds

Wild Singapore’s Ria Tan noticed a spike in her readership. Scrutiny of the data revealed the main source to be the Uniquely Singapore website. When she sends me the link and I click to see that Yesterday.sg has also been added to this “What to see” page.

Both webpage owners/editor/community are elated that their feeds are reaching out to an even wider audience and that a government agency realises these logs do provide excellent resources for visitors.

Yes, this is certanly excellent indeed! I did, however, feel that STB, or probably rather their webpage vendor, should have clicked the “Contact Me” link on each page and let these hardworking individual/groups know.

It would have been gracious!

Riding the female

Male spider mates with female while she is busy with a bee (Stoliczka’s Crab Spider males are known to ride the back of females prior to mating for several days). See the Tiomanese’s blog for an excellent sequence of photos!

Dan speaks to marine volunteers

Dan Ritttschof spoke to marine volunteers mainly about pheromones and sex in marine organisms. The responsive crowd had a good time with a lot of lovely stories delivered with wonderful pace. I realised too the influence he must have had on me, from more than a decade ago, for my bit on chemical communication in the animal behaviour class is easily the largest section under animal communication.

See Ria’s post at the Wildfilms blog

Seeing how he has decades of investigation, reading and teaching, it was as fun as I had expected it to be. He targetted delivery for the layman so it was a relaxing talk for the bunch who turned up after work.

Inter-tidal volunteers are resourceful and even at a seminar, so two brought loads of food so I abandoned my day-old coffee and cold sandwich.

After that we sat around chatting with Jon Siggurdsson and after Ladybug burnt the keys off Cyn’s keyboard, I learnt wee were heading to “far west coast” to makan. We dropped off the well fed speaker before heading home. That mood and conversation was reminiscent of the 90’s for me so it was very pleasant!

And Dan was happy he got to deliver a helpful towards more story-telling amongst his fellow shore-lovers!

Dan and his aposematic mee goreng! (Photo by Cynthia Lee)

Dan Rittschof and the Duke University Urban Tropical Ecology field course, 2005-2008

Dan Rittschof has had a long association with Singapore and NUS, dating back to the early 90’s. I first met him at a seminar in which he talked about the hundreds of fiddler crabs in the inter-tidal habitats at North Carolina.

Amongst his many activities is an annual field trip with the small Urban Ecology class from Duke University. Each year I take the students to the mangrove at night in a conspirational exercise with Dan. The experience provides a dramatic contrast to the things the students have seen in the rest of Singapore. It has always been fruitful, as was last night.

Here is a roundup of most of the blog posts. We might need this for something later on. My favourite is “Bucket Boy.”

Duke University: Department of Biology: Graduate Level Biology Course 216. Sojourn in Singapore: Urban Tropical Ecology. The mix of human ecology, tropical diversity, disturbed habitats and invasive species in Singapore. How Singapore maintains and enhances the quality of life of its citizens while radically modifying its environment. Research on politics, management or biology. Travel to Singapore required. Taught in Beaufort. Consent of instructor required. Instructor: Dan Rittschof. 3 units.

2008

• “Mandai Mangroves with Dan Rittschof’s Urban Ecology class,” by N. Sivasothi. Otterman speaks, 21 Mar 2008.
• “Singapore,” by Stan Rule, M.D. Mar 2008.

2007

• “MacRitchie to Bukit Timah today,” by N. Sivasothi. Otterman speaks, 18 Feb 2007.
• “Sisters with Dan & Gang,” by tidechaser. tHE tiDE cHAsER, 21 Feb 2007.
• “Sisters Island with Dr Dan,” by Ria Tan. Wildfilms, 20 Feb 2007.
• “Trip to Big Sisters,” by Siyang. Urban Forest, 20 Feb 2007.
• “Soujourn to Singapore and MORE.” Blog by Ais Kachang or “the Gang” (Duke students), Feb - Apr, 2007.
• “Dr Dan in Singapore.” By Dan Rittschof, Feb-Mar 2007.

2006

• “Mandai mangroves,” by N. Sivasothi. Otterman speaks, 04 Mar 2006.
• “Selatium brocki eating a caterpillar,” by N. Sivasothi. Otterman speaks, 04 Mar 2006.
• “More than 100 horsehoe crabs rescued from gill net at Mandai,” by N. Sivasothi. Habitatnews, 13 Mar 2005.
• “A day out at Kusu Island (1 March 2006),” by Loh Tse Lynn. Blue Water Volunteers, 04 Apr 2006.

2005

• “Bucket Boy,” by N. Sivasothi. Otterman speaks, 13 Mar 2005.
• “Talking to Duke students,” by N. Sivasothi. Raffles Museum news, 17 Mar 2005.
• “CJ with Prof Dan…Dr. Dan!” By Ria Tan, 15 Mar 2005.

Mandai Mangroves with Dan Rittschof’s Urban Ecology class

20 Mar 2008 - It was time for my annual trek with Dan’s students to introduce Mandai mangroves. Some tales later, for I must go crash now. And then there are students reports to read when I wake…

Dog-faced water snake

Episesarma singaporense

Selatium brocki

Mangrove huntsman

A huntsmen spider up on an Avicennia sp. tree

Dan pondering; we had the students lead them out after that

Students figured their way out under watchful eyes

The Traffic jam at Woodlands Road stretched past Kranji MRT

Briskwalked out to Kranji MRT and just in time for the bus too!

Regrouped at the Woodlands Road junction - had to check I still had everyone

Mission accomplished with no casualties…

Views from the office environs

Egrets behind the bus stop

Looming in the night these days:

Happy 4th anniversary, Hantu bloggers!

Fourth anniversary date is the 15th of March.

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