The annotated budak

WildSingapore's news feed on blogs, events/outings and news related to nature and conservation in Singapore. Click on the news categories for a list of headlines and links.

Don't miss the boat! Biodiversity Talks at the Botanic Gardens

In conjunction with Earth Day and World Biodiversity Day 2008, NParks is holding a series of biodiversity talks on natural habitats in Singapore. All are free and most are at the Botanic Gardens Botany Centre (near the entrance opposite Gleneagles Hospital):

Saturday, 3rd May 2008
Secret Shores of Singapore
Ria Tan
2pm, Function Hall, Botany Centre, Singapore Botanic Gardens

With a special focus on Cyrene Reef!

From Changi to Tuas, Sentosa to the Sisters Islands and beyond. Nemos, sea snakes, living corals and more. Ria will also share about some of the threats to our shores, and the many ways ordinary people CAN make a difference about our little-known shores. For a sample of the photos in the talk, see the wildsingapore flickr site.

Ria is not a scientist and is just an ordinary person who has been photographing the shores for the last 7 years. She is also co-author of the Chek Jawa Guidebook and Southern Shores guidesheet. She also volunteers as a guide with Chek Jawa, Pulau Semakau as well as wildfilms, the Naked Hermit Crabs and TeamSeagrass. She contributes to several blogs including wildfilms, wildsingapore news, wildsingapore happenings and the singapore celebrates our reefs blog.                                                                           

Tuesday, 6th May 2008
Seagrasses: Not just for Dugongs!
Siti Maryam Yaakub
11am, Function Hall, Botany Centre, Singapore Botanic Gardens

Mention ‘Seagrass’ and most people think: Food for dugongs! Seagrasses have long lived in the shadow of other more charismatic marine habitats like coral reefs and mangroves. But did you know that Singapore is home to extensive seagrass meadows and more than half the species of seagrasses found in the Indo-Pacific? Learn more about the role seagrasses play beyond that of ‘dugong food’. Join Siti for an insight into what seagrasses are really about and the wacky people who have embraced these green wonders of the ocean.

About the speaker: Siti Maryam is a Senior Biodiversity Officer with the Biodiversity Centre of NParks. She is a marine biologist by training and was one of the co-founders of TeamSeagrass, a volunteer group that monitors the health and status of Singapore's seagrasses. When she is not counting seagrass, Siti enjoys reading, tennis, experimental cooking and swimming with fish.                                                   

Saturday, 10th May 2008
The status and biology the Singapore Freshwater Crab, Johora singaporensis
Sivasothi N
2pm, Function Hall, Botany Centre, Singapore Botanic Gardens

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.

N. Sivasothi is an instructor at the Department of Biological Science more interested in otters 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.                                                

Tuesday, 13th May 2008
Life - To Give or Not To Give
Karen Teo
11am, Function Hall, Botany Centre, Singapore Botanic Gardens

Acts of compassion turns sour. Come May every year, domesticated animals are illegally released into the nature reserves and reservoirs in the hope of giving them life. But little do many realised that 90% of these domesticated animals end up tragically dead. In an urbanised society like Singapore, the existence of our native flora and fauna hang on a very thin thread. What can we do, as inhabitants of this planet, to save the extensive biodiversity that Mother Earth has so lovingly nurtured over millions of years?

Karen Teo works as a Senior Outreach Officer in Central Nature Reserve, National Parks Board. As an ex-teacher, she is passionate in nature conservation and marrying her teaching skills to share with all the importance of protecting what little natural heritage we have left, through talks, exhibitions, workshops etc.                                                                                                                                 

Saturday, 17th May 2008
Mad About Moths for Kids
Cicada Tree Eco-Place
2pm, Tanglin Core Information Counter, Singapore Botanic Gardens
*This interactive session is limited to 30 children. Please RSVP to lim_wei_ling@nparks.gov.sg by 9th May 2008.

Cicada Tree Eco-Place will conduct Mad About Moths for Kids to share its fascination with our less-known friends, moths. We will offer two concurrent 1.5 hour sessions on moths called Mad about Moths—one for adults and one for kids.

Mad about Moths for Kids will teach kids aged between 5 and 9 how to recognize moths, the differences between moths and butterflies, the life cycle of a moth, why moths are important members of our living planet, and what we can do to make a difference to moths! Children will also get a chance to take quick walk in the Gardens to see some butterflies so as to learn the major differences between moths and butterflies. This session will be fun and engage a young learner.

Cicada Tree Eco-place is a new non-profit, non-governmental organization that promotes nature, culture and eco-living through environmental education. Founded in Singapore in 2007, and managed by volunteer educators and environmentalists, it is named after a native freshwater swamp plant whose habitat is locally endangered, Ploiarium alternifolium (Cicada Tree or Riang Riang).                                                

Saturday, 17th May 2008
Mad about Moths: Emperor Moths & Friends from SE Asia & the Amazon
Dr Preston Murphy
2pm, Classroom 3, Botany Centre, Singapore Botanic Gardens

Dr Preston Murphy will talk about "Mad about Moths: Emperor Moths & Friends from SE Asia & the Amazon" to highlight the beauty of moths in Asia as well as in South America. This talk, targeted at adult nature lovers, will focus on the diversity of large moths and dispel the myth that all moths are dull in colour and unattractive.

Dr Preston Murphy is former President of Lectret Precision Pte Ltd., Singapore, and continues to consult with the company on communications products. He and his wife Mireille are avid eco-travellers and have been to places as wild as Papua New Guinea to look for the birds of paradise. He is a passionate nature photographer, specialising in moths and butterflies.

Barnacles?

Bugs in the bathroom and botanic gardens

Beetle that waved at my duck while he was being watered.

A goondu told me it's a sac spider. Heard these have very nasty bites.

Shield bug nymph and Lycosid (?) spider at the Botanic Gardens.

Probably a soldier fly (Stratiomyidae). A number of this nearly inch-long species were perching on broad-leafed shrubs by the path, pretending to be wasps.

Knob knob

A closer at the knobbly sea stars of Cyrene reveals that the knobs are actually purplish to brown. In the photos you can also see the madreporite, which is a dark porous spot that acts as a sieve to regulate the movement of water in and out of the animal's vascular system. 

The sea stars on the reef also display much morphological variability. Some are dumpy like cartoon characters, others are sleek and sharp with hotrod colours. The circle of knobs on the central disc and ridge of the arms range from well-spaced evil looking 'thorns' to limp toppings on a poorly-baked cookie. Small teacup sized animals are cute and squat, while somewhat larger specimens seem to be suffering from the gawky trauma of adolescence. The drab star above looks a bit different from the rest though, with a well-define pentagonal line on its aboral surface. 

Maybe we'll find knobbly brittle stars too one day! Or wilder, hydra-like monsters resembling 'shaggy rugs covered with bear traps'...

Home on the green

On the tentacled folds of a carpet anemone, this male shrimp sat facing his slightly larger partner, who carries a bopyrid isopod in her gill chamber. Clinging with jointed legs, they seemed to be performing a bobbing dance, rocking to and fro and swaying slightly more than the water warranted. On their cnidarian home, the pair enjoy comfort and relative safety in a soft bed of stinging tentacles that serve as sentinels and on occasion snacks for the transparent crustaceans.

The size, shape and extent of the white markings on the carapace and orange spots on the telson appear to to be unique to each individual, with the white stripe that joins the tiny eyes being the main chromatic constant. Their emerald hosts, in sizes from tea saucer to dinner plate, occupy sporadic pools on the seagrass lagoon of Cyrene, where the  fringing reef captures sediment to elevate the sea floor and offer visiting monkeys a brief glimpse of life below the waves. Unlike free-ranging crabs and prawns that duck to shelter at the approach of a shadow, these glassy frames with their delicate claws tinged with purple remain bold and betray no signs of distress on this island of sinking hope.

LOLZCyrene

Shells, spines and stings

Like the dozen well-armed policemen with three patrol cars and riot van at the carpark, the crepuscular citizens of Changi venture out in the darkness with a full set of armour and arsenal. Because you never know what you might be encountering for the very first, or last, time. For this noble volute, a trip to the shore could mean a one-way ticket into a pail and thereafter a pot. One of the larger species of marine snail found in local waters, Voluta nobilis is a predator of clams and other bivalves that failed to entomb themselves deeply enough in the sediment. With the patience of prophets, the volute engulfs the hapless valves with its ample body until the halves open for want of oxygen. I often come across their shells with anomuran occupiers but this was the first time I saw a live animal, with its striking black-and-yellow mantle and siphon. With luck, it won't be the last encounter with a duck for the snail, for its vivid flesh and that of its even rarer cousin the baler shell are sought after by souls tired of the usual molluscan fare of cockles and conches. You could say, everything can eat but eat everything liao, there will be nothing left to eat...   

A shell much less savoured in sauce is the moon snail, which like the volute is a hunter of fellow molluscs. The phantom forms of white-shelled Naticids are common on Changi, gliding over the grains with their mantle fully extended over a globose shell. Sometimes mistaken for a grotesque slug, their hard shell is revealed only when the animal is poked or probed by curious fingers, upon which it retreats into its mobile home and seals the aperture with a hard operculum to catch up on cable and change its facebook status. If forced to remain inside for too long, the snail is wont to suffocate, for the act of stuffing its immense body into the the compact shell involves the expulsion of much water. They much prefer to let it all hang out and plough their way through sand and silt in search of juicy flesh in hard packages. Unfortunate clams or button snails receive a ravenous embrace and an unwelcome drilling into their living room that allows the moon snail to plunge in and rasp the shell clean of all occupants. Besides the usual pale shadows, we found a bright orange individual this morning, which boasts cool racing stripes in white.   

Tiny button shells often fall prey to Naticids, and their vacated spirals are quickly claimed by puny hermit crabs with frilly antennae. The little anomurans are sadly little higher up the food chain, for these scavengers are heavily fed upon by swimming crabs, moon crabs, fish and larger shrimp. Those who grow out of collecting buttons move on to whelks and Naticids, and when the coast is clear, engage in petty thievery of mates, with the larger males grabbing onto the shells of females or skulking around a potential pair to steal a suit. 

With their prickly demeanour, sea urchins have far less turbulent love lives. In fact, it's debated whether they love life at all, for their spiny tests preclude mutual physical contact and allow only the remote meeting of gametes in mid-water. Pencil urchins with their thick, serrated spines come with a byzantine array of secondary spines, roving tube feet and stalked pedicellariae that probably can't reach far enough to remove the tube worms that have settled near the tips of the primary spikes.

In much greater numbers occur the white Salmacis urchins which graze in loose herds all over the shore. Many were sitting high and dry by the litter line, ruminating on their ill-luck in silence under a meagre cloak of seaweed. The rest assembled in illegal volumes to tempt fate with the crush of a bootie. Their complacent hubris and fashionable vanity fit their namesake, who turned his mythical back on chastity to ravish an unwilling nymph. 

With nowhere to go but down under, bizarre anemones spread their harpooned arms over the sand to ensnare blundering creatures. The most alien-looking of the night's lot, these cnidarians have a broad oral disc with a mouth bearing stripes that create the impression of fanged jaws. My duck decided against testing the pale ring of long tentacles, which look considerably more potent that the merely sticky stings of carpet anemones. It's probably wiser not to mess with a thing with the name of a wildflower but the biting humour of fair Charybdis...   

"wat u looking at, pervy duck?"

Food on the flat

The lush lawns of fern-like Halophila spinulosa and jumbo tablespoons of Halophila ovalis along Changi's seaward edge offer a vast habitat for countless marine creatures. As their rhizomes crawl under the sea bottom, they bind the substrate with a network of roots and bladed shoots that keep the buried sediment from clouding the water column. Alas, the slow and steady work of these soft biofilters is no match for the might of dredging vessels and excavators that plunge deep into the coastal mud to forge channels and mine sand. Natural things, as always, must give way to the needs of human nature.

Between the sandy fingers carved by waves in a cul-de-sac, pools of swimming and scampering beasts scatter before our feet. Young flower crabs dash about at every turn of the head, some paddling away furiously while others sink into the soft grains. Better buried alive than caught dead is also the motto of the moon crabs who vanish under the sand with the speed of gravediggers. With bright eyes that sparkle in our torchlights, juvenile prawns with green and red carapaces dance in the dark, committing minute murder on the sea floor. Like the crabs, they also seek shelter in Changi Below but with less aplomb, as their heads and tails often show up still after a hasty scramble.

Small rabbitfish prey on algae in the shallows, before they grow up to become browsers beneath piers and serve their anointed fate as steamed bearers of spring berries. Sharing their pools are miniature versions of larger beasts – scorpionfish, stargazers, flatheads, sole, flounder and filefish – who spend their youth in the relative safety of coastal waters before they reach harvestable lengths. But as littoral landscapes in this region succumb to the lure of luxury homes and the lifestyles of the rich and clueless, there should be no surprise that the fruit of the sea has less room to frolick and found new generations. Is it possible that the aquatic ape is no less a sotong than this rotund squid that landed on my foot in failing to see that his appetite for creative destruction feeds a hunger that the sea can now barely sate?