Own Grown Gardening

Since my last post about harlequin ladybirds as invasive species here in the UK, I've been reading more widely about this topic. My curiosity takes me on all sorts of twists and turns. I just love it! Along my travels, I stumbled upon the concept of ' Biotic Homogenisation '. This isn't a term I knew previously, so I thought others might be in the same boat. It is the phenomenon of two or more ecological communities (assemblages of species) becoming more alike over time.  This occurs through invasions of species into new areas triggering extinctions of others. You're probably already seeing how this connects back to the beautiful, but worrisome,  harlequin ladybird in my last post. I'll show you how this concept works through the simplified sequence of foody photos below. First, imagine the orange and green saucers below are two islands. The communities of species, symbolised by the fruit and veg, on each of these islands evolved in splendid isolation from one...

I find myself thinking a lot this week about introduced species. When I say 'introduced' species, I mean non-native ones intentionally or unintentially introduced into an area by people. I think this topic is on my mind due to the number of  harlequin ladybirds ( Harmonia axyridis ) I'm finding in my garden this autumn. This species was purposefully introduced to  mainland Europe from Asia as biological pest control. It was released in France in 1982 for this purpose. I took all the photos above over the past couple weeks in my back garden among the raspberry patch mostly. I wanted to capture the amazing variety of colour variations within this one species.  These little insects are largely welcomed in my garden as they keep down the aphid population, but they are a species I simultaneously look upon with a degree of unease. This is because they are viewed by many as not just an introduced species but also a vilified invasive one on our shores. It was first recorded in...