Where’s the ‘Fun’ in Fungi? An Overview of Fungi and Their Role

In this episode we introduce some fundamental aspects of soil. Later we will report on the nature of the soil of Bishops meadow. The nature of an area’s soil can be useful in understanding what sort of ecosystem it may potentially support.

Hoverflies are not a terribly prominent part of Bishop Meadow’s insect fauna but they are probably more significant than one might think.

The genus Senecio is in the Daisy family (Asteraceae or Compositae) which comprises over 1000 species. Of the species native to Britain, six are called ‘ragwort’ - S. jacobaea, Common Ragwort, is the species we will deal with here.

Photosynthesis is the process that has made life on earth as we know it possible.

The notion of what a ‘species’ is is widely understood at some level. Man has always distinguished between and named the plants and animals around him but a formal naming system with rules and objectives was first established in the last decades of the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries.

Biodiversity is a word at the top of the news agenda but its meaning and its ecological significance is not widely understood. It is not merely a list of species. Beyond its appearance a species represents a collection of functions in a net-work or community of organisms.