New Zealand beaches have been visited by three yellow-bellied sea snakes in two weeks. Is this snakegeddon?

Our bird-based nation has been shaken to its core by the sightings of not one, not two, but three yellow-bellied sea snakes on our pristine beaches in the space of only two weeks. Two were found in Northland, but the third was found much further south, on the Manawatū coast. It was alive, but died as a local family drove it to Palmerston North. 

All three were yellow-bellied sea snakes, the most commonly spotted snakes in New Zealand. Clinton Duffy, a marine technical advisor at DoC, explained that three snakes in two weeks is not unusual. According to the DoC website between six and 10 snakes reported each year, but Duffy admitted there are sometimes a few more than that. They show up mostly around Northland, but they’ve been spotted as far down as the Cook Strait. In 2016, three of these snakes washed up in Taranaki alone.

“I wouldn’t be worried about it,” he said.

DoC will cordon off an area containing a snake until nature takes its course. “Our staff aren’t supposed to touch them, but if they get brought in in a bucket or something we’ll deal with it.” DoC released the Tokerau snake in an isolated location. He would prefer people did not collect the snakes in buckets. “We recommend that everybody, including our own staff, steer clear of them.”

The snakes are extremely venomous and should not be handled. They’re unlikely to bite you, but if they do – you’re probably dead. There’s no anti-venom available in our country, as it has a short shelf life. “They’ve got tiny, rear-mounted fangs, so they have to get you in a really vulnerable part of the body, like the webbing between your finger and thumb,” said Duffy.

“I wouldn’t touch it, that’s for sure.”

There’s no record of anyone in New Zealand being bitten by a sea snake.

It’s not unusual for sea snakes to wash up in Northland, Tauranga, or Taranaki. The upper North Island is riddled with good deposit spots for warm ocean currents, which flow south from the tropical waters the snakes breed in and occasionally take one along for the ride.

The snakes are considered “native” under the Wildlife Act 1953 (because they get here on their own), so they come under the jurisdiction of the Department of Conservation. However, DoC does not employ any trained snake handlers. 

Because they’re native, it’s illegal to kill or harass a sea snake. Just steer clear and call DoC. Yellow-bellied sea snakes spend their lives at sea, so one wriggling around on the sand is likely close to death; it’s injured or experiencing thermal shock in our colder temperatures.

The other snake species spotted in New Zealand waters is usually the rare banded sea krait (also known as the yellow-lipped sea krait, for its yellow lips). One lonely Saint Giron’s sea krait was identified in 1925, and has never been seen since. Both these species are extremely venomous.

The difference between sea kraits and sea snakes is that kraits wiggle on land to rest, digest, and reproduce. If you see a banded sea krait on land – they’re recognisable by their black-and-white bands and yellow mouth – it might not be dying. Exercise extreme caution.

Duffy said that while warming oceans could lead to yellow-bellied sea snakes developing a breeding population nearby, there’s little chance of us running into them. “They’re an oceanic species, so we wouldn’t be seeing them on land.” If we did, they’d be on their last legs.

Kraits are unlikely to move here in any significant numbers. “The kraits are really dependent on coral reefs,” he said. “They’re unlikely to establish any sort of population here in New Zealand.”

If you spot a snake, call DoC on 0800 362 468.

There’s a clear researcher bias towards visually striking plants, and it’s not good for the ecosystem, writes Kingsley Dixon of Curtin University

We all love gardens with beautiful flowers and leafy plants, choosing colourful species to plant in and around our homes. Plant scientists, however, may have fallen for the same trick in what they choose to research.

Our research, published today in Nature Plants, found there’s a clear bias among scientists toward visually striking plants. This means they’re more likely chosen for scientific study and conservation efforts, regardless of their ecological or evolutionary significance.

To our surprise, colour played a major role skewing researcher bias. White, red and pink flowers were more likely to feature in research literature than those with dull, or green and brown flowers. Blue plants — the rarest colour in nature — received most research attention.

But does this bias matter? Plants worldwide are facing mass extinction due to environmental threats such as climate change. Now, more than ever, the human-induced tide of extinction means scientists need to be more fair-handed in ensuring all species have a fighting chance at survival.

Hidden plants in carpets of wildflowers

I was part of an international team that sifted through 280 research papers from 1975 to 2020, and analysed 113 plant species found in the southwestern Alps in Europe.

The Alps is a global biodiversity hotspot and the subject of almost 200 years of intensive plant science. But climate change is now creating hotter conditions, threatening many of its rarest species.

Carpeted in snow for much of the year, the brief yet explosive flowering of Europe’s alpine flora following the thaw is a joy to behold. Who was not bewitched when Julie Andrews danced in an alpine meadow in its full spring wildflower livery in The Sound of Music? Or when she sung “edelweiss”, one of the charismatic plants of the Alps that heralds spring?

Hidden in these carpets of bright blue gentians and Delphiniums, vibrant daisies and orchids, are tiny or dull plants. This includes small sedges (Carex species), lady’s mantle (Alchemilla species) or the snake lily (Fritillaria) with its sanguine drooping flowers on thin stems.

Many of these “uncharismatic plants” are also rare or important ecological species, yet garner little attention from scientists and the public.

The plants scientists prefer

The study asked if scientists were impartial to good-looking plants. We tested whether there was a relationship between research focus on plant species and characteristics, such as the colour, shape and prominence of species.

Along with a bias towards colourful flowers, we found accessible and conspicuous flowers were among those most studied (outside of plants required for human food or medicine).

This includes tall, prominent Delphinium and larkspurs, both well-known garden delights with well-displayed, vibrant flowers that often verge on fluorescent. Stem height also contributed to how readily a plant was researched, as it determines a plant’s ability to stand out among others. This includes tall bellflowers (Campanula species) and orchids.

But interestingly, a plant’s rarity didn’t significantly influence research attention. Charismatic orchids, for example, figured prominently despite rarer, less obvious species growing nearby, such as tiny sedges (Cypreaceae) and grass species.

The consequences of plant favouritism

This bias may steer conservation efforts away from plants that, while less visually pleasing, are more important to the health of the overall ecosystem or in need of urgent conservation.

In this time of urgent conservation, controlling our bias in plant science is critical. While the world list of threatened species (the IUCN RED List) should be the basis for guiding global plant conservation, the practice is often far from science based.

We often don’t know how important a species is until it’s thoroughly researched, and losing an unnoticed species could mean the loss of a keystone plant.

In Australia, for example, milkweeds (Asclepiadaceae) are an important food source for butterflies and caterpillars, while grassy mat rushes (dull-flowered Lomandra species) are now known to be the home for rare native sun moths. From habitats to food, these plants provide foundational ecological services, yet many milkweed and mat rush species are rare, and largely neglected in conservation research.

Likewise, we can count on one hand the number of scientists who work on creepy fungal-like organisms called “slime molds”, compared to the platoons of scientists who work on the most glamorous of plants: the orchids.

Yet, slime molds, with their extraordinary ability to live without cell walls and to float their nuclei in a pulsating jelly of cytoplasm, could hold keys to all sorts of remarkable scientific discoveries.

We need to love our boring plants

Our study shows the need to take aesthetic biases more explicitly into consideration in science and in the choice of species studied, for the best conservation and ecological outcomes.

While our study didn’t venture into Australia or New Zealand, the principle holds true: we should be more vigilant in all parts of the conservation process, from the science to listing species for protection under the law. (Attractiveness bias may affect public interest here, too.)

So next time you go for a bushwalk, think about the plants you may have trodden on because they weren’t worth a second glance. They may be important to native insects, improve soil health or critical for a healthy bushland.

Kingsley Dixon is John Curtin Distinguished Professor, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.