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Finding that Norfolk butterfly has been distinct subspecies for 200,000 years could transform conservation approach
The endangered swallowtail butterfly Papilio machaon britannicus, which is only regularly found breeding in Britain on the Norfolk Broads, has been a distinct subspecies for at least 200,000 years, according to a study.
Smaller, darker in colour and much rarer than the continental swallowtail, britannicus was previously considered to have developed its distinctive form during its confinement in the wetlands of eastern England over the last 8,000 years, after the flooding of Doggerland.
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Ailsworth, Cambridgeshire: It’s hard enough to find the crested cow-wheat, it would be even harder were it not for one far-sighted warden
Before 7am, the heat is already pressing down. I’ve come out early for my annual pilgrimage to a local colony of crested cow‑wheat, Melampyrum cristatum. On each side of the narrow path, orchids stand among the grasses, overtopped by the pale pink froth of common valerian flowers, whose scent always puts me in mind of sugared almonds. Stock doves call gently from an oak. Around my boots, grasshoppers and crickets fizz and spring aside.
In among it, to my excitement, is a tangled abundance, thousands of plants jostling with mats of wild liquorice. The flowers repay close attention – soft primrose-coloured tubes with plush mouths, stacked one above another, flushing magenta with age, each held in a purplish bract, elegantly curved and sharply toothed. This is the crest that gives the plant both its common and scientific names.
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Cooling down has become political amid record highs, as experts say row is distracting from work of protecting lives
As the afternoon heat rose to a dizzying 41.7C (107F) in eastern Brandenburg on Sunday, taking German temperatures to unprecedented highs, Mario, 65, took precautions but did not panic. Two years ago, a fierce heatwave had prompted him to buy a powerful device that few Germans own: an air conditioning unit.
“The summers are slowly getting warmer,” says the retired handyman in Neuzelle on the German-Polish border, whose bungalow is now among the 6% of German homes with fixed air-conditioning. “And as you get older, the heat gets harder to endure.”
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Huge numbers of blackchin tilapia, a fish native to west Africa, are wreaking havoc among Thailand’s river ecosystems. Experts – and some chefs – are seeking sustainable solutions
The menu at Kor-Tae seafood restaurant, in Thailand’s Samut Prakan province, is filled with Thai classics – from tom yum talay, a fragrant hot and sour soup, to spicy larb salads. But the restaurant’s chef is also experimenting with a more controversial ingredient: blackchin tilapia.
“People are hesitant, but once they try it – [they say] it’s delicious,” says owner Adisorn Jamsuksaward, who has been offering the non-native fish free of charge to friends who request it.
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Cornell Lab for Ornithology plans data linkup between app and population monitoring on eBird platform
The Merlin bird ID app will allow users to feed real-time bird identifications into one of the world’s biggest citizen-science biodiversity projects in an update it is hoped will aid conservation of at-risk birds.
Since 2021, the free Merlin app, created by the Cornell Lab for Ornithology, has used machine learning to provide an almost instantaneous sound-identification service for birdsong, along with an image for each bird identified. In future, the detections of bird species recorded by people will be automatically collected on the global online database eBird, which contains more than 2bn bird observation records.
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As this year’s invertebrate of the year competition launches, we join scientists studying last year’s winner
Witek Morek is closely inspecting an old brick-and-flint wall on the Cambridgeshire campus of the Wellcome Sanger Institute.
“We are going to use a very advanced tool designed by bioengineers and evolved over millions of years – the human hand – and grab some moss, and put it in an envelope,” he says.
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Guardian recreates audio landscape of past filled by loud morning symphony before 73m wild birds were lost
Imagine a deafening abundance of birdsong so loud it wakes your children at dawn; the chirrup of house sparrows, the chattering of starlings, the melody of the wren, and the clear high-pitched flute of blackbirds saturating the garden, reverberating around your local park, dominating your neighbourhood from early morning to evening twilight.
So loud is the song of the thrush that the naturalist and ornithologist WH Hudson wrote in 1919 that he was grateful when observing one that it was perched on a tree at a distance from his home, “so that when I woke at half past three or four o’clock, the shrill indefatigable voice came in at the open window, softened by distance and washed by the dewy atmosphere to greater purity”.
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Suspicions grow in Lanarkshire that local people have been misled on supposed benefits of the huge development
The promise was that a Scottish community would be transformed by massive investment and empowered to chase “the jobs of the future”. Instead, local people in Lanarkshire fear they may have to sell their properties and lose green belt land because of the errors of a badly planned AI datacentre complex, even as those jobs and investments never arrive.
Late last year, representatives of Oakes Energy Services began to knock on doors in Newarthill, a village east of Glasgow. In letters reviewed by the Guardian, they invited residents to individual meetings. They told them about plans for a solar farm, say local people, and made offers: free solar panels, tree planting, or even cash for their properties.
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Humans have long sought to geoengineer the Earth’s environment. Tim Flannery outlines a few of the wildest ideas from the 20th century
An increasing number of scientists think we have let the climate crisis fester for so long that our only hope to stave off ever-intensifying catastrophes is to use technological interventions. Cloud brightening, injecting sulphur into the atmosphere and the use of tiny mirrors in space – all of which might reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface – are among the concepts being promotedby entrepreneurs and governments alike. Geoengineering, they argue, is now inevitable.
Ever since the God of the Old Testament granted our species dominion over the Earth, ideas of remaking the world to better suit us have been a dominant thread in human thinking. We have for centuries toyed with grand ambitions to alter and re-form the climate and environment, many of which – in retrospect – seem doomed or absurd.
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The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions considers a hot topic within renewable energy
This week’s replies: Are there places on Earth where humans haven’t been?
I would like to know why we build solar farms over green space, when we could just put them over massive car parks as a popular current internet meme suggests. Chris, Middlesbrough
Post your answers (and new questions) below or send them tonq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published next Sunday.
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