Page 13 - Dainfern issue 10 2021

NATURE

iving, as most of us do, There’s a marvellous picture
on the high inland plateau of weevils doing this in Barry
of Southern Africa, what Lovegrove’s The Living Deserts
Ldo we consider a good of Southern Africa. The book is a
rainfall? A summer storm can greatly expanded revision of his
often bring 20mm of rain in an 1993 bestseller of the same title.
hour. That’s good. We often Lovegrove, an evolutionary
experience twice that, even three physiologist, writes with an easy
times more.
style and is unafraid of emotion
But consider this: in the dry half or offering forthright views. He
of South Africa, 20mm is as writes as a lover of desert life
much as people expect in a year. and describes how our barren
Some, in the far west, record as wastes teem with life just as
little as 5mm a year. varied and species-rich as our
coastal forests. The diversity of
How do the animals and plants creatures in these arid regions
survive? Call it evolutionary varies from ants to elephants.
ingenuity. Some, for instance, tap The birdlife is amazing and
the nightly fogs coming in from there are thousands of species
the cold Atlantic. The fogs roll of plants – hundreds found
westwards only to evaporate at nowhere else in the world.
sunrise. There are beetles that Each living thing has its
cling upside down to leaf stems ingenuous way of surviving the
allowing the fog to condense searing temperatures and the
on the surfaces of their hard- rainless months.
shelled outer wings. The droplets
accumulate and trickle down to Lovegrove has forebodings
their heads and mouth parts. regarding climate change and
OUR LIVING DESERTS

B Y J AMES CLARKE

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