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BBC Inside Science

UK pollinating insect numbers, Tracking whales using barnacles, Sleep signals

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.51.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2019

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

One of the longest running insect pollinator surveys in the world, shows that a few generalist pollinators are on the increase, whereas specialist insects are declining. Using data collected by volunteers across Great Britain to map the spatial loss of pollinator insect species, the study by the CEH (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) measured 353 wild bee and hoverfly species across the country. The results showed that on average, each 1km2 survey patch lost an average of 11 species from 1980-2013. CEH's Professor Helen Roy and Dr Claire Carvell explain to Marnie Chesterton how volunteers can take part in the next survey. Want to know where a whale has been? Just ask the barnacles on its head! Barnacles hitchhike on whales, and they’ve been doing this for millions of years. When barnacles grow they add to their carbonate shells using compounds from their surroundings. As the whales migrate, the barnacles take up compounds from the different oceanic locations. A bit like filling in a travel diary, or collecting passport stamps. If you can decipher the chemical code laid down in the barnacle shells, you can work out where the whale has been on its oceanic migrations. This is what researcher Larry Taylor, at University of California Berkeley, has been doing and he says that the information can even be found in fossilised whales (and barnacles.) The patterns signals in our brain make when we are falling asleep are quite hard to study. But thanks to a few people who manage to fall asleep in an FMRi scanner, we now know there are multiple stages of sleep. Professor Morton Kringlebach, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Oxford likens the pattern of brain activity, as it enters the various sleep stages, to the choreography of a dance. His friend, Dr. Milton Mermikides at the University of Surrey, goes one further. As a composer and academic expert in jazz, he thought the pattern of brain activity was like chord changes in jazz music. So he put the sleepy brain to music. Marnie listens to the soporific tones and asks if people with disordered sleep, such as insomnia or restless leg syndrome would make different music? Producer: Fiona Roberts

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.

0:04.7

Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests.

0:08.8

Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook.

0:11.2

Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.

0:15.0

It's in the hands of the creator.

0:16.7

It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.

0:20.7

If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes,

0:24.6

you're doing the wrong thing.

0:26.0

Julie, at your service, listen to all episodes on BBC Sales. BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

0:35.8

Hello there, this is the podcast of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4,

0:41.0

first broadcast on the 28th of March 2019, I'm Marnie Chasterton, and blistering barnacles,

0:48.0

have we got some science for you, as we hear the Wales tale, their secrets revealed by the tiny crustaceans that attach to their bodies.

0:56.0

And also, stay tuned to hear the sounds of your brain falling asleep. But we start with a new study on insect decline. It feels like there's one of these every month telling a similarly depressing story of species collapse,

1:16.0

but this latest one is UK focused so it's all about the critters right outside your windows.

1:21.0

Specifically, the hard-working bees and hover fly pollinators.

1:26.0

So if you care about your five portions of fruit and vegidae, and you should, you might want to pay attention.

1:32.0

Professor Helen Roy and Dr Claire Carvel,

1:34.7

from the center of ecology and hydrology near Oxford,

1:37.8

came to a studio to tell me about this,

1:39.9

one of the longest running insect surveys in the world.

1:43.4

Helen started with the basics, which insects are doing the pollinating.

1:47.8

We have a wide variety of pollinating insects within the UK, for instance,

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