Nightlife in Fgura

Walking through Fgura at 01:30AM, my girlfriend and I noticed a black shadow scurrying along the edge of the road. Too fast for a kitten and too large for a mouse, we soon realized it was a rat.

Of course I tried to stalk it quietly in the hope of obtaining a couple of good photographs, but apparently not quietly enough to prevent it from disappearing almost immediately, leaving me with just this:

I am inclined to think it's the common black rat Rattus rattus, though identification is not easy if only external morphology is taken into account.

Gozo crocodiles

The picture above shows a fossil skull of the Miocene crocodilian Tomistoma gaudensis (Hulke, 1871) from the Globigerina Limestone of Gozo. This specimen is located at the National Museum of Natural History, Mdina, reg. no. NMNH-T11228. Another species, namely Tomistoma champsoides (Owen in Hulke, 1871) is also known to have occurred in the area now occupied by the Maltese Islands.

Reference:

Hulke, J. W., 1871. Note on some reptilian fossils from Gozo. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 27 (1-2): 29-33.

Another garden visitor

It's another butterfly - smaller and much less conspicuous than its relative which I wrote about this week - yet just as beautiful and interesting. According to Sammut's definitive book on the Maltese butterflies and moths, this is Syntarucus pirithous (L., 1767), which is frequently encountered throughout the warm season.

Reference:

Sammut, P., 2000. Il-Lepidoptera. Kullana Kulturali, 12: 1-246. Malta: Pubblikazzjonijiet Indipendenza.

Lampedusa... from Lampedusa

The snail genus Lampedusa consists of three species, two of which are endemic to Malta and quite localized in occurrence. The other is Lampedusa lopadusae (Calcara, 1846), which is endemic to the island of - wait for it - Lampedusa. Unlike the Maltese species, this occurs quite commonly on the island and, amongst others, colonizes habitats which its Maltese counterparts don't: bark of trees, grass and so on. The Maltese species seem to prefer limestone patches.

Photograph of a typical aggregation of the snails taken in 2005 by Arie W. Janssen.

Beach blooms

One of the most large and noticeable summer flowers occurring in Malta is the sea daffodil (Pancratium maritimum L.), which requires a sandy habitat and is therefore quite rare. It usually blooms in mid-summer, however, the Għajn Tuffieħa population is already in full bloom. I took the following photos in the area yesterday.

Another population of the plant occurs on the sand dunes at Ramla l-Ħamra, Gozo (photographed 26.I.2009).

A lepidopteran pit stop

A frequent migrant in June is the elegantly-named butterfly Vanessa (Cynthia) cardui (L., 1758), passing over Malta from North Africa on the way to cooler European climates. The following pictures, taken yesterday in Santa Venera, show a very small sample of hundreds of individuals feeding on the nectar of cultivated plants, before continuing their journey. They seem to prefer the Lantana shrubs above anything else, though this may be because of the flowers' bright yellow colour - purple-flowered Lantana shrubs were hardly visited.

A Mediterranean inspiration

The plant shown above, Acanthus mollis L., is widely held by historians to be the inspiration behind a highly characteristic element of ancient Greek (Corinthian) and Roman architecture - the so-called 'Acanthus motif'. This feature is expressed mostly in column capitals, as shown below*.

For the Romans, the Acanthus plant held connotations of resurrection, as evidenced by the following quote from the architect Vitruvius:

The invention of the capital of this order is said to be founded on the following occurrence. A Corinthian virgin, of marriageable age, fell a victim to a violent disorder. After her interment, her nurse, collecting in a basket those articles to which she had shown a partiality when alive, carried them to her tomb, and placed a tile on the basket for the longer preservation of its contents. The basket was accidentally placed on the root of an acanthus plant, which, pressed by the weight, shot forth, towards spring, its stems and large foliage, and in the course of its growth reached the angles of the tile, and thus formed volutes at the extremities. - Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, 'De Architectura IV', 25 B. C.

Acanthus is a genus mostly native to the Mediterranean region, though it has been grown in many gardens around the world for its beautiful foliage and flowers. Its name in Maltese is Ħannewija.

*image by Jane Vadnal, University of Pittsburgh. Pictures of plant (1): Fiddien 27.V.2009; (2-3): Buskett 06.V.2009

A cliffhanger

The buds of the plant shown flowering above, Capparis orientalis Veillard, are traditionally pickled in brine and used on bread, in salads and in sauces all around the Mediterranean.

Capparis in Malta usually grows on cliffsides and other natural vertical rock faces. However, it is also found growing profusely on old bastion walls, which mimic some of the ecological conditions found on cliffsides.

Of a painter and a doctor

Yesterday was the closing day of an exhibition of paintings by Edward Caruana Dingli (1876-1950), an idealist Maltese artist well known for memorable folkloristic watercolours, as well as iconic portraits of several dignitaries of the time.

Amongst these portraits, one depicting the scientist, doctor and archaeologist Themistocles Zammit (1864-1935) was spotted. In 1905, Zammit discovered that the bacterium Brucella melitensis (Hughes, 1893) was transmitted through goat milk, earning him knighthood and enabling food handlers of the time to drastically limit the infectious pathways of the organism. Brucella melitensis causes undulant fever and was first noticed and studied in Malta, hence its specific name.

Sir Themistocles Zammit - portrait by Edward Caruana Dingli (1926)

Zammit's discovery was extremely important, considering that at the time farmers sold their fresh goats' milk on a door-to-door basis, and pasteurization on an industrial scale was still a long way off. The goat milk vendor has nowadays disappeared from Malta, but he has been immortalized in a number of paintings, amongst which is 'The Milk Vendor', also by Caruana Dingli.

'The Milk Vendor' - Edward Caruana Dingli (undated)

Goat numbers have also declined with the demand for their produce. Goats are indiscriminate eaters and may damage natural ecosystems irreversibly, as can be seen in garigue areas like Magħlaq, where the large majority of plants present are Scilla and Asphodelus, which goats avoid. Unfortunately, some herds still remain grazing at places of high ecological sensitivity, such as Munxar (Gozo), where an extremely rare form of the snail Muticaria macrostoma (Cantraine, 1835) occurs.

Goats grazing in Munxar, Gozo

References:

Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, 2010. Edward Caruana Dingli: Portraits, Views and Folkloristic Scenes. Malta: Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, 32 pp.

Wyatt, H. V., 2005. How Themistocles Zammit found Malta fever (brucellosis) to be transmitted by the milk of goats. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 98: 451-454.

Sharks in Malta Part II - A killer reputation

The vast majority of sharks and rays frequenting Maltese waters are innocuous to humans, and even the largest of them is a timid filter-feeder - this is the legally protected basking shark - Cetorhinus maximus (Gunnerus, 1765).

The species after larger prey, such as the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias Smith, 1838), may attack humans on occasion, and such one-off cases are so easy to sensationalize that the shark is now perceived as dangerous and fear-inspiring. Coupled with overfishing and pollution, this reputation has had grave consequences for shark populations around the world - both species mentioned above are considered as vulnerable by the IUCN.

The following photographs are some archival finds documenting well-publicised shark catches in Malta throughout the years. Hopefully, awareness and education about the true nature of sharks will help keep such actions restricted to a few old pictures.

Alopias vulpinus (Bonnaterre, 1788) - off Gozo, 2000

Isurus oxyrhincus Rafinesque, 1810 - 10km off Ġnejna, 2005


Hexanchus griseus (Bonnaterre, 1778) - off Marsaxlokk (2008?)


Carcharodon carcharias Smith, 1838 - off Filfla, 1987

References:

Fergusson, I., Compagno, L. J. V. & Marks, M., 2005. Carcharodon carcharias. In: IUCN Red List of Threatened Species Version 2010.1. [WWW Document, url - www.iucnredlist.org; last accessed 03.VI.2010]

Fowler, S. L., 2005. Cetorhinus maximus. In: IUCN Red List of Threatened Species Version 2010.1. [WWW Document, url - www.iucnredlist.org; last accessed 03.VI.2010]

Snailing about

A Cantareus aspersus (Müller, 1774) going about its daily business. Photo taken in Mqabba.