Hi everyone

I'm writing to share two recent articles: one I wrote and one the journalist interviewed me for. They are both about the wilder kinds of figs than the ones we tend to eat. Enjoy!

New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/love-the-fig
Newsweek: http://europe.newsweek.com/ladders-heaven-india-sacred-banyan-trees-figs-500196

Best wishes
Mike

A nice read. Good luck on your upcoming book.

Hi,
Nice articles, but a bit too much romanced for me :
Point1.: figs can have viable seeds even without pollination. I have a topic here about figseeds from zone7 sprouting.
Point2.: Just yesterday, I saw ants going in and out of a fig (Some varieties are qualified as  having opened eye after all ). Why wouldn't the female wasps be as smart and pollinate several figs by moving from one to the other ?
             Why would males open the gate, except for going to surrounding figs and fertilize the females there too ... First come, first served :) .

It would be great to be more precise on the world "figtree" or "ficus tree", since there is ficus carica, and all the others that are not edible, or barely edible...Vulgarization is good, but at some point it creates legends, and I like it a bit more scientific .

Hi

You're right to point out that female fig-wasps do (in some cases) leave the fig they first lay eggs in and enter another.

Among wild species of Ficus (not Ficus carica) this is rare and the new generation of female pollinators depends on the males to chew an escape-tunnel in the wall of the fig. The females benefit further as ants patrol the figs, hungry for wasps to feed on. The flightless males succumb to the ants while the females fly away.

I've pasted below details of my book.

If you're interested in more scientific writing on them, you can find the papers I wrote during my doctorate here: https://underthebanyan.wordpress.com/research/ (scroll down to the period 2000-2001 for the fig research)

Best wishes
Mike

Gods, Wasps and Stranglers: The Secret History and Redemptive Future of Fig Trees
(Chelsea Green Publishing, November 2016)
http://www.chelseagreen.com/gods-wasps-and-stranglers

They are trees of life and trees of knowledge. They are wish-fulfillers … rainforest royalty … more precious than gold. They are the fig trees, and they have affected humanity in profound but little-known ways. Gods, Wasps and Stranglers tells their amazing story. 

Fig trees fed our pre-human ancestors, influenced diverse cultures and played key roles in the dawn of civilization. They feature in every major religion, starring alongside Adam and Eve, Krishna and Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad. This is no coincidence – fig trees are special. They evolved when giant dinosaurs still roamed and have been shaping our world ever since. 

These trees intrigued Aristotle and amazed Alexander the Great. They were instrumental in Kenya’s struggle for independence and helped restore life after Krakatoa’s catastrophic eruption. Egypt’s Pharaohs hoped to meet fig trees in the afterlife and Queen Elizabeth II was asleep in one when she ascended the throne. 

And all because 80 million years ago these trees cut a curious deal with some tiny wasps. Thanks to this deal, figs sustain more species of birds and mammals than any other trees, making them vital to rainforests. In a time of falling trees and rising temperatures, their story offers hope. 

Ultimately, it’s a story about humanity’s relationship with nature. The story of the fig trees stretches back tens of millions of years, but it is as relevant to our future as it is to our past.

Yes, temperatures were higher when figs originated, but that was 80 million years ago. Humans originated only around 500,000 years ago. The global average temperature is rising faster now than at any time in human history. This graphic explains it well and is full referenced https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1732:_Earth_Temperature_Timeline

The mass of scientific findings made over the past three decades shows very clearly that human activities are raising the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and that this is raising the global average temperature and changing the climate. While the warming to date has been fairly small, there is considerably more warming locked into the earth-atmosphere system.

We need a lot more trees on this planet to help mitigate the effects of warming on the climate. There may be more trees in the US than a hundred years ago, but worldwide forest cover is still continuing to fall (though the rate of loss has reduced recently). And tropical forests store more carbon than temperate ones.

In the tropics and subtropics fig trees are keystone resources for seed dispersing birds and mammals. They play a disproportionate role in maintaining functioning forest ecosystems and we can harness their biology to promote rapid rainforest regeneration in areas that have been logged.

As usual, incorrect on the wasp issue concerning each type fig having it's own wasp.

The New Yorker piece says: "Almost every species of fig plant—more than seven hundred and fifty in total—has its own species of wasp". This is true.

The Newsweek piece says: "Like all fig species, these trees depend on specific wasps to enter their figs and pollinate the flowers hidden within." Here, 'specific wasps' can mean one or more species of pollinator, and not just any wasp.

My book discusses how scientists once thought that there was a single pollinator species for each Ficus species, but no longer. Some Ficus have multiple pollinator species in once place. Others have different pollinators in different parts of their distribution. There are also some fig-wasps that can lay eggs in more than one Ficus species. Add in the emerging evidence of hybridisation among wild fig species and the story gets more convoluted.