Your art is, as ever, quietly stunning! And in your essay, you answered the questions I've posed myself often, and ones I didn't even know enough to ask. My sympathies are with the hard-working annuals as opposed to the greedy caterpillars, who if the hawks didn't intervene would eat the flowers to extinction. It's too bad the desert annuals can't evolve a symbiotic relation with ant colonies nesting at their base who would defend their sheltering plant with stinging attacks against the caterpillars. Maybe something like Pseudomyrmex ferruginea. Goodbye caterpillars! Problem for the ants would be what to do in the off-season..
Your art is, as ever, quietly stunning! And in your essay, you answered the questions I've posed myself often, and ones I didn't even know enough to ask. My sympathies are with the hard-working annuals as opposed to the greedy caterpillars, who if the hawks didn't intervene would eat the flowers to extinction. It's too bad the desert annuals can't evolve a symbiotic relation with ant colonies nesting at their base who would defend their sheltering plant with stinging attacks against the caterpillars. Maybe something like Pseudomyrmex ferruginea. Goodbye caterpillars! Problem for the ants would be what to do in the off-season..