The Holophusicon

A Short Mid-Season Post

2011-05-02T21:44:00.005-04:00

In my last post, I was patiently waiting for field season to start. And then, all of a sudden, it did -- a few warm days and blueberry bloom was off and running.

Today was an easier day -- it would have been our seventh day of data collection (we need fourteen this year), but the morning was too cool and overcast to be a "good bee day", so the crew and I came back to the lab for a much-needed day of bee pinning and downtime.

I've also had a chance to go through some of my photos, and I even took a few more today of the various critters that visit the honeysuckle bush at the field station. One of the nicest things about staying here is looking out the window while I'm cooking or washing dishes and watching bumblebees visiting flowers. They get absolutely covered in pollen. It's fantastic.

I'm not going to write a whole lot tonight (more data collection tomorrow, so I need to get to sleep soon!) but here are a few photos of what I've been seeing out in the field. The white bell-shaped flowers are blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum, highbush blueberry). Enjoy!

Bumblebee (Bombus) species mid-flight.

This is my best Habropoda laboriosa photo to date, you can actually see her face in this one, yay! Also take a look at all the pollen on her legs! I wish her hundreds of fat children.

Fun fact: "Habs" are actually as soft as they look!

One of the best parts of my field work (and also one of the most frustrating) is feeding bees by hand. Here you can see my triumphant feeding of a Colletes spp. female, who has just visited one of the open flowers near the top of the cluster. At the bottom you can just see my hand holding the water tube; this flower was eventually taken back to the lab and is now a data point in training!

Where I've Been

2011-04-12T21:01:00.010-04:00

Before I start writing up what I'm doing right now, here's a little recap of the last 18 months or so, to put my absence in perspective. Not the most exciting post, but it will put my forthcoming field season posts in perspective!

From October 2009 through March 2010, I wrote my preliminary proposal for my thesis project. Most people take their qualifying exam (aka "Quals") first, but I did things backwards. I'm wacky like that.

As part of my preliminary proposal, I spend a lot of time using GIS to select sites for my study. Since I'm comparing effects of landscape at different scales, site selection is a huge aspect of my project. In the end, I came up with 16 sites and two control sites, all blueberry fields in southern New Jersey. This took most of March.

On April 1st, I started training a field crew of five people, including myself. It was a good thing we started early, because last year was one of the earliest blooms on record for blueberry in this region. Our first day of data collection was April 15, which was already a few days into bloom; we were done with data collection on May 5. Short field season!

From May 6 or so right up to last month, I have been analyzing my data. Really. It's still ongoing, but I had to take a break from analyzing the data to collect more data, starting... probably next week. More on that to follow.

But, data analysis isn't all I do! (Although, it's most of what I do.) I also spent a few months studying for my quals (and passed, thank Darwin that's over!), gave a 10-minute talk at the Entomological Society of America meeting in San Diego last December, started writing a paper with my advisor, and have learned a bit of programming in R. I also got a great teaching gig that lets me teach only in the Fall semester, so I can focus on my field season in the spring. I've also learned to bake foccacia. Overall, it's been a busy 18 months!

I'll write more about the current field season soon, but in the meantime, here are some early-season critter photos. Enjoy!

Gorgeous green beetle.

Habropoda laboriosa male feeding on leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata) flowers. Leatherleaf is one of the earliest blooms in this area, and hungry early-emerging spring bees were all over it!

And we're back!

2011-04-07T19:43:00.001-04:00

Hi everyone! After a lengthy hiatus, i am going to give this blogging thing another whirl. I have a Blogger app on my phone, we will see how it goes.

This photo is one of my first bee photos of the season. It's a female bee sitting in her nest, basking in the sun. I forgot my camera in the car while we did netting practice, so this may not be the best photo, but I will post more field season pics soon!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8

The Naming of Things

2009-10-26T22:54:00.002-04:00

A few things on naming caught my attention recently.

First there was this article (from the NYTimes, of course) which is on taxonomy in general and on native taxonomies in particular. How good are you at distinguishing between bird names and fish names in on naming birds and fish in the Huambisa language?

Then I came across this linked from a faculty member's website: Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature. There's a lot to discover here. From the "Interesting Translations" section, I can't help giggling at Eucritta melanolimnetes (a fossil amphibian), which translates to "creature from the black lagoon", and at Vampyroteuthis infernalis, a squid relative, aka "the vampire squid from hell."

The Creature from the Black Lagoon... is actually sort of cute.

Vampire squid from hell... yeesh. Way to live up to your name!

My favorite section, of course, is the puns. Here's one of the best bits on the whole site:

Balaenoptera musculus Linneaus (blue whale) Musculus could mean "muscular," but it can also be interpreted as "little mouse." Linne would have known this and, given his sense of humor, may have intended the ironic double meaning.

That Linne... what a wacky guy!

Finally, I was reading about native plants the other day... if I told you you had Ambrosia and Lotus growing all over your yard, you'd probably think that was great, right?

Not if you have allergies. Ambrosia is the genus name for ragweed (the name has to do with the immortality of the species). Lotus is a little better -- it's a genus of plants known as deervetches, but certainly desn't look anything like what most people think of as a lotus.

Once Upon a Field Season

2009-06-10T17:28:00.012-04:00

HELLO WORLD!

I'm BACK.

This is a blueberry field on April 22. Notice that it is 1) not in bloom and 2) raining.

A different field, on May 4. You may notice that it is still quite grey and, in fact, the day this picture was taken it was also raining. (This will be the ongoing theme of field season.)

The ongoing dismal weather grounded the local turkey vulture population. They liked to hang out in one particular dead tree near this field. You can see them in the above photo, but here is a close-up.

The next day was another rainy one. Since bees don't like the rain very much, I didn't see very many. I did see some other beautiful little things:

A green spider amid the pink blooms, how very Lily Pulitzer.

I think this tiny arachnids is some sort of crab spider. That flower is about 8 mm long.

Back at the field station, I saw this little guy puffing himself up against the cold weather. A few buzzed me at my field sites as well, but I didn't get any photos. Too bad the light was so dull, you can't really see the ruby-red.

Eventually the weather dried out a bit and we had clear skies for a few days. Of course, the Pinelands are a fire-happy ecosystem, so when I looked up and saw this:

I placed a call to the police to find out whether I needed to evacuate my field site. Fortunately it was a controlled burn and was put out quickly. It smelled very nice, actually, since they were burning a patch of pine forest.

Oh! Right! I also saw some bees!

Since it was a very early season, most of the Bombus I saw were queens. You can tell Bombus queens from workers by the fact that the queens are as big as your thumb and sound like helicopters, while the workers are relatively quite small (especially early in the season). This is probably Bombus impatiens. Fun fact: bumblebees are actually as soft as they look.

A number of other native bees appeared at my field sites, although generally not in any great numbers. This is one of my favorite native bees. It's in the genus Colletes and the orange hairs make them look like they're wearing tiny fox-fur jackets. Eventually they get around to sticking their heads into a few flowers, but they don't work constantly like the bumblebees do.

I'll post again soon, but it's been so long that I have to split things up over several entries. In the meantime, click on the photos to see them larger -- they look really good full-screen, thank goodness I learned how to use the macro on the camera before the season started. Enjoy!

Two Centuries Ago...

2009-02-12T10:00:00.001-05:00

Once in a while, maybe not quite once a century, a person will come along who will have the Next Big Idea, who will shape the course of history. A person that can change the way people think, and can in fact still affect our ideas today.

Oddly enough, on this day in 1809, two people were born on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean who would come to shape their century. One, of course, was our sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln.

The other was Charles Darwin.

Happy birthday, Charles Darwin!

This year is not only the bicentennial of Darwin's birth. He published The Origin of Species at the age of fifty, which makes this year the 150th anniversary of its publication, as well. So as you might imagine, this is a jubilee year for evolutionary biologists. There are conferences going on all month, commemorative articles, magazines and journals, and other fun and celebration. Check out the Darwin Day official website to learn more about what's going on this month and all year!

Celebrating Darwin Day is nothing new; scientists were celebrating him by 1909. This year, of course, is a Big Round Number year, so there are more things going on than usual. Have a very happy Darwin Day!

For your reading pleasure:

The Origin of Species, available through Google Books.
The Descent of Man, same
Newsweek article about Darwin and Lincoln
Smithsonian Magazine article about Darwin and Lincoln, and the table of contents for the February 2009 with them on the cover!

I Happen to Like New York

2009-02-03T22:13:00.004-05:00

Just a quick trivial post to get myself into the habit of writing again. I'm going to try to make Wednesday my blog day and spend ninety minutes writing. That's not a whole lot, but if I can at least get into the habit of one post a week, I'll have a more regular update schedule. This semester is keeping me really busy (more on that later!) so it's been tough to write lately.

Anyway, there were two great articles in the Times today that I just had to share. They don't have anything to do with food, politics, natural history, or any of my usual topics. They're just snapshots of New York. Even though I'm still in NYC on a semi-regular basis, I miss living there.

First article: The Elevator at Fairway. On the one hand, I love articles about how eccentric Fairway is. On the other hand, I wish they would stop writing about it. There are already too many people there! When I returned a piece of cheese to Stop n Shop yesterday (it had been wrapped in plastic for nearly a month! cheese abuse!) I felt a particular pang for Fairway. I don't think any given piece of cheese stays on the shelf for more than a day there.

Second article: I LEGO NY, by Chris Niemman, the same artist who told us about how much his sons love the subway. Charming, whimsical, and very very funny. Take ten minutes out of your day to chuckle, and if you're a New Yorker like me, to enjoy the sense of superiority that comes with knowing that people in other parts of the country won't get it quite as well as you do.

PS: The bulk bar -- the best place in NYC to buy granola, dried fruit, or whole grains -- is upstairs, as are the fresh peanut butter machines. Just don't ask me where the elevator button is, I'll never tell.

Results Show & Tell

2009-01-14T19:15:00.018-05:00

Homemade, fresh ricotta is really, really good.

As per my previous post, I followed the recipe for fresh ricotta. It took a little longer to drain than I anticipated, but the results are rich and creamy, with just a fresh taste of milk and no weird stuff. Here is a step-by-step photo-safari of the process.

The ingredients, and most of the equipment. Not shown: stirring spoon, measuring cup, cheesecloth.

Heat the milk until it simmers, steams, and bubbles on the edges.

Buttermilk ready to go.

After adding the buttermilk, continue heating and stirring constantly until it starts to look a little weird. Those are the curds forming. Next stop, cheese!

Pour everything into a colander lined with cheesecloth. The whey goes down the drain, or into a bowl if you want to hold on to it.

About half of the final product still in the colander. After an hour of draining, it was very thick and creamy. (I moved it to a bowl to free up space in the sink.)

The final product (atop the recipe). 1/2 gallon of milk + 2 cups buttermilk = about 1 pint of ricotta cheese.

I recommend eating it straight from the container with just a little honey and a pinch of salt, or just piled up on a piece of sourdough bread with a little salt and pepper. Next time I might try pressing it to form something like feta or mozzarella, but for now I'm going to sit around and feel pleased with my homemade cheese.

DIY Dairy II: The Curdling

2009-01-13T10:46:00.005-05:00

A while back, I talked about my interest in making my own yogurt.

Tonight, I'm going to try a new experiment: I'm going to make my own cheese.

As before, you may have your doubts, reminding me that caves are often an integral part of the cheese industry and that I live in an apartment (and not a very cave-like one, at that).

But Mr. Bittman says it can be done at home, and quite easily. And, I have an important ingredient: motivation. When I lived in Manhattan, I had the world's best sheep milk ricotta available whenever I wanted it from the Fairway cheese counter. I remember the first time I tried it; I had asked the cheesemonger on duty where I might find the ricotta, and he said to me, "Well, that Polly-O stuff and all the others are around that corner, but... try this." He produced a spoonful of the creamiest, lightest, most delicious ricotta I had ever tasted. (They kept it behind the cheese counter, available only by request.) I made a fine baked pasta that night, and every bite was a song of praise to the sheep that had produced the milk. That ricotta tasted of excellent milk, open green pastures and fresh air. Polly-O and all the others, after that, only tasted like processed, fake food.

Sadly, I do not currently have a source for this miraculous ricotta. When the farmer's market season fires up again I will be able to get some, but I have a tomato-blue cheese tart planned for Thursday and I need some good ricotta today.

Which is why I am going to make my own cheese.

The basic principle of cheese-making is this: if you start with milk and add something that acidifies it, the proteins will stick together in clumps (curds) and separate from the liquid (whey). Strain the whey from the curds, press them together, add salt and other flavors. Age as you see fit. A simple process in principle, but with lots of room for improvisation.

When you acidify the milk with an acid, you get something like feta or cottage cheese. However, most cheeses are made at least in part with the help of our friends, the bacteria. Bacteria break down the sugar in milk (lactose) and turn it into organic acid (lactic acid). This acid then causes the reaction I described above. You already know this if you have encountered milk that is very far beyond its expiration date; it smells sour and gets a bit clumpy at the bottom.

The recipe Mr. Bittman gives calls for buttermilk, which is made by innoculating milk with a bacterial culture, similar to a very thin yogurt. (Historically, buttermilk is what remained after skimming the milk to make butter, but that is rarely available in your average supermarket today.) The milk is simmered for a few minutes, the buttermilk is added all at once, and, with a little luck, everything will curdle nicely. The whole mixture is put through a cheesecloth, salted, and drained.

I will let you know how it goes tonight in my ~~laboratory~~ kitchen. I'm using cow milk, since sheep milk is not available at Stop n Shop. In the meantime, check out the Wikipedia page on cheese. Interesting things to know:

The history of cheese predates recorded history.
Acid-set cheeses (as opposed to rennet-set) will not melt; they have a different kind of protein matrix holding them together and only get firmer as they cook. (Paneer is a good example.)
The US is the world's biggest producer of cheese, but France is the biggest exporter. But the true title of cheese-eating champions goes to Greece, which eats more cheese per capita than any other country. (However, three quarters of it is feta cheese.) France is a close second.

There are a lot of things I didn't talk about here that relate to cheese making, including rennet and fungus. While I would like to discuss them in the future, I won't be using either in my cheese-making attempts tonight, so I will have to leave them for another time.

PS: A little late, but... Happy New Year!

Small and Blue and Beautiful

2008-12-24T09:28:00.008-05:00

Yesterday I blogged about something very small.

Today I'd like to call your attention to some articles that talk about something very big.

Forty years ago today, astronauts took this historic photo, "Earthrise". I didn't remember that until reading the editorials in the Times, of course, since I wasn't around yet. Some say that this image helped jump-start the environmental movement.

Anyway, the articles from today and from 1968 are worth checking out. Here is today's editorial reflecting on 1968 and now; this op-ed piece observes that while *we* may be fragile, life on earth has endured worse than humans and survived. From the first editorial, click on the "Related Articles" links to download some of the original articles from 1968, which are not available as web pages. This photograph is also so famous that it has its own Wikipedia page.

From the 1968 editorial:

To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold — brothers who know now they are truly brothers.

Lovely.

PS: For more on "Earthrise" and a short video clip from the Apollo 8 mission, visit this Dot Earth post from today.

The 40 Million Year Old Virgins

2008-12-23T12:32:00.001-05:00

Imagine, on this cold near-solstice day, that in the spring you go out to a nearby pond and collect a sample of water. You bring it home, put a drop on a microscope slide, and take a look at the pond's microcosm. Zooming around your sample are a wide variety of "wee beasties" -- you might see a blobby amoeba, a diflagellate like Chlamydomonas, and many other single-cell organisms.

Then a large, mostly transparent creature comes into focus. It doesn't look like all the others. It's far more complex, like a mechanical sea creature in miniature. Something like this:

Beautiful, isn't it?

This is a rotifer, a tiny aquatic animal in the phylum Rotifera. It may be small, but it is bilaterally symmetric and has a distinct head. It pulls in food particles with the wheel-like structure (hence "rotifer" or "wheel-bearer") around its mouth.

The rotifer pictured above is, however, special for another reason. This is a bdelloid rotifer (the b is silent). You are looking at a species that has not mated in at least 40 million years.

All bdelloid rotifers are female, and they reproduce by parthenogenesis. (Olivia Judson talks about them at length in her excellent book, Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation, and wrote a column about them in June.) This is highly unusual, since it is generally thought that gene exchange is an important mechanism for evolution. Yet with no sexual reproduction, how could the bdelloids have speciated so intensely (there are estimated to be 350 species) and persisted for so long?

Researchers at Harvard and Woods Hole may have the answer. In a paper published in Nature in May, geneticists found that when they analyzed rotifer DNA, they found genes known to occur in plants, fungi, and bacteria. This evidence suggests that rotifers have been engaging in horizontal gene transfer (HGT).

HGT is a well-known phenomenon, but it was primarily known from single-celled organisms. For example, many bacteria are known to incorporate novel genes from other members of the population, or even from other species. When you only have one cell, it's not too hard to get a novel gene into that cell. Most animals, which are by definition multicellular, can't do this; most of us pass our genes to our offspring via specialized reproductive cells, which are typically hidden away inside gonads. Unless novel genes make it to the sex cells and can therefore be passed on to the next generation, HGT has not taken place. (Passing genes to your offspring is vertical inheritance.)

Bdelloids, however, appear to be capable of massive horizontal gene transfer. Gladyshev et al. point out that this is not a case of rotifers simply retaining genes that are common to all life; that case is both extremely unlikely and not supported by the data. Instead, they suggest,

It may be that HGT isfacilitated by membrane disruption and DNA fragmentation andrepair associated with the repeated desiccation and recoveryexperienced in typical bdelloid habitats, allowing DNA in ingestedor other environmental material to enter bdelloid genomes.

With their proclivity for moist habitats, bdelloids also run the risk of dessication. They are able to withstand repeated dessication; in fact, it might be necessary for the continued success of the entire class, since this appears to be the mechanism by which they gain new genetic material. The authors conclude,

Although the adaptiveimportance of such massive HGT remains to be elucidated, itis evident that such events have frequently occurred in thegenomes of bdelloid rotifers, probably mediated by their unusuallifestyle.

So, in conclusion, bdelloids have done away with sex as we know it, but periodically get turned into rotifer jerky, incorporate new genes while their cells are cracked open, and when reconstituted and repaired produce more copies of themselves, thus passing new genes to the next generation.

Lots of questions remain; for example, what are rotifers doing with all these new genes? (One example is a bacterial gene for cell walls; no one knows how an animal might make use of a cell wall.) I will keep you posted on all rotifer-related news updates. Stay tuned!

References
Gladyshev, E. et al. "Massive Horizontal Gene Transfer in Bdelloid Rotifers." Science 30 May 2008: Vol. 320. no. 5880, pp. 1210 - 1213

Judson, O. "The Weird Sisters" The New York Times, June 3, 2008.

Plants Fighting Back

2008-12-15T18:02:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday I reached into the container of cilantro from the grocery store and quickly pulled my hand back in surprise. Something had hurt me! But what?

My thoughts went to some alarming places. Bits of metal? Shards of glass? I felt like I had been pricked by something sharp, but there were no marks on my fingertips. No blood was drawn.

I dumped all of the cilantro into a colander and moved it around with a fork. There in the middle was the culprit. Initially its camouflage had concealed it from sight, but on closer inspection it stood out from its surroundings.

Clearly, those are not cilantro leaves. Any guesses?

It turned out my instinct was correct, because the first page I pulled up on Wikipedia was stinging nettle, where I saw the above picture. The plant mixed with my cilantro was the spitting image.

What makes a stinging nettle sting? The sting is caused by a combination of chemicals, not just by the hairs alone which, although sharp, are tiny. Tiny and hollow, and filled with a combination of chemicals that give a noticeable irritation: acetylcholine, serotonin, and perhaps most importantly, histamine and possibly formic acid. Yikes.

Surprisingly, nettles are easily tamed, and can be made into tea or even eaten when young ( and cooked). They're also good for your hair, feature prominently in hippie-dippie shampoos, and are mixed into cattle feed to give the bovines shiny coats. My nettle, however, was transferred by fork to the trash bin, as I was in no mood to attempt to tame it. (And my hair is already quite shiny, thank you.) I do admire it for fighting back, though. As a vegetarian, I'm not really used to food that puts up much of a struggle, so this was an interesting interaction between me and a plant.

But I think I'll stick with cilantro just the same.

Wild Edibles Seafood Market, or, What Not to Buy

2008-12-04T23:05:00.003-05:00

Over the long weekend, I visited Grand Central Station to check out the holiday marketplace. While we were there, our group also visited the food markets . I love the temple of dairy that is Murray's Cheeses, and Penzey's Spices is always a treat.

And then I was face to face with a red snapper.

I don't often spend time near the seafood counter at the grocery store, nor do I actively seek out fishmongers on a regular basis. But I can recognize a red snapper, and I was mildly perturbed to see one on display at Wild Edibles Fish Market. I decided to leave one of my Seafood Watch seafood guides with whoever was on duty and send an email to the company when I got home.

Then I looked closer. There was a sign near the snapper with a bright red fish symbol and a description of why red snapper is not a recommended seafood choice. I surveyed the rest of the catch of the day; every fish was marked with a sign, and a not insignificant number carried the red "Avoid" tag. A sign hanging over the counter informed me that Wild Edibles was working with the Blue Ocean Institute to help people decide which seafood to buy.

They even had wallet-sized seafood guides available at the counter.

I was horrified. They were actually selling the fish that their own signs declared threatened or endangered. I asked the woman working the counter, "How can you sell this when you know that it's endangered?" Her response: "Well, we want the customers to decide. If they tell us to stop selling it, we'll stop selling it."

Let's tell them.

Tell them that they ought to know better. Tell them that they do know better. Let them know you don't want to see fish on the menu that, by any account, would be better described as "Endangered Species" than "Catch of the Day". And while you're at it, tell your local fish seller too. Go to your grocery store and see if they're selling red snapper, orange roughy, Chilean seabass, or any other endangered fish. Give them a seafood guide, or two, or ten.

While you're at it, you might want to let the Blue Ocean Institute know what you think of their endorsement, as well. Shame on them for lending their name to an irresponsible fish merchant.

Better Know an Insect: Fungus Farmers

2008-11-26T22:56:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

A few weeks ago, I read some interesting papers about mutualisms in ecological networks.

Here is a thought-provoking opening sentence from one of them:

About 40 – 60 million years before the advent of human agriculture, three insect lineages, termites, ants, and beetles, independently evolved the ability to grow fungi for food (Mueller & Gerardo, 2002).

As you digest your delicious Thanksgiving meal, think of all the things we farm, and the complex relationship we have with agriculture, with farmers, and with the organisms we farm. Then contemplate that insects did it all way before us with their tiny little nervous systems.

Leafcutter ants are one of the lineages that have developed the ability to farm. You might have seen leafcutters in a museum -- they're popular exhibits because they will build their entire colonies readily inside an enclosure and only require a steady supply of leaves. They are the champion farmers of the insects; in some areas, they are considered major agricultural pests because they will strip all vegetation near their colonies to feed their fungus colonies.

The life cycle of leafcutter ants is something like this: when a new queen hatches, she takes a small amount of her home colony fungus along with her on a specialized structure on her thorax when she makes her nuptial flight. After mating, she founds a new colony with the fungus she carried with her. The fungus grows on decomposing vegetation -- leaves -- which the queen initially supplies. After her first offspring have developed, they take over the role of leaf-gathering so that the queen can focus entirely on laying eggs.

Humans go to great lengths to maintain their crops. We spray insecticides, fungicides, and other chemicals to keep our crops disease-free. Ants have developed a system to do this as well -- on each worker is a small patch containing beneficial bacterial colonies. These bacteria secrete antibiotics that help protect the fungal crop from disease. The ants can also adjust the kind of vegetation brought into the colony, and will not bring leaves that have previously been rejected by or toxic to the fungal crop.

Two amazing, related facts about leafcutter ants: 1) they are native to the Americas (especially Central and South America) and are not found on other continents; therefore, when you see a line of leafcutter ants in The Lion King (sorry, I'm having a hard time finding a screenshot) that is an error.

2) While most leafcutters make their homes in the tropics, one species actually lives as far north as southern New Jersey.

There's loads more to say about leafcutter ants, but I mainly wanted to talk about farming in this post, since it sort of relates to Thanksgiving. Perhaps I'll write about them again soon. Eusocial insects are my favorite insects to talk about since they do so many amazing things. Look for more on ants in the future!

Sources:
Mueller, Ulrich G. and Nicole Gerardo. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002 November 26; 99(24): 15247–15249.

Vote.

2008-11-04T10:22:00.002-05:00

Get out and vote! Go on! Go vote!

Vote because, if you're a woman, your right to vote is less than 100 years old. Honor the women who struggled to get you that right!

Vote because you don't get to complain if you don't vote.

Vote because you can get a free cup of coffee at Starbucks and a free cone at Ben & Jerry's if you tell them that you voted.

Vote because all your friends on Facebook are voting. (All the cool kids are doing it!)

Whatever your reason, whatever your voting preference, go do it!

Barack O'Lanterns

2008-10-31T16:32:00.002-04:00

Just a little something fun for Halloween...

The image is watermarked, but here's a link: YesWeCarve.com. They even have stencils for you to make your own Barack O'Lantern. (Jack O'bama? No, definitely Barack O'Lantern.) Gotta love the flexibility of that sunrise/O logo. It's a sun! It's a notebook! It's a pumpkin!

Sarah Palin Loses the Geneticist Vote

2008-10-30T10:50:00.005-04:00

This is already burning up in the science-oriented part of the blogosphere, but I want to mention it here too.

I've talked before about how Sarah Palin is a heartless lawbreaker who would love to shoot every wolf in Alaska. But did you know she's also opposed to basic scientific research?

Well, more specifically, she doesn't know what she's talking about when it comes to research. Otherwise, why would she highlight spending on fruit fly research in Paris as a "pet project earmark"? Did no one in the McCain campaign bother to find out what kind of research they were doing? I hate to tell you this, Ms. Palin... but fruit flies are the favored lab animal for genetics research around the world, both in Paris and here in the good ol' USA. (Except for New Jersey, which is not part of the "real" America.)

I think PZ Meyers, who writes the excellent blog Pharyngula, said it best:

Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of the most powerful tools in genetics and molecular biology are available in fruit flies, and these are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. Molecular genetics has revealed that humans share key molecules, the basic developmental toolkit, with all other animals, thanks to our shared evolutionary heritage (something else the wackaloon from Wasilla denies), and that we can use these other organisms to probe the fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in the formation of the nervous system — precisely the phenomena Palin claims are so important

.

Oh, and he also threw in this disturbing but excellent point:

You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work?

If you're interested in watching, Think Progress has a video clip of Palin delivering the remarks. You can read the original prepared text at the McCain campaign page, but they differ somewhat from what she actually said. (For example, sarcasm is not noted anywhere in the prepared text.)

With the election so near (I've been unable to think of anything else lately), I think it's important to recognize what a McCain victory would do to the scientific community. Government funding for basic research is non-negotiable.

Dinosaur Documentary Drinking Game

2008-10-14T15:03:00.003-04:00

Last night, D. and I watched a Nova episode about Arctic dinosaurs. (You can view the whole episode online!)

D. is a remarkable and patient man, for I know few people other than him who could tolerate watching a TV show about dinosaurs with me. I am incredibly annoying. I have a tendency to argue with the television, pause the show to make a comment about what I feel is wrong with the most recent shot, and so on. I do this a lot with science shows in general, but dinosaur shows for whatever reason have a greater likelihood of skewing towards hyperbole. (That, and I don't know enough about astrophysics or material science to keep up my end of the argument.)

I guess I must have paused the action one too many times (is three times in the first ten minutes a lot?), because D. turned to me and said, "You know, we should create a dinosaur show drinking game."

Voilá. We took notes during the show and added a few other things based on previous things we've watched. (Walking with Dinosaurs, etc.)

Drink for tired clichés -- "gentle giant", "vicious carnivore" etc. -- that make assertions about an animal's temperament based solely on what it eats. (Cape buffalo and hippos are herbivores, but no one would call them gentle!)
Drink for scientific inaccuracy, like showing T. rex urinating on its territory. (Feel free to call me if you aren't sure. Here are a few to start you off.)
Drink for Jack Horner. (Jack Horner is awesome!)
Drink every time they show a digital animation of an asteroid hitting the earth at the end of the Cretaceous. Drink twice if the ensuing explosion is reflected in the eye of a dinosaur.
Drink for Montana.
If anyone says "Brontosaurus," (including the narrator!) finish your drink.
Drink each time a prehistoric critter breaks the fourth wall (bumps the camera, etc.) -- prevalent in the "Walking with..." series.
Drink for paleontologists in cowboy hats. (One drink per hat.)
Drink for dinosaur-on-dinosaur violence or dinosaur mating.
When a female paleontologist or other scientist appears, finish your drink. (Don't worry, guaranteed not to happen more than once per show. The Wikipedia page for Sue is longer than the page for the woman who discovered her. These are very male-dominated shows.)

Grab a couple of beers and your TV Guide -- there's always something about dinosaurs to watch, whether on Discovery Channel, PBS, National Geographic or Animal Planet.

In the end, though, as critical as I am of these shows, I have a deep affection for them. Perhaps its the part of me that hasn't stopped hoping to see a real, living dinosaur someday, or maybe I'm just a nature nerd. I couldn't tell you which. But check out the Arctic dinosaur show, it was actually quite interesting. Bring a beer over to your computer while you're at it. Keep an eye out for cowboy hats.

PS: Forgot to mention -- if you have anything to add to this list, please leave a comment!

FiveThirtyEight

2008-10-11T14:59:00.001-04:00

I can't believe I haven't mentioned this sooner!

If you love number-crunching, politics, statistical research, sociology, or any combination of the above, (or you're a big fan of Obama and want a joyful little reprieve from the woe of the stock market) you will love FiveThirtyEight.com.

There are a lot of polls out there. But any given poll will only survey a few hundred, maybe a few thousand, people at best. With something like 200 million Americans of voting age in this country, how much information can you get from a single poll?

Not much.

That's why a baseball statistician from Chicago named Nate Silver created this marvelous website. He combines polling data from all over the country, assigns a weighting to take into account factors like the number of people interviewed and how reliable a polling company is likely to be, and runs thousands of simulations. All this lets him make predictions about how each state will swing on November 4. (You can read more about the particulars on the FAQ.) These predictions are presented in various ways on the site, but my favorite is the at-a-glance map in the upper right corner.

That map is starting to look a little like my fantasyland map, and I'm tickled dark blue.

The most exciting part recently has been watching states turn white from pale pink, and then slowly, gradually, start turning the palest shade of sky blue... then a little more of a baby blue... and then all of a sudden Virginia is almost as blue as Vermont, Michigan is as blue as Minnesota, and it seems to be spreading from Pennsylvania to Ohio to Indiana.

There's more to the site than the presidential race -- you can read up on the Senate and House races as well. You'll have to sort through that for yourself, as I'm mostly paying attention to the big race (although I like checking the Senate map as well). Enjoy!

Sneak Peek

2008-10-10T13:32:00.002-04:00

This Sunday's New York Times Magazine is all about food!

Bittman! Pollan! Kosher conundrum! Exploding corn (on the cover)! All this and more on newsstands this Sunday... or, yours to read right now.

I haven't had a chance to read any of it yet, so I'll probably have at least one more blog post about this issue of the magazine. I just wanted to bring it to your attention, since it looks like there's tons to read. Before I dig in, though, I just want to point out exactly which food they chose for the cover. It's not an heirloom tomato or a bag of wheat or a Twinkie. It's an ear of corn. And that's not an accident.

Read, enjoy, discuss... I'll blog it up soon enough!

Uncertainty Parcel Service

2008-10-07T17:41:00.006-04:00

I recently ordered something through a website, and the merchant kindly provided a UPS tracking number.

When I clicked through to track my package (still in CA? what's with that?) I ended up on the UPS page. Apparently, UPS now has a new program called "Quantum View". The description is interesting:

Quantum View^® visibility services help you manage your shipping information securely and efficiently. Whether you want to provide proactive notification to your customers when their shipments are on the way or create a custom tracking report, Quantum View has a solution for you. [emphasis added]

Now, of course, the way they want you to parse this paragraph (I believe) is that you can do all of these things with their new program for businesses.

But, given what they've decided to call the program, I'm pretty sure you can only do one or the other. You can find out when your package will arrive, or you can know what city it's in. How uncertain.

New Poll!

2008-10-05T19:33:00.003-04:00

Hello readers,

Just wanted to let you know, there is a new poll up on the sidebar! I'm curious about how many of the international hits on my blog are actually people reading my posts, and how many are just looking for photos of Johnny Depp or giant isopods or something. Oh, and hey, if you're just here for the pictures that's cool too -- maybe leave a comment and tell me what you were searching for? I'm curious about who's checking out my blog!

Corny Ads

2008-10-02T23:43:00.000-04:00

Lately there have been some very interesting ads on television and in newspapers. Perhaps you have seen them. In the TV ads, the script is something like this:

Person A: Ew, you're eating that? It contains corn syrup!

Person B: So? It's made from corn. Corn is a plant! What's wrong with it?

Person A: Uhm... I... uhm... can I have some?

You can check them out on YouTube: Ad 1 and Ad 2.

Naturally, these ads have been lighting up the food blogosphere. The Jew and the Carrot (hereafter known as JCarrot and now part of my blog biscuit) had a good, long post about them a few days ago, and I don't want to just repeat everything that they said, so check out their post. I just wanted to bring this to your attention, in case you're like me and don't actually watch enough TV to see these things for yourself.

Don't be like the folks in the commercial, clueless when it comes to actual reasons to avoid corn syrup. There are plenty of good reasons, having nothing to do with its nutritive value. Notice that in the commercials, the products are "fruit drink" and a popsicle, things we expect to be sweet... had they shown breadcrumbs, canned soup, tomato sauce, or any of the myriad products that really *don't* need to be additionally sweetened, I would hope that Person A would reply, "But why do you need to have corn syrup in your breadcrumbs/tomato sauce/chicken soup/whole wheat bread in the first place?" and it would be Person B's turn to be at a loss for an answer.

Actually, that's not a bad idea... maybe we should get some talented filmmakers to make alternative versions of these ads and post them as responses on YouTube to the corn syrup ads. Any volunteers?

In the meantime, though, read the JCarrot article for some suggestions about why corn syrup is, in fact, not all that great. (Although in my conversations with Aliza, I have learned that nothing is nearly as simple as we'd like it to be.) And, you know, while you're at it... keep reading JCarrot, it's a great blog!

PS: I have no idea why I didn't post this when I wrote it. So I'm posting it now, a little late but better than never, right?

Migratory Patterns

2008-09-29T11:19:00.003-04:00

::David Attenborough voice::

Today we will witness one of the greatest migrations on the Eastern Seaboard.

From my vantage point in the driver's seat of my vehicle, I will be able to observe the great herds in their seasonal movement. In enormous numbers, the vast flocks will gather at places used at this season for generations. In just a few days, they will disperse again, many of them not appearing until the next yearly migration. In the meantime, however, their sheer density will change traffic patterns for miles.

::back to myself::

In other words, I get to sit in traffic on the Belt Parkway later this afternoon. But as long as the documentary in my head keeps rolling, I think I'll be ok.

Happy New Year!

Better Know an Insect: Just a Little Weevil

2008-09-25T23:36:00.003-04:00

I love whole grains, so I keep a variety of them in miscellaneous jars and other storage vessels in a cabinet in my kitchen. I like barley in my soup, curried quinoa, fresh popcorn (no microwave needed!), steel cut oats, and other tasty grains.

Unfortunately, I'm not the only one.

While restocking our popcorn jar, I picked up a bag of barley that I had opened some weeks ago and had rolled and clipped shut. I noticed that some of the barley was... moving. Crawling, really.

This was how we found out that we had an infestation of weevils. More specifically, they were probably wheat weevils, also known as granary weevils, which are a common pest of grain. They look like this:

Unlike the giant water bugs a few months back, however, what you're seeing on your screen is far larger than lifesize. If you check out the post on Wikipedia, you'll see the length given as 3-4 mm from snout-tip to end. These are tiny little critters; they burrow into seeds, very tiny indeed!

They might be tiny, but they don't lack ambition. We found the majority in the barley, but they'd also made it into the wild rice and the oat bran. (Actually, we caught a mating pair in the act nestled in the oat bran. I'm just glad we found them before it was full of their offspring.) It's not entirely clear -- they may have simply navigated the folds of the bag -- but they may have actually chewed through the plastic to get to the barley. (It was one of those flimsy two-pound bags.)

Anyway, we transferred everything to weevil-proof glass jars and threw the infested materials in the trash.

I don't know how accurate the Wikipedia article is, although the description is true enough. (It's completely lacking in citations.) The page about the weevils as a group is fairly interesting, if brief. It's too bad that the article is so short. There are 60,000 species of weevils in the world, so such a short entry really doesn't do them justice.

Weevils are in Curculionoidea, a superfamily of Coleoptera, or beetles; there are approximately 350,000 described species of beetles total, although there may be as many as 5 million in the world. (This might sound familiar -- frustration with mammal-centrism is part of the reason I do these "Better Know an Insect" posts.) As the visualization goes, if you lined up every known species of animal at random, every fifth one would be a beetle. By comparison, there are fewer than 6000 species of mammal in the world. There are not quite 60,000 species of vertebrates. Yet the gallery for weevils has just a handful of pictures, including the very pretty palmetto weevil.

Even the Encyclopedia of Life has no information about the little granary weevil. The best you can do is the snout beetles page, which has a few nice pictures and a phylogeny but not much besides.

I'm tired and it's nearly Friday, so I'm going to end there for now... but there will be more about other kinds of beetles in the future! There are so many, I could just blog about beetles and have several years' worth of material!

Super Supper?

2008-09-17T14:38:00.005-04:00

People who know me well are often inclined to ask my opinion about whether something is "good for me." It's an interesting question. I'm not really qualified as a nutrition scientist, food chemist, doctor, or, you know, any other professional food expert. I am a vegetarian, which has made me more aware of what I eat (and more aware about myths concerning protein, for example) but other than that, and being a voracious reader and an enthusiastic Pollangelical, I'm just an ecology graduate student.

But, usually, I have an answer. It's generally along the lines of, "Well, is it a plant? If it's a plant, eat it. If it's not a plant, just eat a little of it." For more information, I turn to the trusty rules of Pollan: does it have more than five ingredients? (Bad.) Are any of them unfamiliar? (More bad.) Are any of them unpronounceable/indistinguishable from the ingredients in your shampoo? (Very bad!)

Now, though, there are new problems. Foods that used to be totally normal foods have become... something else. Do you like sardines, for example? (Many people don't.) What if you couldn't taste them, and they were in your orange juice this morning? Would you like to have some broccoli, kale and beet salad? (Not too appetizing?) That's OK, you can get all your vegetables in a convenient chocolate bar form!

Weird, right? And yet... and yet. Superfood or Monster from the Deep?

So is that chocolate-broccoli-kale-beet bar good for me?

I hope no one asks me, I'm not really sure what to say. I'm pretty sure the answer is, "Well, it's still a chocolate bar!" but what does that even mean any more? What if it supplies all the daily requirements of certain things? I can tell you that eating a square of chocolate will not fill you up, and you'll still want a normal meal. I can tell you that if the rest of your diet is made of burgers and fries, having some antioxidants in your chocolate is probably not going to help you much.

What about having orange juice with sardines in it? Even assuming a negligible flavor difference, shouldn't orange juice have, you know, just one ingredient?

Thoughts from the gallery? I'm moderately sleep-deprived, so let me know if I lost you somewhere along the way.

14 Questions

2008-09-15T23:13:00.004-04:00

Have you been wondering where Obama and McCain stand on important science issues? Science Debate 2008 can help. They compiled a list of fourteen general questions about important science issues and put them to each of the candidates.

You can read their full responses here. Too busy to scroll all the way down? (Or is the lack of a Web designer hurting your eyes?) Check out the summary published by the NY Times.

Note: You will not find anything about evolution or the teaching thereof in this article. It just didn't figure into the top 14 questions, I guess. I think that's sort of encouraging, but then again, the people asking the questions are scientists. Would I love to hear John McCain say something dumb about evolution? You betcha, but I don't think it's likely; in the Republican primary debates, there was the following exchange:

MR. VANDEHEI: Senator McCain, this comes from a Politico.com reader and was among the top vote-getters in our early rounds. They want a yes or on. Do you believe in evolution?
SEN. MCCAIN: Yes.
MR. VANDEHEI: I’m curious, is there anybody on the stage that does not agree -- believe in evolution?
(Senator Brownback, Mr. Huckabee, Representative Tancredo raise their hands.)
SEN. MCCAIN: May I -- may I just add to that?
MR. VANDEHEI: Sure.
SEN. MCCAIN: I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.

So, there's that. But, I also think McCain is slippery enough to try to get out of that one too, especially with what's-her-name in the game now. Gotta love how he has to qualify his acceptance (we don't like to say belief) of evolution. Also love that they work in some discussion of sustainable seafood! Anyway, now I'm going off on a tangent. Enjoy the articles!

Fantasyland

2008-09-14T17:52:00.002-04:00

At night, I close my eyes and in my dreams I visit a magical land. A land that, in some ways, is much like our own... but just a little different.

Actually, I have a map... it looks like this:

Let the "keep dreaming" comments begin.

Sarah Palin: Heartless Lawbreaker

2008-09-05T11:24:00.008-04:00

Hello readers, I apologize for being very quiet of late. I've been watching and reading coverage of the DNC and the RNC, pondering "change" and "hope", starting the school year, getting the full rundown of teaching assistant instruction, etc.

There are a few things I would like to point out about "moose-hunting hockey mom" (what the heck kind of demographic is a hockey mom, anyway?) Sarah Palin. Namely, that she doesn't only like to shoot big, adorable, antlered critters.

Sarah Palin likes to shoot dogs from airplanes. Specifically, these dogs:

(What, you thought I was going to work a reference to Bristol Palin's pregnancy and Sarah Palin's determination to stick to her abstinence-only, wolf-killing guns? Nah, that would be a cheap shot, no more sporting than shooting a wolf from an airplane...)

OK, yes, the dogs in question are the wild conspecifics of our cuddly canine companions. (And I am being incorrect in referring to them as dogs, since dogs are the subspecies and wolves are the species. It got your attention though!)

But that doesn't change the matter of aerial hunting. Aerial hunting is cruel, unsporting, and just plain awful. Whole packs can be shot in a short amount of time, orphaning pups back at the den. They claim to do this to increase herd numbers of deer, elk, caribou, etc. so that hunters can put more meat on the table. (In other states, wolves are shot to protect the interests of ranchers who claim that wolves kill their sheep.)

Want to see what wolf hunting looks like? Check out this video on Radar. There isn't a lot of blood, but it's not an easy video to watch all the same. Oh, and so you know, Sarah Palin broke the law (again!) when she offered a bounty on wolves. There was a law against putting bounties on various critters, including wolves. And she broke it by offering $150 per pair of fresh forelegs of a wolf. That seems pretty clear (and pretty grim) to me. (And now they want to go after black bears...)

Do you really want another Vice President with no discernible compassion, no respect for the law, and no regard for the environment? Haven't these last eight years been enough of that?

Too Cool

2008-08-27T10:06:00.003-04:00

So, it turns out that I'm rather allergic to certain moisturizers, or some ingredient therein.

In addition to some serious topical steroid cream which required a prescription, my dermatologist suggested a lotion called Sarna* as an additional treatment/source of salvation. (A salve of salvation?) What's the magic ingredient? There are two, actually: camphor and menthol.

Camphor

Naturally-derived camphor is a tree resin that is solid at room temperature. It is also highly flammable, which I learned from The Time Machine. Not surprisingly, it has some insect-repellent qualities (of course it does, plants need defenses too!). Some mothballs are made with camphor. It is also a rather effective topical analgesic.

It is interesting to note that natural camphor is derived from the camphor laurel, Cinnamomum camphora. That genus name isn't a coincidence; true cinnamon (C. verum) and cassia (C. aromaticum, which is most common "cinammon" sold in America) are in the same genus as camphor. Camphor laurels are an economically important crop in the areas where the species is native, but the tree is invasive in Australia. Camphor was also one of the first organic chemicals to be synthesized in a laboratory.

Menthol

Menthol is the other half of this dynamic duo. Menthol can also be synthesized in the lab, but in nature it is found in members of Mentha, the genus that includes peppermint (Mentha x piperita, actually a well-established hybrid of watermint and spearmint), spearmint (Mentha spicata), and other pleasant-smelling herbs.

I don't know which of these compounds acts faster and which one lasts longer, but combined they're enough to stop itching cold. (Sorry.) Menthol stimulates specific cold-sensitive ion channels in skin neurons, but I'm not sure how camphor works. In my case, the combination of menthol and camphor creates such a strong illusion of cold that I start shivering even though I know my body is at an acceptable room temperature.

I would write more -- allergies are incredibly interesting and very complicated -- but I'm also taking diphenhydramine and I feel like I'm about to zonk out. (And it's only 11 AM!) I'd better prepare some coffee.

Caffeine

Oh, organic chemistry, is there anything you can't do?

*As an interesting aside, sarna apparently means "scabies" in Spanish.

Rescue Ink

2008-08-25T22:31:00.004-04:00

When Big Ant, Sal, Des, Batso, and Mike Tattoo tell you that your dogs have inadequate shelter from the sun and you should really build them a doghouse, would you say no?

Tattooed Bikers, A Dog's Best Friend

It takes a tough man to bottle-feed a kitten, that's for sure. Let's hope Michael Vick runs into a couple of these guys when he gets out of prison.

You can learn more about them at the site for Rescue Ink.

Don't forget -- spay and neuter your pets! (Big Ant doesn't like people who don't.)

PS: Forgot to mention -- the slide show for this article is one of the greatest things ever. Really.

Correction

2008-08-21T13:40:00.002-04:00

Just a quick FYI -- thanks to Mike, I can now inform you that the dragonfly I previously labeled L. vibrans (great blue skimmer) is actually L. incesta (slaty skimmer). Apparently, vibrans has a whitish face, which indicates that this is incesta. I do not know how it came to that species name, however. That's all for now!

Anax junius and Friends

2008-08-14T22:34:00.012-04:00

As promised, some pictures!

It turns out that Anax junius likes to hang out more towards the middle of the pond. Lacking waders, I practiced catching anything I could. (Things like coordination don't always come easily to me.) I also don't have a great camera for macro stuff. One of these days I'll get a better one, but in the meantime I still got some decent pics!

OK, less talking, more dragons!

Pachydiplax longipennis

First up is Pachydiplax longipennis, also known as the blue dasher. That is the standard way of holding dragonflies after you catch them, by the way. This guy was a lot more blue than the picture looks, but it's sort of hard to see.

Celithemis eponina

If this is what I think it is (but I don't have a great field guide) then it is the aptly-named brown-spotted yellow-wing, Celithemis eponina. Unfortunately, standard dragonfly holding procedure obscures a lot of the beautiful wing patterning, so check out Wikipedia for more. The wings on these guys are lovely! If I've ID'd it correctly, it's also known as the Halloween pennant. Even if I don't have the species quite right, I feel pretty good saying that it's at least in Celithemis.

~~Libellula vibrans~~?
Libellula incesta

I don't have a good handle on this one. I suspect it might be Libellula vibrans, the great blue skimmer, but I'm really not sure. There's a picture of one on this page about the genus Libellula, but ... I don't know. I'll have to send this post to Mike and ask him.

(Editor's note: See next post for correction.)

Plathemis lydia

I'm pretty sure this one is a white-tail, Plathemis lydia. Why? The tail is white. (Actually, there may be several species of white-tails, but there is only one in my field guide. Hopefully the correct one. )

And, finally, the pièce de résistance, the trophy at the end of several hot hours standing in the sun by a mucky pond with a net, the big kahuna we were hunting all day:

Mike holding our first and only Anax junius of the second day out.

Waiting for the glue on the transmitter to dry.

Waiting for clearance from air traffic control.

After being manhandled for several minutes, they need to shiver their flight muscles to get warm enough to take off. Payload firmly attached, he was airborne a few seconds after this pictures.

We tracked him for about an hour with a pretty strong signal, first up in the woods and the back to the pond area where Mike had originally caught him. And then, suddenly, the signal vanished. We waited awhile, but he did not return. Perhaps he decided that this pond was too dangerous.

PS: You might be interested to know, for scale, that my left thumb nail, which features prominently in all but the pictures of Anax, is almost exactly one-half inch wide. You might also be interested to know that "longipennis" means "long-winged", despite what I know you were thinking. Apparently penna means "feather" in Latin and is related to the word "pennant". Penna is also the root of the word "pinion", meaning both the outer part of a bird's wing and the removal thereof to permanently prevent flight. Aren't you glad you asked? Entomology and etymology, all in one convenient location.

Applebee's, Redux

2008-08-13T11:34:00.002-04:00

On Monday evening, as I was preparing dinner, I received a telephone call.

It was from Applebee's! (Read my previous post on Applebee's here.)

Specifically, a very nice manager of the location at which I recently dined who made the following points:

1) The "artifact" (their word, not mine) had been promptly removed and destroyed. Or at least put in the trashcan, good enough for me!

2) As a lapsed vegetarian, she had a lot of sympathy for the fact that when I look at the menu, even though I know that something could be made specially for me, I feel slighted by the 100% coverage of meat. I expressed this feeling and suggested that even listing a few things, like vegan burgers, black bean and veggie quesadillas, and maybe a pasta primavera with a choice of sauces could really add veggie comfort to the menu. She thanked me for the suggestions and gave me her email address in case I think of more/better ideas. (Since I was preparing dinner at the time, my brain wasn't entirely focused on coming up with *other* meals, one at a time please!) I haven't contacted her yet, been busy with the dragons, but I will soon.

(Any suggestions?)

Anyway, I have to say that this experience with Applebee's has been on the whole very pleasant and positive. It's nice to know that companies really take the words "customer service" seriously. So far I'm three for three in my interactions with food businesses this year, kind of awesome! Hopefully, if they're really serious about it, we'll start seeing more veg-friendly fare on the menu at your local Applebee's too. One location at a time, I guess. Where better to kick things off than the Garden State?

Better Know an Insect: Anax junius, part I

2008-08-12T21:33:00.003-04:00

I post a lot about what's going on in the world of science, but I haven't posted much about what I'm doing.

Today, that changes.

Ladies and gents, this is Anax junius, the green darner dragonfly:

Male green darner.

Female green darner.

Take a good look, because you'll be hearing a lot about these guys in the future.

Today was a testing day for Mike and myself. (Mike is my advisor.) We received some very small transmitters a few weeks ago, but because of various things (his trip to South Africa, my shuffling between NJ and LI, logistics, etc.) the plan finally came together only this week.

(Please bear with me. I forgot my camera, I will try to describe things as well as I can, and I will hopefully have some more pictures tomorrow.)

After borrowing a van from Princeton, which may or may not prove handy depending on how well we can use our radio antenna, we headed to a pond and spotted a few Anax. Mike being in possession of the one pair of waders, he went on in while I stayed on shore in case any made an escape attempt in my direction. We were very lucky, and Mike bagged a male (like the picture above) within a few minutes. Back on shore, we sat down in the shade (don't want the little guy to overheat) and proceeded to apply a radio transmitter with a combination of eyelash adhesive and crazy glue. Once it was on, he sat on Mike's finger, shivered his flight muscles for a few minutes to warm back up, and took off.

We were able to follow him for a bit into some trees (apparently, green darners that have been man-handled will retreat to trees away from the pond) and then lost the signal. Driving around, we were able to find his blip again, only to lose it a few minutes later. We are concerned that the soldering was not as firm as we'd like and the transmitter may only be transmitting intermittently (that's a mouthful!).

Our plan for tomorrow is to 1) try to find our guy again in the same area. If we are successful... well, actually I don't know. I think we'll just try to keep an eye on him as long as we can. 2) If we can't find him, we'll first do a practice run with just a transmitter to test the range of a properly-functioning beacon. After that... probably try to bag another one and follow it around for a while.

What's the point of all this? Well, our project is on migration in Anax. So, we're trying to figure out whether it's even feasible to tag one, relocate it, and follow it for several days over land. It has been done before, but we're both new-ish to the technique. And it's not easy.

I'll post more in the next few days about the exciting world of insect endocrinology and how hormones may influence migratory behavior -- an under-explored area which might become part or all of my project if it proves too difficult to consistently follow tagged individuals. Also, pictures next time.

PS: In case you were thinking that we were attaching big, heavy transmitters to dainty damselflies, rest assured, we are not. Green darners are anything but dainty. Go out to a pond, take a look at all the dragonflies you see, and look for the biggest thing flying around. That's probably an Anax species. A picture for size comparison:

Male A. junius and female A. longipes.

I didn't take this picture and those aren't my hands, but this will give you some idea of just how big these guys are. Totally harmless, of course, but definitely massive!

I Want to Go to Nice

2008-08-06T13:49:00.002-04:00

This restaurant sounds amazing!

Rich, Luxurious, French, Vegetarian

The only thing is, where did Mark Bittman get this idea that people need to be convinced that veg doesn't equal monastic? Guacamole, peanut butter and tahini are all vegan and all decadent, and when you're ovo-lacto the whole world of cheese, eggs, and therefore soufflé is at your disposal. So, I'm not really sure where that came from, or who he's trying to convince. After all, he did write How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, so he knows better... it's very odd how defensive he is.

But if you're up for a trip to Nice (and who isn't?), let me know, we're going to this place.

Applebee's, Meat, and the Dearborn Independent

2008-08-03T19:57:00.003-04:00

Today D. and I went to the local Applebee's for a quick bite after doing some shopping at Target. We don't eat there often, but it was close by and we figured it would be fast and easy, and it was.

While we were waiting for the check, I idly surveyed the sports memorabilia decor. Jets jerseys sharing a wall with Giants jerseys, an assortment of hockey team photos, and along one wall, a number of humorous golf-related signs.

And then my eyes fell on something unusual on the wall of golf items. For there, between the sign indicating that hitting your caddies with a five iron is more effective than with a driver (or something like that, it seemed very violent either way) and something else about golf being outlawed in fifteenth-century England, there was a little framed magazine cover showing a man in classic golf pose, having just driven the ball 200 yards and looking very satisfied.

It was a cover from the Dearborn Independent.

Had I been in this Applebee's a year ago, I might not have even made any association, although the name was certainly familiar. However, over the last couple of months D. and I have been watching The Jewish Americans, a great documentary that aired in three 140-minute segments on PBS. It's really good so far, although I haven't yet wanted to watch the next segment. Learning about Jews in the Old West is one thing, but we're just about up to World War II and that's a little harder.

In the meantime, though, we have learned a lot about Henry Ford and the newspaper he purchased that published some genuinely bonkers anti-Semitism. Among other things, it ran the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Dearborn Independent was founded in 1901 and purchased by Henry Ford in 1919; it didn't publish again after 1927, after lawsuits about above-mentioned bonkers anti-Semitism forced him to shut it down. The cover in the restaurant was dated 1926, putting it squarely within his era.

I'm not calling for some kind of mass action against Applebee's; restaurant chains have enough going on right now with the economy doing what it's doing. But it did get me thinking. I had actually been planning to email the company anyway; the menu is dreadfully dead-animal centric, although, as our waitress helpfully pointed out since it wasn't on the menu, they do serve vegan burgers. I think I will mention the magazine cover in my email as well. I know that their intention was not to offend; I'm sure it's only up on the wall because it fit the golf theme of that section. But I do think it's worth reconsidering whether it should be up there at all.

What do you think?

You Say Xitomatl, I Say Tomatillo

2008-07-31T23:09:00.004-04:00

Tonight I cooked tomatillos for the first time.

I suspect that most of my regular readership knows at least vaguely what a tomatillo, also known as a husk tomato, is, but just in case, these are tomatillos:

Physalis philadelphica

They're green and tart, and from what I can tell, their primary use is making salsa verde.

They're also great for confusing cashiers at the grocery store. Apparently, in New Brunswick tomatillos are purchased so infrequently that they were not in the computer system; a manager had to trek to the produce aisle to find the price.

It's too bad, because they're absolutely delicious. I took a bite of one before cooking, out of curiosity, and found it very pleasant. It was tart, yes, but flavorful and not overwhelming. It didn't make my face screw up the way it does when I lick a lemon; it was more like the pleasant tartness of a granny smith apple (which it strongly resembled visually) without any of the sweetness.

The dish I was making was not salsa verde, but it may as well have been. It was basically a souped up version of salsa verde, with lots of pureed corn, peas for extra green color, and for no discernible reason, canned green chilies. (That's what was in the recipe, and I like to follow recipes one time through before I fix them up.) Next time I make it, no cans necessary -- the jalepeños, for some reason, are thriving on our balcony and we should have a nice harvest starting soon. (It will add some heat, too -- the soup could use a little more hot pepper.) I can say with some satisfaction, however, that I used home-made veggie broth for the first time, with outstanding results.

Anyway, back to the tomatillo.

Tomatillos are in the nightshade family, although they are in a different genus from tomatoes. An interesting fact from Wikipedia is that tomatillos are self-incompatible; that is, you need at least two tomatillo plants to get any fruit. Whole Foods, meanwhile, indicates that they can be used to tenderize meat, probably due to their acidic content since it doesn't mention anything about our friends the enzymes.

According to Purdue, evidence of tomatillos has been found at the site of Tehuacán in Mexico, although they give a date range of 900 BCE to 1542 CE, which is not terribly helpful. (A lot can happen in 2100 years!) They do add that in pre-conquistador Mexico, the tomatillo was actually preferred over the tomato. (I would have to guess that their European visitors did not share this opinion, because we do not eat spaghetti and meatballs in salsa verde.) There was also, apparently, a lot of confusion about exactly which fruits were which, because Aztec words got a little mixed up by the Europeans.

GourmetSleuth, however, seems pretty sure that the domesticated tomatillo dates back to at least 800 BCE. They also have information that's a bit easier to read about the whole tomato-tomatillo-tomatl-xitomatl-miltomatl controvery. (Dang, now I wish I spoke Nahuatl. Apparently "tomatl" means approximately "round and plump", so that's a word I can get behind! Also, these are the same folks who gave us chocolate.) They also agree with Whole Foods that tomatillos freeze well but should be frozen whole.

So there you have it, the tomatillo in a nutshell. Or in a tomatillo husk, as the case may be.

The moral of the story: go buy some tomatillos and eat them, cook them, make salsa verde, confuse cashiers. I think they'd probably make an interesting margarita, too. Too bad I cooked all the ones I got today.

What, Me Worry?

2008-07-29T10:10:00.002-04:00

John Tierney's column today, "10 Things to Scratch from Your Worry List" does our planet a considerable disservice.

OK, yes, it's true we don't need to worry about sharks (we never did), and local produce may not be all its cracked up to be. (Eating in season is still best, but it's more complicated.)

But what bothers me about this column is #5, "Evil Plastic Bags."

5. Evil plastic bags. Take it from the Environmental Protection Agency : paper bags are not better for the environment than plastic bags. If anything, the evidence from life-cycle analyses favors plastic bags. They require much less energy — and greenhouse emissions — to manufacture, ship and recycle. They generate less air and water pollution. And they take up much less space in landfills.

It's as though he's being willfully ignorant -- for if you follow the link to the EPA page, you know what they recommend? Bring your own bag! (Don't believe me? Click the link.) While plastic may require less space and less energy, they are also made from petroleum, which unlike trees, does not spontaneous grow from the ground.

In short, the evidence only marginally favors plastic bags in my opinion, and overwhelmingly favors the option of cotton canvas tote bag instead. Or reuse your plastic bags, if you can; I find that mine tend to rip well before the eleventh reuse, which is the point at which you have "broken even" by some reckoning. My bags of choice for regular grocery shopping are a combination of little green Stop n Shop bags and two long-handled canvas tote bags. (Long handles are good for slinging over shoulders.) If I was in the market for another bag, I might get this one. It's pretty! I keep extras in the car; I have a large canvas bag that can hold three six-packs of bottled beer (tested yesterday) among others.

Bring your own bags; then you don't have to worry about plastic bags or paper bags. And your groceries will taste better.*

*Note: groceries may not actually taste better.

In Which I Am Perplexed

2008-07-17T14:51:00.002-04:00

I am trying to imagine the contents of this book.

Notice the "Fact & Fiction" tag at the bottom right corner. Are there rampant fictions being spread right now about goat cheese? Have the cow cheese makers started telling nasty lies about goat cheeses, like goat cheese is actually made from baby goats? Is the moon not, in fact, a giant Crottin de Chavignol? Is goat cheese likely to kill you tomorrow?

Amazon is less than helpful. There are no reviews, no comments, no "See Inside This Book!", nothing.

The face of the goat on the cover is inscrutable. She is contemplating cheese; is she also contemplating the laughing goat? There are no "thought bubbles" connecting the two; perhaps he is a figment of her imagination. (And no, there is no particular reason I chose those genders for the goats; I just needed a handy way to distinguish them, and the pensive expression the brown goat suggests that she is thinking about where her milk is going.)

In short, what is going on here? If anyone out there has read this book, please tell me. I love goat cheese and I don't want to give it up because it might make me go insane or something. Thanks!

Chocolate-Covered Enzymes

2008-07-15T21:20:00.004-04:00

Flipping through bridal magazines, you see many cakes. A majority of them, at least the über-fancy ones, are covered in fondant. Fondant (for those of you not shopping for pastry at the moment) is what makes cakes look like this:

It's a cake!

A cake frosted with buttercream, on the other hand, looks more like this:

Raspberry delight!

Both cakes look lovely, but notice how the top cake is so smooth and sculptural, while the bottom one (which in my opinion looks more delicious anyway) is a little rougher; there are little air bubbles and minor imperfections along the sides, the lines aren't quite perfect.

"What the heck does this have to do with science? I didn't come to this site to read about fondant vs. buttercream! I demand an explanation!"

Let's start out just talking about fondant. Fondant is a heavy paste which, at its most basic, is made with just water, sugar, a little food coloring, and a skilled hand. (A candy thermometer helps, and there are many variations using different sugar ingredients.) If you accidentally jolt the bowl while it's cooling, the sugar will come out of solution quickly and in large crystals; presto, rock candy!

However, by mixing the water and sugar together at a high temperature and then cooling it very gently, stirring violently at the very end, the supersaturated solution forms very tiny crystals that look as smooth as a lake on a calm day. You can use this paste to decorate cakes in myriad ways -- a quick Google images search for fondant cakes will give you an idea of just how many! You can sculpt with it. You can cut it and shape it. And, for all intents and purposes, you can even eat it. (Although not that many people do.)

Now, if you made fondant from scratch, you would likely just use sucrose -- that is, ordinary table sugar.

And if you cut that piece of fondant into squares and dipped them into chocolate, you would have this:

Minty!

"But wait! The inside of an After Eight mint is so creamy and soft! There's no way it could be the same as that stiff piece of fondant covering the cake up there!"

Ah. Yes. You have a point.

And that is where the enzymes come in. Invertase is a naturally-occurring enzyme produced by some bacteria as well as some animals that breaks down sucrose into its component sugars, glucose and fructose, which is sometimes known as inverted sugar syrup. (The reason for "invert" is interesting but I can't explain it well; read about it here.)

In the production of After Eight mints, a small amount of invertase is added to the minty fondant just before it is coated with chocolate. The enzyme doesn't begin to work immediately, so the chocolate can cool around the fondant before it begins to "cure". The smaller, more soluble molecules of glucose and fructose go into solution more readily and disolve in the small amount of water contained in the fondant; it isn't enough to create a runny liquid, but it's enough that when you bite into an After Eight (or any other fondant-filled treat) the texture is creamy and viscous and not a stiff paste.

Mmm, enzymes. What can't they do?

PS: On a totally unrelated note, we just watched the first segment of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Hilarious! So much fun! Go watch while you can, it's gone on Sunday.

Dr. Horrible

2008-07-14T11:44:00.003-04:00

Speaking of fireflies...

So... normally I don't like to promote stuff or whathaveyou, there isn't any advertising on my blog... except for this!

Because: 1) science fiction is almost as good as science facts; 2) Neil Patrick Harris; 3)NATHAN FILLION; 4) it has the word "blog" in it, so it's relevant! 5) Oh, and did I mention Joss Whedon? Him too.

Watch it and stuff!

More real posts later.

Better Know an Insect: Femme Fatale Fireflies

2008-07-09T23:11:00.003-04:00

Last night Dustin and I took an evening stroll through the park. It was a lovely, warm evening, with robins singing from the treetops and a slight breeze rustling the grass. And, of course, there were fireflies, lighting up the summer night with their romantic display, a visual analog to a bird's song.

Males, seeking females, blink their message in code, while females sit and wait on the ground for the right guy to come along. When she sees him, she blinks back until he finds her, and that's where baby fireflies come from. Aww.

Unless she's a hungry female of the genus Photuris, that is.

After Photuris females have mated, they don't need to mate again. But why waste a perfectly good signaling device? Instead, the Photuris females signal back to males of another species, Photinus, luring them in and catching them for dinner. Delicious!

But he's not just a tasty meal to help her lay eggs. It turns out that Photinus males produce a chemical that protects them from attacks by spiders and other arthropod predators. By eating Photinus males, the Photuris female acquires this armor and is herself protected from attack.

So, the next time you're out for an evening stroll in July, consider the drama playing out before you. There are dangerous femme fatales everywhere you look.

Read more about it on this page from Cornell.

Mater Familias

2008-07-07T20:31:00.000-04:00

This article ran a couple of weeks ago.

Albanian Custom Fades: Woman as Family Man

I find everything about it interesting. A woman cannot head a household, but it's acceptable to change her gender and live her life as a man, and head a household. It is an interesting view of gender perception. While I'm glad that greater equality is coming to Albanian women, it's also a little bit sad that such an interesting cultural tradition (respected by both Christians and Muslims alike) is going to fade away within the next twenty years or so.

I don't know what else to say... any thoughts from the peanut gallery?

DIY Dairy

2008-07-05T10:34:00.002-04:00

In the spirit of reducing packaging from foods (is seltzer a food? maybe in Hollywood?) that I love, consider the yogurt maker.

"But dairy products were not meant to be made at home!" you might think. "They are frequently complicated, sometimes involve caves, and are generally not DIY projects!" Ah, but that is not always true. Yogurt is actually incredibly easy to make at home; technically, you don't even need a yogurt maker, but having one can greatly improve the reliability of your results. (And as a scientist, I am always in favor of reproducible results.)

Yogurt is delicious but also tends to arrive in non-recyclable plastic containers, creating even more guilt than recyclable seltzer bottles. (Yes, in some places you can recycle plastic #5, but for whatever reason, those places don't include New Jersey.) It also tends to come in fairly standard flavors, like peach and blueberry. Making yogurt at home allows you to create your own flavors. If I get a yogurt maker at some point in my life, I might start with herbal or spiced yogurts (lavender? thyme? cumin?), maybe play with extracts... cherry-almond is one of my favorite combinations, so a little almond extract (or even almond milk?) might be a tasty addition. We'll see how it goes.

July 4, 1776

2008-07-04T15:17:00.001-04:00

WHEN IN the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience heth shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

(read the rest here...)

I Love the Subway...

2008-07-03T09:54:00.000-04:00

I love the New York City subway system. It's always been like a jungle of intersecting vines to me, and as Tarzan swung vine to vine, I swing from handhold to handhold through my turf.

I do not love the subway anywhere close to the way these two little boys do, though. This story, and the accompanying graphics, are utterly adorable. It's great that someone out there is actually pleased to hear the words "service change".

I hope that one day, riding the subway, I will encounter this family and see three little boys singing (in perfect harmony) all the stops on the 3 train. That would be one for the blog. I'll keep you posted.

(Boom de yada, boom de yada...)

Better Know an Arthropod: Bizzaro Lobsters!

2008-07-01T21:00:00.001-04:00

Most people are familiar with the lobsters that grace many New England tables this time of year. The American/Atlantic/Maine lobster, Homarus americanus, is a well-known icon of the northeast part of the country and countless J. Crew summer prints.

Therefore, we're not going to discuss them further here today. Perhaps once I read The Secret Life of Lobsters I'll have something interesting to say about them beyond that they're apparently good with drawn butter.

This post is about the bizarro-lobsters of the deep seas. Sharon introduced me to a new one today, so let's view that one first!

The slipper lobster is not a "true lobster" -- it is instead more closely related to some of the other bizarro lobsters, the spiny and furry lobsters. They are achelate, meaning they have no claws. This makes them easy prey for humans, and indeed, if you Google "slipper lobster" you will find their tail meat for sale. (Of course, there is no claw meat to speak of.) Some of them are actually referred to as bugs, which is rather entertaining. No word yet on their position as a sustainable seafood. Not much seems to be known about them, if Wikipedia is at all accurate. Maybe it's better that way.

Next up: spiny lobsters. Popular for eating, also known as "rock lobster", and very colorful. Also, the only arthropod (as far as I know) that was immortalized in song by Fred Schneider (who is also very colorful). Interestingly, spiny lobsters have a unique form of sound production involving rubbing their antennae against a file-like protrusion. I'm not really sure what's going on there, but they're the only ones that do it, so that's neat.

I would tell you something about the furry lobsters, but there doesn't seem to be much to tell. (Except that if you start thinking too hard about the concept of a furry lobster, it can sort of hurt your brain.) Besides, you don't want to hear about true furry lobsters, you want to hear about this:

Kiwa hirsuta

Kiwa hirsuta, also entertainingly known as the yeti lobster, is not a true lobster or in the Achelate group with the other "bizarro" lobsters. Kiwa is in its own brand-new family, Kiwaidae, all by its lonesome. See, this beautiful, samba-dancing lobster, which you might be tempted to call a furry lobster but is not, was only discovered in 2005, chillin' at the bottom of the Pacific ocean. It lives on hydrothermal vents (so, maybe not chillin', per se), is pretty much blind, and may use all those "hairs" to detox after hanging around the vents, which spew mineral toxins.

My favorite part of this lobster is not that it's yellow, not that it's furry, and not that it's a deep-sea critter. (Although I love deep-sea critters, they're so bizarre!) My favorite part is that it was only found three years ago. I spent most of my life on a planet where no humans knew this thing existed! I suppose Kiwa knew it existed, if decapods can have self-awareness. But we did not know. There are still new things out there to find, if we look hard enough! (As I mentioned in my previous post, the world is just awesome.)

So there you have it. OK, true, none of these critters are true lobsters, but they all have lobster in their names and are therefore acceptable for a not-entirely-scientific blog post. (I didn't name the blog "Correctly Taxonomied Creatures," did I?) I hope you enjoyed your bizarro lobsters. Now please pass me some drawn butter, I want to dip my asparagus in it.

Just Awesome

2008-06-27T09:41:00.007-04:00

Apparently I'm a blogoslacker, because it's been, what, more than two weeks? Yeah. I was running dry on material and very busy going back and forth for wedding plans and such. Bad blogger! I'm still a little low on material, but I have a couple things I'd like to share. Brace yourselves, I'm back!

Dustin and I watch a lot of Discovery Channel. Mostly Mythbusters but also some other random nature shows and things like that. If you watch Discovery Channel enough, you will see these commercials, which are for the Discovery Channel.

60 Second Spot

30 Second Spot

They're just... great. And slightly different, worth watching both.

Anyway, I was simply delighted by today's XKCD.

I don't really have a lot to say about this, they sort of speak for themselves. One thing that comes to mind, however, is that I sort of feel like these spots very succinctly address why I blog: "The world is just awesome." Yes, yes it is, and I'm trying to highlight that one "Better Know an Insect" at a time.

I love the insects, I love to look at birds,
I love old fossils, I love big mammal herds.
I love the whold world, and all the beauty here
Boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada...

Fashion + Science

2008-06-12T15:04:00.004-04:00

At first I was very distressed that these flippin' awesome shirts appeared to only come in one color each for women, while men had their pick of several. Then I realized that you can actually just design your own -- color, cut, everything. Sweet!

Now the only question is, do I prefer "the devil put dinosaur bones in the ground" or "the five basic elements"? Such hard decisions!

Teach the controversy... Atlantis did exist!

Bagels and... what?

2008-06-09T10:37:00.007-04:00

Hmm. Zabar's will have their hands full trying to make sardines the new lox. Good luck with that.

Sardines with your bagel?

Despite what seafoodwatch.org might say, salmon is probably best to just keep on your Avoid list. I'm not sure how recently they updated the list, but it probably hasn't been updated since the Pacific fisheries south of Alaska were closed. With prices on Alaskan salmon poised to go through the roof, you might want to find something new to put on your bagel.

Unfortunately, the other classic bagel topper, whitefish, is also a no-go. Atlantic cod, aka whitefish, is a big red Avoid on that list. But if you're a fan of herring in cream sauce, you're doing A-OK, since herring (aka sardines or kippers) are considered a Best Choice.

Of course, the other option is to not put any fish on your bagel at all. I like mine toasted with a little butter, tomatoes, and a slice or two of manchego. Simple, delicious, and definitely dolphin-safe!

Ohhhh-bama!

2008-06-03T22:59:00.002-04:00

What a beautiful headline!

Sparkling or Still?

2008-06-03T11:09:00.005-04:00

Tap water is hot. Bottled water, finally, has earned itself a reputation as an excess, an over-indulgence by Americans who don't know how good they have it, who have clean water always on tap and available.

There's just one little problem.

My kitchen sink doesn't produce seltzer.

And I like seltzer, dammit! I'm not so keen on sodas, I'll have one once in a while, but I love seltzer. Sparkling water is just so delicious and fun to drink... except for the large plastic bottles that it comes in, which inspire a pang of guilt every time I put one in the recycle bin.

But there is an answer! You can make your own! SodaClubUSA has the answer. Refillable carbon dioxide cartridges, reusuable bottles, and a broad selection of flavors.

Also, I would point out that anyone who can get the Forward, the Environmental News Network, and RV Life to agree must be doing something right! (Of course, the NY Times is right in there too, surprise surprise, but for once that isn't where I read about it first.)

My only criticism of this would be that they don't have nearly enough seltzer flavors... I'm a fan of lemon and lemon-lime, but I also love cranberry and raspberry. Where are my berry flavors? All in good time, maybe. Or I could just use real fruit, I guess.

You say CAFO, I say IFAP...

2008-05-31T09:48:00.003-04:00

The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Union of Concerned Scientists have published reports that say that our current animal husbandry system is inhumane, inefficient, and disgusting.

Yeah. We already knew that, but it's nice to have confirmation from people with recognizable names!

Yesterday I went to the Rutgers Farmers' Market (I'm not really sure what to do with that apostrophe, by the way; anyone have a suggestion? If multiple farmers are selling things, it goes at the end like that, right?) for the first time. The produce selection was limited, but one item was in abundance: meat. There were bison steaks and burgers, chickens -- whole, deboned, sausaged -- quail, maybe even lamb, I don't remember exactly. Locally and humanely raised, the whole lot of it. I wish it were as simple as "stop eating meat" but if that's not really the way you want to go, check out your local farmers' markets; you might be surprised at the variety of non-vegetable foods available to you. (I'll get some links to the NJ ones up soon.)

Guano

2008-05-30T10:44:00.003-04:00

There was about a week there with no posts; sorry about that. I was busy, and there was Memorial Day weekend, and it took a few days to get myself back together.

This article, in two short pages, manage to cram in a lot of interesting information about colonialism, the pre-petroleum world, sustainable fishing, sea bird conservation, organic farming, and other topics.

Peru Guards its Guano as Demand Soars Again.

Guano is bird droppings; colonial birds such as the cormorants and boobies mentioned in this article produce a lot of it every year. Before humans figured out a way to make synthetic fertilizer (leading to corn that is grown with petroleum, which doesn't really help us when you make it into ethanol), guano was the richest soil amendment you could buy.

What I'm not too clear on is why seabird guano is so particularly sought after. We have millions of captive chickens, turkeys and ducks; can't we use some of their droppings in a similar way? If anyone has a good explanation about this (is it something about the level of fish in the diet?) I would love to hear it.

Anyway, it's an interesting article. It gives a little more insight into just how this massive food chain we've created works. Fish that would go to seabirds are instead going to chickens (which don't normally eat fish); declining seabird numbers means less guano for organic farmers to use on vegetables. The price of petroleum goes up to the point that "conventional" petroleum-based farming is too expensive, so farmers of all stripes are looking for alternative fertilizers.

Better Know an Insect: Plant-Ants and Ant-Plants

2008-05-22T13:49:00.000-04:00

"In the present paper, plants with ants living in them will be called 'ant-plants'; the ants will be called 'plant-ants.' "

~Dan Janzen (1966)

Whatever you decide to call them, myrmecophytes (ant-plants) are an interesting area of research. I recently wrote a term paper on the subject because they came up in the chapter on mutualisms and I couldn't stop thinking about them.

This is a bullhorn acacia tree; similar trees live in the tropics around the world:

This is a South American acacia-ant, Pseudomyrmex ferruginea (sorry, it's sort of blurry):

These species need each other to survive. The acacia produces enormous thorns, which a recently mated queen can hollow out to build the first chamber of her colony. She lays eggs and cares for them by using food provided by the plant in the form of extrafloral nectaries (glands on the tree that produce nectar) and Beltian bodies (small blobs of protein that grow at the end of leaflets). As the colony grows, they hollow out more thorns to use as brood chambers and for other purposes.

Sounds great for the ants, but what does the tree get for giving so much? Easy -- the tree gets a standing army, equipped with painful stingers and biting mandibles. The colony of ants protects the tree from all herbivores, both small (they will either kill or carry away any insects that try to eat the leaves) and large (those stings are effective on large mammalian herbivores as well!).

An African acacia, with large mammalian herbivores.

The ants also act as a landscaping crew. The workers use their powerful jaws to mangle any vines that attempt to climb the tree and destroy any saplings growing within a certain radius. Acacias are susceptible to being shaded out by other trees, so this landscaping is of great importance to the tree's survival.

Mutualistic ants are critical for the tree's wellbeing. In fact, if the ants are experimentally removed from an acacia, the tree is rapidly destroyed by herbivores. (Janzen found this in his landmark study in 1966, the source of the introductory quote.) It is believed that ants have taken over the role of secondary plant chemicals, which normally function as the plants' defense against herbivores. Rather than increasing the toxicity of their leaves, this group of acacias has lost their secondary chemicals and have gained instead a standing army.

This relationship has, not surprisingly, been parasitized by closely related species of ants. You can learn more about this, and the role that large herbivores play, in this video.

There's a lot more to tell about this relationship, but this post is getting long. I wrote a term paper on it, so let me know if you want more ant-plants and plant-ants!

Links: More photos of acacias; "Weird Plants"; a webpage comparing the symbiosis between ants and plants to a nuclear reactor (welcome to the Internet!).

In Which I Am Perturbed

2008-05-21T22:23:00.003-04:00

The latest thing in the abstinence-only movement:

Dancing the Night Away, With a Higher Purpose

Father-daughter "purity balls." Contents include praying, a ceremony involving white roses, and tactics that have been shown to have only limited effectiveness at actually protecting teenagers.

Aside from everything they mention in the article -- that abstinence pledges are ineffective against STDs because the kids are less likely to use condoms, etc. -- something remained unmentioned, only vaguely hinted at here:

For the Wilsons and the growing number of people who have come to their balls, premarital sex is seen as inevitably destructive, especially to girls, who they say suffer more because they are more emotional than boys. Fathers, they say, play a crucial role in helping them stay pure [emphasis mine].

Hm. Sounds like these girls are suffering from hysteria, or one of the other feminine complaints, perhaps. Haven't we moved past this nonsense yet?

Also disturbing: "Stephen Clark, 64, came to the ball for the first time with Ashley Avery, 17, who is “promised” to his son, Zane, 16." She's promised to him? At 17? Seriously? I can barely believe this is done in our country, never mind with kids so young. More than anything else in the article, that really threw me for a loop.

The other thing that bothers me about all this is the conspicuous absence of two other important groups: mothers and sons. Where are the boys who need to learn to respect women from a positive female role model? Where are the mothers to encourage all of their children to make good choices? Why can't the fathers be role models for the boys too? It's just so infuriating that the onus is all on the daughters and the responsibility is all given to the fathers. As though sons had no responsibility for daughters' "purity", as though mothers had no role in teaching their children how to live their lives.

I should really stick to posting about animal behavior. Human behavior can be so infuriating.

Cynthia Nixon

2008-05-20T23:50:00.001-04:00

Cynthia Nixon needs to get to the AMNH more often.

From her interview in the NY Times Magazine this past Sunday:

Has anyone ever told you that you resemble the woman in the Parmigianino painting “Madonna of the Long Neck”? I have a friend who sometimes calls me Bronty, short for brontosaurus, the dinosaurs with the really long necks. They have a new name now, apatosaurus.

Uhm... yeah. So that new name has been in place since 1903. Not... actually... that new. This is the sort of comment that just makes me roll my eyes and groan.

It needed to be said. It bothers me when people say things like that. It suggests that our education system hasn't been updated since 1903, which might be true, and is disturbing.

Haven't Found One for a Sewing Machine Yet

2008-05-19T21:12:00.002-04:00

There are many blessings in Judaism, and I find this fascinating.

One of my favorite lines from Fiddler on the Roof has always been, "Rabbi, is there a blessing for the Czar?" "Of course there is a blessing for the Czar. May God bless and keep the Czar... far away from us!" (Followed, naturally, by a rousing chorus of "Tradition!")

And then there's the scene with the sewing machine.

Anyway, a few days ago, I found these, and they make me happy: Daily Prayers of Praise and Gratitude. My favorite is the one for seeing strange people or creatures, but it also delights me that there are blessings for trees, for thunder, for rivers, for scholars, etc. Neither Dustin nor I can quite figure on the last time the blessing for 600,000 Jews was used, though.

Also interesting are the blessings for food. Things I didn't know: a meal is defined as including bread, and when you bless the bread, the blessing extends to the whole meal, except for any wine or grape juice which gets the appropriate blessing. A snack is anything you eat that does not include bread. Blessings over snacks are more complicated, but what I find most interesting is that there are separate blessings for four different kinds of plant-based foods, but all other foods (meat, dairy, fish, mushrooms, eggs, etc.) have but one blessing amongst them. (Click here for a nice summary.) Fascinating!

PS: Thanks to Sharon for mentioning this in the comments: Tradition!

Mixed Feelings

2008-05-18T13:27:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Kids' Book on Plastic Surgery

On the one hand, I think it's good that, if the need exists, someone wrote a book to address the worries and fears of young children whose mothers go under the knife for cosmetic surgery.

Was mommy not beautiful before?

On the other hand though, surgery always carries a risk, even if its small, and I find it alarming that mothers with young children would put themselves at risk for something like a tummy tuck or breast implants. And, how do you explain to kids why you need implants? The book apparently skirts the issue, focusing on nose and abdominal work. Plus, like they say, what exactly are you telling your kids if you feel that your nose isn't perfect? What if someone has said to them, "Oh, you have your mother's nose!" These kids might develop a complex about it.

It seems like this book could be reassuring for some children but might cause others to doubt their "worth" based on their appearance. I don't know.

Better Know An Insect: Mad Hatterpillar

2008-05-17T16:48:00.000-04:00

Some insects have evolved really wild ways of defending themselves. Some butterflies have eyespots that they flash to startle birds; bombardier beetles can spray boiling acid at any would-be attackers. (I should probably devote a whole post just to them.)

But the caterpillar of the gum leaf skeletonizer, a species of destructive moth, has an unusual defensive mechanism that has earned it the nickname "mad hatterpillar" -- every time it molts, it retains the exoskeleton of its head capsule on top of its head. By the time it reaches the last instar, it looks like something out of Wonderland indeed:

The extra head capsules probably don't offer much physical protection, but if a bird bit off a capsule or two it might give the caterpillar just enough time to escape. Wild, pretty, and pretty wild!

Massive NY Times Update

2008-05-17T00:07:00.009-04:00

One of my favorite hobbies (if you can call it that), as you have surely noticed by now, is reading the New York Times. I love the Times. I am a Times junkie. When I don't get to read my articles I get a little cranky.

What's your favorite section? (Tell me in the comments!) You might think that mine is Science, but you're only half-right... it's actually more of a toss-up between Science and Opinions. I love the editorials and columnists, especially arguing with David Brooks and calling people with incorrect opinions names while sitting at my computer. I also read the Education section religiously, looking for religion trying to interfere with education.

The upside of this is that it gives me a lot of blogging material. The downside is that I got backlogged during the end of the semester and I now have more articles to post about than I will ever get to, since new stuff keeps appearing! (That's why they call it the news.) Very frustrating. So, here is a rundown of everything I wanted to post in the last few weeks, with brief commentary, all in one big post. They're not in any particular order, and some of them are not recent, but they're all interesting reads. Enjoy!

Exodus Exegis -- Kristol's editorial about the 3 presidential candidates' Passover greetings.
Bambi (1942) -- the original review of Bambi, back when deer were more cute than a nuisance.
Tests Confirm T. rex Kinship with Birds -- geneticists confirm what we've known for a while.
2 Clues Back Idea that Birds Arose from Dinosaurs -- paleontologists had this idea already fleshed out in 1993. Based on evidence from bones. Oh, the horror.
Noble Eagles, Nasty Pigeons, Biased Humans -- humans tend to assign morality to the animal world, to varying degrees and with various consequences for our perception. I could write a whole blog post about this, but I think I'll hold off for now.
An Elephant Crackup? -- one of the most moving, fascinating, and troubling articles I have ever read. Published over 18 months ago, it still haunts me. War has considerable consequences for animals other than humans.
Albert Hofmann Dies at 102 -- the inventor of LSD made it to 102; in related story, flying pink elephants have turned 70.
From Auschwitz, a Torah -- a Torah that survived Auschwitz is restored and rededicated. The story of how it was found is a great read.
Battle at Kruger -- how an 8-minute amateur video of lions, buffalo and crocodiles became an Internet phenomenon and then the subject of a 1 hour documentary. If you haven't seen the original, check it out. Note: had I posted this video, I probably would have titled it, "Between a Croc and a Herd Place."

What, you're still here? I didn't give you enough stuff to look at? Go read some of these articles!

Small Farms Are Delicious!

2008-05-16T09:54:00.003-04:00

Surprisingly, the crux of this post isn't "don't eat meat." Just read this: Change We Can Stomach.

Today's post is brought to you by the letter "buy local" and the number "support small family farms."

Best quote:

In fact, small farms are the most productive on earth. A four-acre farm in the United States nets, on average, $1,400 per acre; a 1,364-acre farm nets $39 an acre.

How about that statistic? Check out the link to Local Harvest under "Favored Links" to find a farmers' market near you! Mm, delicious produce. Oh, also, go to sites like AllRecipes.com to find delicious ways to use all that wonderful produce. Farmer's market season is only just beginning, but I'm already fantasizing about just-picked tomatoes. Hopefully I'll have pictures of my own garden up soon, but I haven't had a chance to upload them.

On a related note, you might want to check out this pocket guide to the best foods to buy organic. Of course, you should get organic as much as possible, but if you have to decide (since organic is still more expensive), this guide will help you get the most organic bang for your buck. (At the moment this link isn't working, but hopefully they'll fix whatever issues they're having soon.)

Mind Your Manor

2008-05-11T10:08:00.003-04:00

There are many, many places I want to visit. I hope to eventually visit all continents, and perhaps even all countries. But one thing I have always wanted to do is to visit Kenya and see the many marvelous creatures living on the savanna.

And what could be better than meeting some of the natives over breakfast?

I'm referring, of course, to native giraffes. When you visit Giraffe Manor, which is just outside Nairobi, they join you for breakfast, at least from the neck up, and then hang about all day. With long, elegant necks, lovely eyelashes, and legs for days, who wouldn't want such elegant company?

There was a story in Vanity Fair about them last October, and they've been featured in numerous other magazines. You can see them in motion in this clip, which also discusses the education and conservation mission of Giraffe Manor.

PS: Thanks to Phil and Karen for the inspiration.

Steampunk

2008-05-10T12:27:00.004-04:00

Steampunk got a shout-out in the Style section on Thursday. Check out the slide show, some of the prettiest gadgets you've ever seen.

Pretty computer! Can I get a laptop version?

I'm surprised they didn't mention Hiyao Miyazaki's work when they talked about movies. They're a bit more fantasyish than The Prestige etc. but many of his works have a steampunk aesthetic as well. Stardust (and, to my knowledge, other Neil Gaiman? please correct me if I am wrong) had a bit of it as well -- sky pirates and all that. Both of them involve more magic/fantasy than science/technology, but there are airships and steam-powered cars and goggles all over the place in the Miyazaki 'verse. (See: the title castle in Howl's Moving Castle, which is in fact steam and demon powered!)

Anyway, I digress. A subculture that embraces scientific discovery, adventure, and exploration? Yes, please. We need more of that. Also, more men in hats. Never underestimate the power of a good hat!

For more fun check out: Steampunk Workshop; Rivets and Lace; Brass Goggles.

And for your viewing pleasure: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Sleepy Hollow (proto-steampunk), Wild Wild West, Firefly (sort of), and the short-lived Legend.

PS: Steampunk also got a blog post on Omivoracious, Amazon.com's book blog. Read on for steampunk lit.

Fungibility

2008-05-09T22:26:00.000-04:00

I got quoted on fungibility! It's best to imagine it with "scary eyes" at the end.

Happy Birthday!

2008-05-08T14:21:00.001-04:00

Today is David Attenborough's birthday! He is celebrating his 82nd trip around the sun.

Two years ago, in celebration of his 80th birthday, The Daily Mail ran a story saying that UK citizens rated the superb lyrebird clip from Life of Birds as their favorite Attenborough moment, followed by his 1979 encounter with mountain gorillas in Rwanda, seen in Life on Earth.

One of his newest projects, announced in March, is a major conservation education center featuring butterflies, hummingbirds, scorpions, etc. I'm not sure hummingbirds in the UK is a brilliant idea, but their overarching goal is preserving species against habitat loss, and that's not a bad thing.

Happy birthday, Sir David!

Big In Japan

2008-05-08T08:58:00.005-04:00

The crows are big in Japan.

Japan Fights Crowds of Crows

Actually, the correct term is a murder of crows, but that would make an odd headline, wouldn't it? "Japan Fights Murders of Crows" -- in fact, they are actually murdering the crows, which have become a nuisance.

I have to give a lot of credit to the crows. Building dummy nests, attacking people for food, shutting down one of the most advanced train systems in the world... well done. Nature 1, humans 0.

But, as it says in another article recently, being smart may not be all that great. In the crows' case, it just makes humans want to exterminate them more, it seems. Poor little crows. It's the same story over and over: humans make a habitat that favors humans, but it also favors other species like crows. Crows multiply in expanded, favorable habitat, so people feel like they have to kill them, that they have no other choice. So sad.

The kicker, though, is here:

The crow explosion has created a moral quandary for Japan, a nation that prides itself on nonviolence and harmony with nature, because culling programs are the only truly effective method of population control.

Excuse me? Prides itself on nonviolence and harmony with nature? Oh, right, whales aren't part of nature, they're outside of it. Sure. To prove you're in harmony with nature, stop hunting whales. I think that's pretty straightforward.

Anyway, yes, it's true. Sometimes culling programs are the only effective way to deal with the situation, as in NJ we have to hunt the deer because they're overtaking the green spaces. But, it's also worth examining why we're having the problem. Is there a way to create habitat in which humans and crows can coexist? Perhaps having a more efficient garbage disposal system, so that there is less garbage sitting around? If culling is truly the only way, then it's the only way... but it's a shame, nonetheless. As intelligent creatures, crows deserve our respect.

Because I Know You Were Wondering

2008-05-05T22:15:00.004-04:00

For those of you who may not know, I don't watch a lot of reality TV but I am absolutely devoted to Dancing with the Stars. Pretty people! Pretty costumes! But most of all... ballroom dancing! I took a few lessons in high school and joined the team at Brown for a while. Although I didn't really keep up with most of it after my freshman year (dancing in heels was rough on my previously-mentioned bad knees and I just got into swing more than ballroom), I have never stopped loving it.

Anyway. A few times I have heard the judges, especially Len, use the word "fleckle." I had to know what graceful step had such a bizarre name. Turns out it's actually called a fleckerl (German?) and it's when they stand in place and turn around each other. That description doesn't really make that much sense, so check out this answer (and the videos). Then watch Kristi and Mark's V-Waltz -- at about 2:20 they do the fleckerl. (Keep watching for an amazing series of turns a little later!)

The couple to beat!

Food, Food, Food

2008-05-01T11:00:00.001-04:00

Food is so hot. Food is one of the reasons I started a blog. Yet I haven't been posting nearly enough about it!

There have been two articles in the NY Times worth checking out recently. One is part of a series called "The Food Chain" which is in the business section about the global food crisis and various other food issues. The articles is "Shortages Threaten Farmers' Key Tool: Fertilizer." The long and the short of it, again, is that we should stop eating meat. Really.

The other article actually says that we should eat more meat, assuming that meat is from a heritage breed or other endangered, culturally significant food source: "An Unlikely Way to Save a Species: Serve it For Dinner". For the most part, I agree with the perspective of this article; too many heritage breeds and heirloom varieties are being lost to the uniformity of global food production.

However, I have to take issue with a few of the species they list in the infographic as food supplies worth conserving, including leatherback sea turtles, wild bison and Snake River chinook salmon. They do mention this to a degree in the article, with regards to the flying squirrel (yep, squirrel is on there too), but I just feel like they don't talk enough about the species on here that we need to do a lot more for than just eating them; that, in fact, we might do better for by not eating them at all. I think putting the species on this list at all, although they may be culturally significant, is not going to do them any favors. This is especially true for the poor over-harvested salmon; hopefully no one will look at this article and say, "Well, we're harvesting a heritage food, we'd better keep eating them to conserve them!" Maybe I'm underestimating people, but... I don't know. It's a little disconcerting. Definitely interesting in regards to the fainting goats and the Makah ozette potato, though!

If someone figures out a cure for chestnut blight based on wanting to eat them, that might be wonderful. Seeing a chestnut stump with sad little sprouts is a tragedy.

PS: I have never been to a clambake.

May 1

2008-05-01T00:00:00.000-04:00

Shark Ballet

2008-04-30T15:15:00.003-04:00

Continuing a week of "I'm too busy to post about stuff myself, so here are some interesting animals to look at instead."...

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water around South Africa...

Great White Sharks -- Planet Earth

There are many, many documentaries on sharks. Discovery has a whole week of them, for cryin' out loud. People love the bloody, violent footage of sharks mangling their prey, attacking cages, and generally being eating machines.

But -- this one is a real standout among all the millions of hours of shark footage out there. The high-speed camera allows the producers to slow down the action so we can see a 20 foot great white fully out of the water, gracefully suspended in the air. It's haunting, and beautiful. Instead of showing the blood and gore that we typically associate with feeding sharks, we see the power, the elegance, and the sheer strength behind the teeth.

Damien Hurst wishes he could make it look so good.
Interestingly, recent studies have suggested that great whites are actually somewhat social creatures that have developed ranking hierarchies, communication via body language, and other traits that we typically think of as "advanced." Natural History did a cover story on it a little while back, and it's a great read -- plus, more fantastic photos of sharks leaping out of the water! Some of the behaviors they describe may sound familiar; you've probably seen bison or other large mammals perform very similar ones, and for similar reasons. There's a lot more going on in the deep sea than we thought!

Oh, and they're curious, have distinct personalities, and don't appear to care for the taste of human. So if they come up and nibble on you, it's only because they're not sure what you are. Reassuring, no?

Great Moments in Documentaries

2008-04-29T13:15:00.001-04:00

I love nature documentaries. I can't get enough. I watch everything that the BBC sends us as well as Nova, most of the Discovery Channel, and more. Deserts, deep ocean, mountain peaks, rain forest, it's all good to me.

But sometimes, there are moments that really stand out from the pack, that really make you sit up and take notice. This clip is one of my absolute favorites. The first time I saw it, I had to rewind several times to get the full impact.

The Dance of the Red-Capped Manikin

One smooth mover.

This is from a Nature miniseries on PBS; the episode was "Deep Jungle". The whole program was fascinating but this was by far the best moment.

Enjoy!

Minor Mental Meltdown

2008-04-28T16:11:00.003-04:00

Hello readers (or other visitors looking for pics of Johnny Depp),

Just so you know, blogging this week might be a touch on the sporadic/incoherent side. I have two papers to finish writing this week. But lucky you, I might actually post on the topics of my papers after I finish them, because I happen to think they're really interesting! (Then again, I also think Trivers-Willard is interesting, but I might be the only one.) If you like "Better Know an Insect" you'll like them, how about that?

If you're looking for fun things to read, check out my "Favored Links", they're good fun and will keep you busy.

Stay tuned, next week I'll have an update on our garden, Things You Didn't Know About Ants, atrocious puns, rumination, speculation, meditation, and more!

Jurassic Peck

2008-04-26T14:07:00.016-04:00

This morning was notable in that (among other things) it was the first time I've been bitten by a dinosaur hard enough to draw blood.

I'll start at the beginning.

As part of my course on field ID of birds, our field excursion today was to our professor's house to mist net for birds. A mist net is a very fine-gauge nylon net that, when properly hung up and stretched taut, is nearly invisible to birds. The nets we were using were for small birds; catching the resident turkeys takes considerably more than a mist net!

Step 1: Hang up mist nets and go away for a while.

Step 2: Come back and check out the catch of the day.

A little help here?

The little cutie in the net there is a tufted titmouse, henceforth a "tuftie". Tufties are related to the chickadees. They can hang upside-down from branches while foraging, they're fun to watch at feeders, and they can open sunflower seeds by hammering on them with their bills.

The next step is to disentangle the bird from the mist net. All you need to do is gently loop all the little openings in the net over the various limbs and head of the bird, coaxing it out while retaining a firm but gentle grip on it. After all, they are small and very delicate. Be gentle and it should be relatively painless.

The question is... for who?

Getting a screaming, angry tuftie out of a net is a pain in the hands. As in, the damn thing bit mine AND WOULD NOT LET GO. You know the webbed part of your hand, between your thumb and index finger? Imagine a beak that is meant for cracking hard seeds has just gotten your hand into its mouth and you cannot do a damn thing to convince it to let go. The upper bill is slightly decurved, which means that simply pulling your hand out of its mouth will cost you a piece of hand.

Now, imagine that it finally does let go, and begins using that strong, pointy beak to hammer down on the back of your thumb knuckle, which is the closest piece of flesh to its face, but there's no way of holding the bird without exposing something to it, and this is the best option. Oh, and did I mention that they can hang upside-down? That's because they have very strong feet with very sharp claws. And the thing is... if you let go of the bird for a second, they have a tendency to get themselves more caught up in the net than before, prolonging the time the two of you get to spend together. Also they're noisy little critters, and they don't stop yammering the entire time they're biting you.

So your best option, really, is to swear like Calamity Jane on a bad day, adjust your grip, and remember that you weigh approximately 2600 times as much as it does.

Was it worth it? Look at this photo -- that's my hand!!

Deceptively cute!

It's just like they always say, a bird in hand is worth being pecked and bitten! (Something like that anyway.)

The other birds we banded were not *nearly* so quarrelsome as the tufties. We had a total of two robins, three tufties, and four or five white-throated sparrows.

Untangling a sparrow.

Once you have the bird in hand, it does actually get pretty easy. Even the angry little tufties calm down a good bit when they're out of the net and in your hand. The next step is, naturally, to actually band the bird. You pry open a tiny aluminum ring, record the number on it, and close it again so that it just hangs on the leg of the bird.

Haha, we've got you now!

After you've banded the bird, you let it go. It's that easy. If we were doing a study of bird diseases, bird health, or anything like that, we might take a blood sample, weigh the bird, take a few measurements, etc., but today was just a banding day.

Nice sparrow picture.

Sparrow showing off his leg band.

One of the robins after banding.

The way we released the birds was by holding them on their backs and slowly opening our fingers. Some of them fly off almost immediately, but not all... occasionally they need to "take a moment" before getting back to what they were doing before they got all tangled up. Watch in this video as Jay releases a bird! (Don't bother adjusting your speakers; there isn't any sound. My camera only takes silent movies. Just imagine the sound of wings flapping.)

So, aside from the fact that my knuckle still hurts, this morning was amazing. Birds are so tiny -- sometimes we forget how little there is under all the feathers. Feeling their hearts beating in your hand is amazing. They're so fragile and so beautiful. And yet despite their size they will stand up to you and let you know exactly how they feel about being deceived, ensnared, and manhandled. Marvelous little creatures.

PS: Don't believe me that I was bitten by a dinosaur? Read this... geneticists have finally agreed with what we've already known for a while!

Eat More, Make Boy Babies

2008-04-24T10:27:00.008-04:00

It's always a nice thing when things I learned about in Animal Behavior class come back and may actually *gasp* apply to humans!

Boy or Girl? The Answer May Depend on Mom's Eating Habits

A little background: I can't find the reference right now, but a few years ago I read about a study that showed that mating success among male red deer (I think it was red deer) was directly correlated with how much they were fed as fawns. Only a fraction of the males in a population -- the biggest and most impressive -- will mate. However, since these males get all the mating opportunities, their mothers' genes are spread through many grand-fawns. This is good for grandma deer, since her fitness goes up every time her son reproduces.

On the other hoof, a wimpy son won't get to reproduce at all, effectively halting the spread of grandma deer's genes through the population. When times are tight, it makes more sense for a doe to produce a female fawn, because most females, even ones that didn't quite get enough to eat as babies, will reproduce at least once or twice in their lifetimes if they make it to adulthood. She might only get one or two grand-fawns, but this is a lot better than none at all.

At least, that was the hypothesis. But the researchers checked out the sex ratios of deer during good and bad years... and found exactly what they had predicted. Remember, deer are mammals too, and have the same kind of X-Y determination that we have. But females can control, to a certain extent, the sex of their offspring. That is pretty freakin' amazing, in and of itself.

And that's what they're referring to (at least partially, I think this has been found in other organisms as well) in the last line of this article. If it really does happen in humans, we wouldn't expect to see a radical skewing because we still have a genetic component and I would guess we don't want heavily skewed ratios. But we might expect to see a slight change in the ratios, which we do. Your body doesn't know that there is a lot of food in the world or that you want to be a size 6; all it knows is what you put into it. Skip breakfast? Times must be lean; better make a girl. Hearty breakfast? Excellent chances of producing a dominant male -- make it a boy! If I remember correctly, our closest relatives do have dominance hierarchies with top males getting most of the matings (although I think there are opportunities for other males to breed as well), so this isn't coming from out of left field, evolutionarily speaking.

I have to wonder what the implications of this study might be. Moms in China having big breakfasts to increase chances at boys? Women who want daughters skipping meals? What if parents want different sexes? Will fathers be able to say, "You're not eating enough, you're trying to deprive me of a son!" I don't know what the end result will be -- after all, it's a small study. There are still so many things that are unanswered. What is the mechanism for this kind of sex determination? As some comments on the post have pointed out, how does the father's health figure into this equation? It should be an interesting area of research for years to come.

Edit: OK, here's some more info. What I'm talking about is the Trivers-Willard hypothesis. I realize that Wikipedia isn't a great source, but not everyone will be able to access the original paper at JSTOR. (Also, they were talking about caribou, not red deer. My bad.) Oh, and the Wikipedia article also includes a citation about primates, although they're macaques and not great apes. There's also this article at BioOne titled "Maternal Diet and Other Factors Affecting Offspring Sex Ratio: A Review." If you want to try to find it through your own institution, here's the rest of the info: Rosenfeld & Roberts, Biology of Reproduction, Volume 71, Issue 4 (October 2004).

PS [dang, I wish I had a timestamp]: EVEN MORE info from the Science website, but this should be accessible to everyone for the next few weeks. But they mention Trivers-Willard as well, so I was on the right track before and therefore I am not crazy, I am just a bio geek. Yay biology!

Worms are a Girl's Best Friend

2008-04-23T22:35:00.004-04:00

You know what would look great in my apartment?

A composter full of worms, of course.

Since we live in an apartment, a regular compost bin is basically out of the question. We have neither space nor dirt enough to run it properly. But a worm composter is a little easier. Instead of waiting for microbes to break down your vegetable scraps in a matter of weeks, worms can do it in a few days. Also, worms are way cuter than microbes.

Awwww....

If you as fascinated by compost as I am, you might want to check out this article about choosing a composter (granted, it's written by a store, but it seemed helpful) before you decide. For apartments like mine, they recommend something like the Worm Chalet. (Makes you think of little worms in ski boots, sitting around the fireplace, sipping après-ski cocktails, right?)

Also, here's an article about composting in the city. Not as sexy as Sex and the City, but ultimately way more useful.

The only downside is that they do their magic best when kept warm... so they would have to come inside for the winter. Dustin feels that worms are outdoor pets, so until we have a spare utility closet we might have to wait. Oh well, a girl can dream of worm farming, can't she?

Blog Update

2008-04-23T11:33:00.004-04:00

Hello readers,

I have some exciting news: my wonderful and loving fiancé has given me what every girl really wants. That's right -- I have my own domain name! So exciting! What does this mean? Well, you can continue to come to my blog at blogspot.com, OR you can now view my blog at:

Holophusicon.com

Yay! I have a domain! Maybe one day there will be other content there as well, but for now it's just a redirect to this site. Ready, set, update your bookmarks!

Why Bother?

2008-04-22T13:49:00.002-04:00

Michael Pollan wrote an article for the NYTimes magazine this week. What, you thought I wouldn't post it? I was saving it for Earth Day!

Why bother?

In brief: plant a garden, it's good for you, it's good for the planet, and it will give you food.

I am excited to say that Dustin and I are trying to plant a garden this year. We're starting small -- a few sugar snap pea, tomato, and jalepeno plants, and some pots of herbs. Since we don't have any land, we have to fit everything on our balcony, and we've never done this before. So far so good, though. Everything is sprouting nicely. The tomatoes shot up in two days, the peppers , basil, and cilantro followed after about a week, and we're finally starting to see some pea shoots and tiny parsley seedlings. It's all very exciting. We even play them death metal on occasion. Photos to follow, as soon as I take some.

Unique

2008-04-22T00:01:00.001-04:00

Things that are Unique

The Mona Lisa

Snowflakes

Our Beautiful Planet

... so let's do what we can to keep it healthy!

Happy Earth Day!

"Blechs" Prize

2008-04-21T23:11:00.004-04:00

PETA Offers $1 Million For Test-Tube Meat

Putting aside whether or not this goes against PETA's mission statement... eww. Meat grown in a test tube actually sounds kind of gross. I mean, part of what makes meat good is the texture, right? Muscles need to be used to develop that texture; I don't think there's a way to make muscles without all the support structure that goes with them, and once you start building that... well, why don't you just raise cattle?

But the bigger picture is more disturbing. No matter how much it may discomfit PETA to think about it, this process is going to require energy. Cows and chickens ultimately get most of their energy from the sun, which is free. Laboratories are generally not solar powered, which means more fossil fuel consumption than producing beef the old-fashioned way, most likely. I really don't think this is the solution.

PS: Someone is going to remind me that fossil fuels are also mostly solar energy, which is true. But they're and indirect form, I'm talking about a two-step process: plants make sugars and starches, cows/people/insects eat sugars and starches to sustain life.

Free Rice

2008-04-18T21:46:00.003-04:00

See the link to the left? (It's below the saiga antelope.) Click on it to play the best vocabulary-building game ever. Every time you get a word correct, they donate 20 grains of rice. Might not be the most effective way of donating food, but it's really addictive. So far my best level is 49. (Max is 55, I'm still trying to get there.)

In case you're interested, a cup of rice contains approximately 7200 grains. (I know that that's a fact because I found it on the Internet!) So get clicking, you just need to get 360 words right to get there. That isn't very many, and it goes by fast!

Smoking Guns and Drunken Logic

2008-04-18T09:02:00.005-04:00

Today is April 18!

You know what that means, right?

Today's the day Expelled opens nationwide!

The Times has a brief and scathing review.

From the review, it sounds like Ben Stein listened to Billy Flynn: "Give 'em the old razzle dazzle, razzle-dazzle 'em... Long as you keep 'em way of balance, how can they spot you've got no talents?"

You're just a bagel, Ben. And your arguments are like a piece of Swiss cheese -- nutty and full of holes.

PS: I couldn't bear to post a picture of Ben Stein's smug face on my blog, so I put up a picture of Mr. D. instead. He looks displeased about the movie too.

Quick Rant

2008-04-17T14:23:00.004-04:00

I am so tired of being told that my wedding dress is the most important dress I'll ever wear. Yeah, it's important. But let's say I was in a field in which the Nobel Prize was awarded (come on Nobel committee, there's more to biology than medicine!), and I somehow manage to win one, and I go to Sweden and wear a formal evening gown and look fabulous while accepting my prize. Isn't that gown ALSO important?

I actually really like wedding planning stuff, most of it has been pretty fun so far, but I am SO TIRED of the hyperbole! Bands do it, stationers do it, photographers do it, magazines do it. Yes, it is an important and significant milestone in my life. BUT it is not a reason to abuse the English language within an inch of its life. For example, one band told me that they would end my party on the highest possible note. Yeah. OUCH.

I just wish they would stop the terrible writing. It actually makes me less likely to like you when you can't use the word "literally" correctly to save your life. Literally is the opposite of figuratively, not a synonym... thus no one is going to be "literally dancing on air" or whatever. If they were, that would be some pretty sweet advanced technology! (Human-sized air hockey sounds like a GREAT idea for a wedding reception!)

Godzilla does not like high notes either.

Ok, I'm done now.

/rant

10 Reasons to Rent "Life in the Undergrowth"

2008-04-17T10:04:00.005-04:00

Rent it! D. and I just watched the last episode a few weeks ago. It is amazing. It was far too short, in my opinion, for all the diversity of creepy-crawlies out there, but it was nonetheless an astonishing nature documentary.

There are actually eleven good reason to rent it. Check out these ten video clips that the producers considered the highlights of the series.

(Don't worry, they're short, but if you're really pressed for time, the slugs mating, the feather-legged bug, and the titan beetle are my favorites. Oh and the bees. Check out the bees!)

The eleventh reason? This man:

Sir David, with friend.

Sir David Attenborough -- do you need any more reasons to watch anything? Go rent it now! I know for sure that Netflix has it. Enjoy!

Avast!

2008-04-16T18:27:00.007-04:00

OK, let's get something straight here. I am fond of 18th century-style pirating. Not 21st century style pirating.

Jack does not approve of whaling, unless whales are full of rum!

BUT! I am incredibly excited about eco-pirates, or "pirates of compassion" as they style themselves.

Green Pirates Claim Victory

It's really sad that countries I otherwise have no real problems with (Canada, Japan) insist on maintaining these out-of-date marine mammal hunts. Whaling is so nineteenth century! But it seems like the pirates did a fantastic job; the Japanese whaling ships were only able to take about half the number of whales they had set out to brutally slaughter, and none of those were fin or humpback whales. It's still a few hundred whales too many for my tastes, but still -- a good thing for cetacean-kind!

Jumping for joy!

Victory via coconut cream. That has got to be the best pirate I've ever seen!

Godwin's Law: The Movie

2008-04-15T15:34:00.004-04:00

A new movie is coming out this Friday called Expelled. It claims to present evidence that intelligent design (aka creationism) is being pushed out of academia despite being well-supported and a good alternative to evolution. Oh, and it also links Darwin to Hitler.

Right.

It is propaganda and lies, pure and simple, which is why I'm not actually linking to the movie's web page. (Learn more here.) I actually had this quandary a few weeks ago, and here comes Pharyngula with a solution to my problem! I couldn't bear to link to the actual movie page and boost their Google ranking, but I couldn't just let Ben Stein and his pseudoscience slide under the radar entirely. NCSE to the rescue!

Move, Whales, Get Out the Way!

2008-04-14T23:20:00.003-04:00

Humans to whales: "Can't you move it any faster?"

Even the Whales Have Their Predators: Ships

Not much to say here except that I'm rethinking what I said about not hating people. Even the whalewatch boats don't want to slow down!

Short post tonight because blogging isn't my job, being a student is my job!

Better Know an Insect: Giant Water Bug

2008-04-13T19:56:00.013-04:00

Like, OMG, I have been totally vertebrate-ing out here. Hares, tortoises... humans!

Let's get back to bugs, eh?

Today's subject happens to be the topic for my insect behavior class tomorrow: the giant water bugs.

Depending on your monitor, this might be life-sized!

Things you should know about the giant water bug:

There are several genera that are referred to as "giant water bugs."
Really not kidding about that "giant" part, some can be almost five inches long! (Oh, and they fly!)
They have one of the most painful bites out of all the insects. (Rated on a different scale from hymenopteran stings, however.)
They're true bugs (order Hemiptera) and as such have cool sucking mouthparts. They're predators and inject digestive enzymes into their prey to liquefy them, and then suck out the contents like soup.
They really earn the #1 DAD mug every year.

Wait, what? #1 Dad? What's going on here?

Giant water bugs in the genus Abedus are one of the few insects that demonstrate paternal parental care. (Say that five times fast!) After repeated matings (to assure paternity), the female lays her eggs on the back of the male who fertilized them.

He takes care of them for a fortnight or so, even though they may weigh up to four times more than he does. He makes sure they get enough oxygen by "brood pumping", which is to say that he rocks forward and backward to move them through the water. Eventually, towards the end of their development, they encumber his breathing apparatus to the point that he needs to park himself on a plant and stay close to the surface until they hatch.

Furthermore, mama water bugs and unencumbered males will eat any first instar (just after hatching) nymphs that they can get their grasping appendages on, but dads brooding eggs will not eat nymphs. It's not all bad-parent good-parent though; if times are tough, the male will remove the eggs from his back and eat them before moving on to find a better habitat. Mm, embryo-licious!

I hope you've enjoyed these installments of "Better Know an Insect (or Other Arthropod)." I think I'll keep doing them, because they're really fun! I'll probably cut down to once a week or so from now on, but I will keep the series going. Thanks for reading!

PS: You'd probably love to know what my sources are, wouldn't you? Click this link to a Google search for the genus and the author, and prepare to immerse yourself (ha!) in water bug literature. The papers I read today are:

Smith, R. L., 1976. Male brooding behavior of the water bug Abedus herberti. Annals of the Entomological Society of America 69:740-747.
Smith, R. L., 1979. Paternity assurance and altered roles in the mating behavior of a giant water bug, Abedus herberti. Animal Behaviour 27:716-725.
Smith, R. L., 1979. Repeated copulation and sperm precedence: paternity assurance for a male brooding water bug. Science 205:1027-1031.

Borrow your local academic's library subscription if you want to read them... or just ask me for the PDFs. They're really interesting and fun to read!

The Tortoise and the Hare

2008-04-12T10:57:00.008-04:00

This morning I volunteered at Run for the Woods, the EcoGSA's spring 5K to benefit Helyar Woods. I'm not a runner (I think I've mentioned my knees), so I was staffed at a tricky part of the course, guiding runners and making sure they stayed on track.

Standing about in the woods on a beautiful morning left me plenty of time to think. I was thinking about races in general, and Aesop's story about a tortoise and a hare, and I wondered: what's the difference between a turtle and a tortoise or a rabbit and a hare?

I'm pretty sure I can outrun this guy.

First, tortoises. Tortoises are a kind of turtle; specifically, the kind that lives on land, eats plants, and can't swim. (Although they can float. Maybe.) All of the tortoises are in the family Testudinidae, in the order Testudines. As far as I can tell from Wikipedia and from Vertebrate Life (one of my favorite textbooks!), they seem to be a "good group;" that is, they are all descended from one slow ancestor. I can't seem to find anything called a tortoise that is not in Testudinidae. Which is actually not what I was expecting to find; I had been under the impression that tortoise was a catch-all term for turtles that live on land. Interesting! So, tortoises are a kind of turtle.

Definitely not this guy.

Hares, on the other hand, are not a kind of rabbit. Rabbits and hares, along with pikas, are all in the order Lagomorpha. Lagomorphs, in turn, are not rodents; they're the sister order to rodents, and are thus closely related, but there are significant differences between the two. Rabbits and hares are both in the family Leporidae, but the "true hares," again, as far as I can tell via Wikipedia, are all in the genus Lepus. (Which is a very large genus.) There are other lagomorphs also called hares, but they are in other genera. So... what does this mean for rabbits and hares? I'm pretty sure it would be wrong to say that all hares are rabbits, or that all rabbits are hares. Both of them are lagomorphs, and some of the common names seem to be arbitrary. (Jackrabbits are actually in Lepus, for example, making them hares despite their common name.)

This is why I like scientific names. All of the lagomorphs in Lepus are more closely related to each other than to any lagomorphs in Sylvilagus, whether you call them hares, jackrabbits, bunnies, cottontails, or Peter.

Aesop should have called it "The Testudine and the Lepus," just to clear things up a ... hare.

I hate puns. I am not a punny rabbit... damn.

PS: Three interesting things to know about hares:

Those big ears aren't just good for hearing; they help the hare radiate body heat and cool off.
Hares give birth above ground, rather than in nests like other lagomorphs. To compensate for this, their babies are precocial, meaning that they have fur, their eyes are open, and they can run soon after birth. Most other lagomorphs are born in burrows and are altricial, that is, blind, naked, and helpless.
Hares can hit top speeds of 45 miles per hour!

Feeding the World

2008-04-11T09:08:00.006-04:00

Right. I said last month that I am not a vegangelical, and I stand by that.

But it needs to be said.

Stop eating meat.

Despite the fact that I am an animal lover, I am not saying this to spare the cute 'n' cuddlies. The simple fact is that we are running out of grain, and eating animals is an inefficient use of grain, and although I sometimes don't like people, it doesn't mean I want a massive food crisis to hit around the globe. It takes 700 calories of grain to produce 100 calories of cow. I don't know about you, but 14% efficiency, to me, is WAY too low.

Some recent reading material:

Grains Gone Wild -- Paul Krugman's editorial from a few days ago.

Farmer's Spurn Conservation Program -- Science/Business Times this week.

First one is straightforward, just read it. Second article... well, do we want to eat or do we want to worry about the birds, as the baker says? Why can't we do both? Cattlemen have the answer:

“This program is taking money out of your pocket twice a day,” said Jay Truitt, vice president for government affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. “Do you think it’s right for you to pay so there’s more quail in Kansas?"

The cattlemen and bakers argue that farmers should immediately be allowed to take as much as nine million acres out of the Conservation Reserve without paying a penalty, something they say would not harm the environment.

Of course the cattlemen want more land out of the conservation program, they need it to feed their meat-producing machinery. What if I want to pay for the land in Kansas? It doesn't matter to me if the price of beef goes up, but it does matter to me if there is less land available for our native birds. (And who made a bunch of bakers and cattlemen experts on what would or would not harm the environment? Probably the same group that decided airlines could monitor themselves.)

Further, one of the demands on the food system is that countries that traditionally haven't eaten much meat (looking at you, China) are starting to adopt American-styles diets, full of beefy goodness. So, as though Americans weren't enough of a strain by themselves, people around the world now want to eat the way we do. And there just isn't enough land to support that lifestyle.

We're not going to get any more land. We have one planet, and that's it.

There's really only one solution. Stop eating meat. It's the easiest thing you can do today to save the world.

Two Stories, One High School Student

2008-04-10T23:43:00.004-04:00

Matthew LaClair is a troublemaker.

Last year, he brought a law suit against his high school (in New Jersey!) for a history teacher's utter failure to make the separation between church and state in the classroom. He secretly taped the teacher saying things like, "only Christians had a place in heaven, that the Big Bang and evolution theories were not scientific and that dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark." (Did I mention that I live in New Jersey too?)

Other than the fact that I'm still getting over this sort of thing happening in New Jersey (!), there are two sentences I find alarming in this article. First: "After the tapes became public, Matthew received a death threat and was shunned and bullied by some of his classmates, he has said." Wow. It's unbelievable to me that his actions would actually be cause for people to shun someone. If this had happened in my high school, I'm pretty sure we would have thrown him a parade.

Second: "In the fall, the board reprimanded the teacher and later adopted a policy barring students from taping in class without a teacher’s permission." I find this vaguely unsettling. What if another teacher is saying wildly inappropriate things in the classroom? How can students prepare themselves to keep church out of school if the school makes rules against what Mr. LaClair did? Very shady if you ask me.

Anyway. Sometimes you don't need a tape; the evidence is already written down and published.

You can't keep a good rabble-rouser down, and he's causing some more trouble in history class. This time, his beef is with a textbook that plays down the causes and impacts of global warming. (For example, although millions of people might lose their homes as coastlines are flooded, they won't have to pay as much for heating! Yay!)

Whether you agree with him or not, this guy deserves a lot of credit for standing up to The Man. Freethinking is not taught in most high schools; anyone who comes away with that particular skill is likely to be self-taught. Mr. LaClair, I salute you.

Better Know an Arthropod: Giant Isopod

2008-04-10T22:56:00.003-04:00

Have you ever turned over a rock and watched the little creatures that go scurrying away? Under your average rock in New Jersey you'll probably find a centipede or two, a millipede, a variety of insects like ants and beetles, and a few rolly-pollies. Pillbugs. Woodlice. Whatever you want to call them, they're sort of cute, greyish little things that roll up in a ball if you poke at them.

Imagine, if you will, what that would look like if it were light purple, 14 cm long, weighed over a kilo and a half, and lived in the ocean.

Turns out, you don't have to imagine too hard. It would look like this.

What does a beastie of such proportions eat, you might wonder? Fish? Octopi? CHILDREN?

Nah... they're noshers.

Apparently, in Taiwan they're served in restaurants and taste like crab. EXTREME CHEESE flavored crab, in this case.

They're pretty much harmless to humans, being slow-moving deep-sea scavengers and all, but you should avoid looking them directly in their highly reflective, compound eyes.

Not photoshopped!

They can see into your soul, and they will know if you are hiding Doritos from them. Oh yes, they will know.

PS: If you want a t-shirt featuring a giant isopod, get one here! (Third one down.)

Cute Animals!

2008-04-08T12:24:00.002-04:00

Really! Cute animals! Awww... who doesn't love an adorable hippo? No insects in this post, I promise.

Better Know an Insect: On Second Thought...

2008-04-08T11:50:00.003-04:00

You really don't want to better know these.

Actually, stay as far away from them as you can.

Cracked.com: The Five Most Horrifying Bugs in the World

I have to kind of agree with them on all counts, too. Notice how all but one are hymenopterans.

Better Know an Insect: Beatrice

2008-04-05T10:20:00.009-04:00

Meet Beatrice. Beatrice was truly an exquisite little creature. She is surely gone to the great garden in the sky now, but she lived in a tank (ok, actually a file box) in our apartment for three days last October.

For my insect anatomy & physiology class, we had to collect some insects for dissection. I had already caught more than I needed (I still have some of the insects I didn't use in a jar on my desk, to remind me not to take life needlessly) when I found Beatrice hiding in a tangle of vines.

She was so astonishingly beautiful (even if her kind is an invasive species) that I knew I couldn't let my classmates find her. I borrowed a jar to keep her in and brought her home with me instead.

I tried to make her comfortable in a file box full of plant matter. (She coordinated with it beautifully.) I fed her whatever insects I could. Strangely, although we almost never get insects besides fruit flies in our apartment, while Beatrice was with me I found two large shield bugs on the screen door to our balcony. I fed both of them to her. She seemed to like them.

Watching her eat was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. (Including the time I saw a snake eat a mouse while hiking in New Mexico!) Mantids are ambush predators, so she would hold very very still and orient towards her prey, whether it was a stink bug, an injured satyr butterfly, or any of the other prey I supplied. Watching her triangular head turn to face her prey could have been science fiction. Once she was within striking distance, her forelegs would shoot out, delivering a crushing blow with the sharp spines on the inside of the grasping section. Then she would eat.

I could write poetry about the delightfulness of insect mouthparts. Humans are so limited. We have a single jaw that goes up and down. With a little thought we can go side to side, a bit. And that's it. Insect mouthparts are derived from appendages, which is why they come in pairs. Several pairs, actually. In addition to the mandibles, which are often the most visible, they have several other pairs that taste the food, help process it, and push it into the opening of the mouth. They are complex, tiny, and fascinating to watch.

Mantids are what we technically call "chewing" predators, which is to say, they eat the whole damn thing, exoskeleton and all. ("Sucking" predators turn the insides of their prey to soup and suck it out through straw-like mouthparts, discarding the exoskeleton when they finish; the true bugs do this.) Beatrice took dainty little bites (owing to her mouth being relatively small for her body) but she was certainly quick. Watching her eat a caterpillar reminded me of how I would approach a baguette, if no one was looking: hold it in both hands, take a big bite out of the middle, and eat through the middle first. Chew up one side until it was gone, then the other. Lick fingers.

Beatrice was as fastidious as a cat. After eating, she would meticulously groom every spine on her grasping legs. She even cleaned her eyes at one point (possibly after the butterfly, which no doubt covered her in little wing scales).

Eventually I felt that I couldn't keep Beatrice indoors any longer -- not when October was continuing in such glorious fashion. I returned to the garden when we first met and set her down on a patch of flowers, knowing that visiting bees and butterflies would supply her with plenty of food. I wanted her to live out her last week or two in her natural habitat, so that next spring there will be more baby mantids out there to find.

Better Know an Insect: Hissing Cockroach

2008-04-03T18:57:00.006-04:00

As promised, more critters!

This beauty is a Madagascar hissing cockroach. This one is a male. I borrowed him and a female (henceforth "Hissy" and "Missy") from my friend Eugene earlier this semester for a class project.

You can tell this little guy is a male by the large horns (bumps) on his pronotum. (The pronotum is the part that looks like a shield over his head.) Females are much smoother.

As you might expect for something that is roughly snack-sized for a lot of creatures, hissers are not fond of being lifted. When you pick them up, they flatten against the ground as best they can and expel air through a series of tubes in their abdomens. This creates a loud hissing sound -- and even when you expect it to happen, it can still startle you! Missy wasn't particularly prone to hissing -- I couldn't get a peep out of her -- but Hissy up there was not fond of being lifted and hissed at me repeatedly before I got him up.

Once you pick them up, though, they're very happy to sit for pictures. (I suspect that they liked how warm my hands are; they're tropical and my apartment doesn't frequently reach 85 degrees!) Their legs are strong and they can hold on to almost anything. Eugene says that they can climb glass, and I definitely saw them climbing the walls of their plastic tanks.

They also constantly test the air. In the photo you can see that Hissy's antennae are blurry; that's because he was moving them constantly despite the rest of him being completely still. It's important for potential snacks to know what's going on!

I hope you like my hisser photo. Tomorrow I'll post some pictures of Beatrice.

Mammal-centrism

2008-04-02T16:25:00.007-04:00

It bothers me. Yeah. That's right. I'm tired of cute, fuzzy, cuddly critters. (Except that saiga antelope. Man that thing is crazy looking!)

Vegetarian Times has put its April 2008 edition online as a free trial of online magazines, which is actually pretty cool, except that you can get all of their recipes online anyway. (Part of the reason I stopped subscribing.) But the image that goes with the article on p. 68 really irks me. The article is called "Eat for Change" and that's all well and good, but there are way too many mammals. Aside from the female human in the picture, there is a rabbit (which looks like a white lab rabbit, including makeup!), a skunk, a deer, and a squirrel (also wearing makeup, apparently this is the one Eddie Izzard met). There are two birds and two butterflies.

Ugh.

I realize that my idea of "cute" might not be the same as anyone else's (yes, I did bring home a pair of cockroaches one time, and yes, I did start to find them sort of adorable) but what about, at least, other attractive vertebrates? There are some lovely lizards and fishies out there, not to mention the sheer cuteness of frogs.

But even including more vertebrates is, well... besides the point. We're the minority, folks. The insects have us, tarsi-down. There are more species of beetle than there are of vertebrates several times over. More than half of known animal species are insects.

For the rest of this week, and all next week, I'm going to post about interesting insects and other non-vertebrates. Let's call it "Get to Know Your Neighbors" week-and-a-half. Interesting critters live all around us, if we're open to seeing them. For example, leaf-cutter ants mostly live in the tropics, but one species lives as far north as New Jersey! I'll write more about leaf-cutters in a post of their own, though -- those minuscule farmers deserve it.

In the meantime, here's a picture of a pair of frangipani hornworm (aka tetrio sphinx moth) caterpillars that I took in St. John.

My hand is actually right next to that caterpillar; I am not using Peter Jackson's camera techniques. They grow to be six inches in length and can eat up to three leaves a day; one clutch can defoliate a frangipani (plumeria) tree in very little time. They might look fat and succulent, but I wouldn't recommend eating them; some of them sequester toxins from their food sources. However, another theory is that they're also mimicking the coloration of a coral snake, which is highly venomous. Either way, they're pretty spectacular larvae! (You can see the little horn on their abdomens in this picture; it looks like a little hair.)

Enjoy the hornworms. More insects tomorrow!

Chatham cod

2008-04-02T15:09:00.004-04:00

Before I launch into this post, I just want to clarify: I do not eat bacon (or any other meat for that matter), and I do not want a gas-guzzling atrocity like a stretch Hummer as my wedding transportation. Check the date stamp, people. NEVER trust anything I tell you on April 1.

Today being April 2, however, feel free to believe away.

I don't know why the Times hasn't just combined the Dining & Wine section with the Science section. It seems like every week there are new articles about food and ecology, which, of course, are basically the same thing. (You said so yourselves, in my poll last week.) Last time it was salmon trouble. This week, it's cod and herring.

This is a cod. They don't start out as fish sticks.

Not a lot of new things to tell you about here. Same old story: we caught too many fish, the stock plummeted, we stopped catching them, they're doing better but still not great, and part of the problem is that we forgot to take into account that no species of fish exists in a vacuum. We (humans) are particularly fond of fish that eat other fish, so when the numbers of the prey fish drop, so do the ones we like to eat. Yay ecology.

Wedding Transportation

2008-04-01T11:17:00.003-04:00

For our wedding next June, we'll definitely need some transportation for the wedding party. Limos are so old-fashioned; what I really want (and since I'm the bride I get what I want!) is something that says, "We're young, we're fun, we know how to party!"

What ride could say that better than this?

I even like the zebra stripes; it definitely lets you know that I'm both a nature lover AND a party animal! (See what I did there? Ha!) But seriously, this thing would be great for a safari, I bet lions would come up to it and try to take a bite, and then we'd get some excellent closeup photos. But anyway, it would also totally coordinate with the men's tuxes and stuff. Yeah!