biology
grrlscientist | December 7, 2006
Unknown moth species.
Houston Heights, Texas. 27 October 2006,
The photographer writes; This green moth visits my breezeway at night in
response to the lights. To get this flash shot I had to stand back and use the
macro-zoom feature on the Fuji Finepix 5200. Presumably the green wing color
allows the moth to safely roost on green tree leaves in the daytime with the
white markings likely helping to blend with leaf veination. The moth is about
3/4 inch wide along the rear wing margins. This species shows up with some
frequency. I think it is beautiful and mysterious.
Image: Biosparite.
Can…
evolgen | December 7, 2006Circus of the Spineless #15 has been posted at Words & Pictures. Go check out the best invertebrate (cough, paraphyletic taxon, cough) blogging from the past month or so.
grrlscientist | December 6, 2006
These Lower Pleistocene shells date to around 1-1.6 Myr ( Bermont formation). I collected them on a Florida Paleontological Society field trip nearly two years ago. If you were a Florida-Gulf-Coast sheller, you would recognize many of the shells as having modern representatives despite their age. There has been essentially a "freeze" on molluscan evolution in the Atlantic shell fauna since the inception of the 20 or so ice ages that have occurred in the Pleistocene. You said you were not averse to having fossils shells, so take a look. Notice the cone snails (Conus) in the strew. Nature ran…
omnibrain | December 6, 2006
Well It seems that I'm on a bird kick this morning.
Birds living in cities are performing a type of "avian rap" while their rural counterparts are sticking to more traditional sounds, a study shows.
Dutch researchers found that urban species of birds sing short, fast songs rather than the slower melodies of countryside birds.
City birds also sing at a higher pitch and will try out different song types.
Experts said city birds have adapted to counter background noise and increase their chances of finding a mate.
They speculate that "birds had developed shorter, more varied, higher pitched…
omnibrain | December 5, 2006
Well it seems that Neanderthals may have had a taste for.. well... other Neanderthals.
Neanderthals suffered periods of starvation and may have supplemented their diet through cannibalism, according to a study of remains from northwest Spain.
Paleobiologists studied samples from eight 43,000-year-old Neanderthal skeletons excavated from an underground cave in El Sidrón, Spain since 2000. The study sheds light on how Neanderthals lived before the arrival of modern humans in Europe.
Researchers found cut marks and evidence that bones had been torn apart, which they say could indicate…
grrlscientist | December 5, 2006
Adult Bald Eagle, Haliaeetus leucocephalus,
the only eagle species that is unique to North America.
Image: Dharma Bums.
The photographers, who live near my other beloved home, Seattle, wrote; I'm sure you heard we had an amazing snowfall last week. We've been taking walks along Chimacum Creek and checking out all the wildlife. It is beautiful in the winter with the snow and ice.
We've been seeing eagles a lot lately. We know their favorite trees, so can pretty much find one most days. I particularly like this snag. It's right behind some houses that hug the cliffs above Port Townsend Bay…
grrlscientist | December 5, 2006After comparing the brains of hummingbirds to those of other birds, scientists found that a specific nucleus (in this case, a "nucleus" refers to a distinct brain region) that detects any movement of the entire visual world. They found that this brain nuclei was two to five times bigger in the hummingbird than in any other species, relative to brain size.
"We reasoned that this nucleus helps the hummingbird stay stationary in space, even while they're flying," said said Doug Wong-Wylie, Canada Research Chair in Behavioural and Systems Neuroscience and psychology professor at the University…
tfk | December 4, 2006SAn international team of scientists has gotten the first look ever at deep sea communities off the coast of New Zealand. The project, part of a larger effort to survey all the major areas where such communities exist, turned up new species and new problems. The area surveyed has four types of chemosynthetic habitats, including the sorts of hydrothermal vents we've become familiar with, and less familiar cold seeps.
At the hydrothermal vents, molten rock provides energy and nutrients to communities of bacteria, worms, crabs and other odd creatures. At the cold seeps, methane or hydrogen…
omnibrain | December 3, 2006
And it seems that every 7th woman has a mans brain. It's amazing what valuable information can come from a Russian bride importing website.
Scientists discovered that every fifth male has "female brains." The owner of such brains does not necessarily look like a gay man. Vice versa, he can be a rather brutal-looking macho. A man with women's brains will differ from other men for his passion for women's occupations.
A man can always use the "women's logic" argument in a dispute with a woman. The argument finishes the dispute immediately, and the female opponent will not be able to win it, no…
scientificactivist | December 3, 2006Via A Blog Around the Clock comes news that Daniel Rhoads, who writes the informative blog Migrations (and formerly A Concerned Scientist), has successfully defended his dissertation. So, after a few minor revisions, it looks like it won't be too long before we'll have to call him Dr. Rhoads.
In good blogger form, Daniel has published the first chapter of his dissertation online. The title of the chapter is "Integrin receptors and determinants of polarity in directed cell migration," and it looks like a nice overview of the subject. As someone who used to study cell migration in blood…
grrlscientist | December 1, 2006
The Tree of Life
Click image for larger view.
This tree is constructed from an analysis of small subunit rRNA sequences sampled from approximately 3,000 species from throughout the Tree of Life. The species were chosen based on their availability, but most of the major taxonomic groups were included, sampled very roughly in proportion to the number of known species in each group (although many groups remain over- or under-represented).
The number of species represented is approximately the square-root of the number of species thought to exist on Earth (i.e., three thousand out of an…
grrlscientist | December 1, 2006
Banded Argiope, Argiope trifasciata.
Photographed in the "Spider Ranch" part of my gardens here at my farm in eastern Ontario.
Image: Bev Wigney.
I know this will amuse many of you dear readers, because I am a zoologist, but I am terrified of spiders -- and I once kept spiders as pets when I was a kid, can you believe that?? Well, to prove to you that I am not biased against spiders, I include this lovely picture of a very scary spider here for your enjoyment (and for my heebie-jeebies).
I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of…
grrlscientist | November 30, 2006
Stinkhorn Mushroom, Clathrus crispus??.
Click each picture for a truly large mage and then
feel free to correct me on the scientific name of
this mushroom, since I am not a mushroom expert
and need some help from those of you who are!
Images: Todd Smith.
The photographer, Todd, writes;"Here are a couple of pictures I took in my backyard this summer. I noticed a few golf ball sized spheres (see figures below the fold) growing in some mulch I had laid the year before. I thought they were common puffballs. However, inside, they looked like nothing I had seen before.
Soon they grew into what…
evolgen | November 29, 2006
A bunch of grad students at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) are organizing an online symposium in the Life Sciences. They've got a list of speakers and you can upload your own presentation. The conference runs from December 4-8, but I'm not sure how exactly this virtual conference works. If you're interested, check out their website and read what other people have to say.
(Via Public Rambling.)
grrlscientist | November 29, 2006
A frog on a temperate rainforest floor in the Pacific NorthWest.
Here's one of my first photos taken with my Pentax K100D, significantly
compressed for blog purposes.
Image: David Warman.
How many different species of flora and fauna can you identify in this picture, amigos bonitos?
I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in them. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me,…
grrlscientist | November 29, 2006
California sea lions, Prince William Sound, Alaska, 2000.
Image: Neil Moomey and Dan Beeler.
Tourists love to visit Fisherman's Wharf for the seafood, the view of San Francisco Bay, and also to watch the many dozens of playful sea lions that lounge by the water's edge, eating fish. However, in southern California, sea lions have begun attacking god-fearing American citizens. For example, this past June in Southern California, a sea lion charged several people on Manhattan Beach, eventually biting a man before escaping justice. Last spring in Berkeley, a woman was hospitalized after a sea…
scientificactivist | November 29, 2006In this week's edition of PNAS, crop scientists at Texas A&M University report the engineering of cotton strains with edible seeds. Now, when I think of cotton, I generally think of clothes, especially the kind that really seem to like getting wrinkled in the drier. Not counting the unrelated--but still delicious--exception of cotton candy, food generally doesn't come to mind. However, the new PNAS paper from the lab of Keerti Rathore may mean that it's time to think outside of the (clothes) box when it comes to cotton, especially in addressing world hunger.
According to the paper, for…
grrlscientist | November 28, 2006
Blue-spotted Salamander Ambystoma laterale
Photographed on the same day as the one shown previously.
Image: Bev Wigney.
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I am receiving so many gorgeous images from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in those images. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited.
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tags: salamander, blue-spotted salamander, amphibian, zoology
tfk | November 28, 2006Disease decimates Kansas buffalo:
Nearly one-fourth of the buffalo have died at the state-owned Maxwell Wildlife Refuge, home to one of the oldest surviving wild buffalo herds.
A new disease is decimating buffalo herds across the state and has prompted the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks to cancel its annual buffalo auction, typically held in mid-November.
The animals are infected with Mycoplasma bovis, a bacterium that causes pneumonia, mastitis and arthritis in cattle. It was first detected in some U.S. cattle in the 1960s.
For buffalo, it is especially virulent.
"They don't have…
jstemwedel | November 28, 2006I have a question for the scientifically informed hive-mind:
Why is it that no matter what I do, I end up with a head-cold by a few days after Thanksgiving?
Back when I was doing the frightening make-fifteen-dishes-to-bring-to-the-potluck Thanksgivings (with graduate classes and teaching and research in the background), I could kind of understand the sneezy fallout as a natural consequence of too little sleep and too much stress. Whose immune system wouldn't strike back against such rough treatment?
Similarly, when the kids were smaller and they brought home every exotic virus they could…