ecology
mikethemadbiologist | March 11, 2008Over at evolgen, ScienceBlogling RPM discusses a paper that describes a new barcoding technique for plants. It struck me while reading his post that barcoding has two very different meanings, even though both techniques are used in genomics--and often, at the same time.
One meaning of barcoding, and the one discussed by RPM, is the use of a gene to assign different groups of organisms a taxonomic DNA label (or barcode...). In other words, we're replacing Latin bionomials, like Escherichia coli or Homo sapiens, with a DNA sequence from a single gene (or a set of closely related sequences).…
mikethemadbiologist | March 5, 2008Yes, this is O157:H7, not ExPEC. Bully for you.
One thing regarding popular accounts of antibiotic resistance I've noticed is that there is an overemphasis on the evolution of resistance, and an underemphasis on the spread of resistant bacteria. While the evolution of resistance is important, most of what we see in a hospital is not the de novo change of a sensitive strain into a resistant one (i.e., evolution), but, instead, the survival and spread of already resistant bacteria in this antibiotic-laden environment.
What this means is that changes in the frequency of resistant organisms,…
tsmith | February 29, 2008
I really need more time to fill in a gap in my microbiology education: environmental microbiology. I run across papers all the time that are absolutely fascinating, and wish I had a free year to just take some additional coursework in this area. For instance, a paper in today's Science magazine discusses how atmospheric bacteria result in the formation of snow; more after the jump.
The authors here were looking at ice nucleators (IN) in snowfall. Think of this like crystal experiments you did as a kid--you had to stick something into the solution to serve as a seed for the crystal to…
chaoticutopia | February 28, 2008Oh, that fresh Rocky Mountain stream water... sparkling snowmelt, flowing from the ancient peaks to the broad plains, teeming with hermaphroditic fish. Hermaphroditic fish, you say? Like, fish with male parts and female parts, all in one? In our streams? Ok... well, maybe not everywhere... just downstream from where we use the bathroom.
Hormonal disruption seems to be in the news quite a bit lately. Endocrine disrupters have been found in our food containers, and by proxy, our food. Every once in a while, a report on these hormonal substances is highlighted in the mainstream media, stirring…
edyong | February 25, 2008Humans have explored the entire face of the planet, but we haven't done so alone. Animals and plants came along for the ride, some as passengers and other as stowaways. Today, these hitchhikers pose one of the greatest threats to the planet's biodiversity, by ousting and outcompeting local species.
Islands are particularly vulnerable to invaders. Cut off from the mainland, island-dwellers often evolve in the absence of predators and competitors, and are prone to developing traits that make them easy pickings for invaders, like docile natures or flightlessness.
Two years ago, I wrote about…
hrynyshyn | February 21, 2008Plenty of fuss has been made in the past few weeks over a New York Times investigation into the health risks of eating sushi, with tuna, and more specifically, bluefin tuna, painted as the biggest villan. The problem is the level of mercury in the fish, and mercury is a nasty neurotoxin. The fuss is over whether the risks of poisoning your brain outweighs the benefits to your heart from all those healthy omega-3 fats tuna offers. But there's another way to resolve the dilemma that seems to have been overlooked.
The New York Times public editor summarizes the tuna battle in a look at the…
clock | February 20, 2008Brendan Bohannan, Richard W. Castenholz, Jessica Green and their students and postdcos at the Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Oregon are currently doing a Journal Club on the PLoS ONE article The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition: Metagenomic Characterization of Viruses within Aquatic Microbial Samples, which is part of the PLoS Global Ocean Sampling Collection. Please join in the discussion.
clock | February 19, 2008There is a lot of stuff one hears about food, sustainability, environment, etc., and it is sometimes hard to figure out what is true and what is not, what is based on science and what is emotion-based mythology.
For instance, some things I have heard over the years and have no means to evaluate if they are even close to plausible:
Claim #1: if we used every square inch of arable or potentially arable land, clearing the rainforest, turning deserts into fields, removing cities, malls and highways, killing all the animals, destroying all natural ecosystems, moving all humans to the Moon and…
laelaps | February 18, 2008
Over the last several hundred years, humans in North America have unwittingly selected the species that are going to be coexisting with humanity in the future. Rare native flora and fauna have disappeared, but some organisms have flourished in the modified landscape. White-tailed deer, coyotes, black bear, cowbirds, and other familiar (if somewhat "plain") animals are just a few of the native species that have adapted and even benefited from the presence of people while other species have been driven into extinction.
Some researchers like Paul S. Martin, however, argue that we are living in…
chaoticutopia | February 4, 2008School can be fun. Tomorrow, I’ll be heading up into the mountains outside of Boulder for my first official in-the-field lab. I’ll be the first to admit, I’m more of a research and writing person than an experimental and field work sort of person. Since I hope to make a career out of science writing, I’m particularly eager to get this sort of hands on experience. So, what will I be doing in the mountains, exactly? I’ll be looking at ponderosa pine trees (Pinus ponderosa). Well, not just looking at them, but measuring them (height and width at breast height), taking core samples, and noting…
laelaps | February 1, 2008As I mentioned not too long ago, the natural world is more weird and wonderful than anyone can imagine, and yet another example of the diversity of life is the giant Palouse earthworm (Driloleirus americanus). This super-sized worm was thought to be extinct by the 1980's, but a number of the worms have been seen recently, showing that they are still hanging on. Unlike the worms in your garden (which are actually European in origin), this worm is native to North America and presently can be found in Washington state and Idaho. Indeed, this isn't just an ordinary worm, the species being known…
voltagegate | January 28, 2008Man am I not on top of things. EDGE released its list of evolutionarily distinct and Globally Endangered amphibians last week, and I just read the press release with the top 10 (actually nine, but it says 10) on the list. If you want a brief explanation about how EDGE prioritizes conservation, I blogged the PLoS paper released by EDGE scientists last year.
Without further ado, the list:
Chinese giant salamander (salamander that can grow up to 1.8m in length and evolved independently from all other amphibians over one hundred million years before Tyrannosaurus rex)
Sagalla caecilian (limbless…
laelaps | January 28, 2008The skeleton of an Irish Elk (Megaloceros giganteus) at the AMNH.Discussions of mass extinctions nearly always give rise to heated debates as to the mechanism(s) behind the disappearance of so many taxa in a short amount of time, and one of the most active debates still surrounds the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna. All over the world the extinction of large animals appears to be correlated with the movements of our own species, Homo sapiens, into new territories. Disease and climate change have their own parts to play, the "Overkill Hypothesis" is perhaps the most popular explanation for…
mikethemadbiologist | January 28, 2008When I read Olivia Judson's post about hopeful monsters, I didn't think she used the term correctly (here are some good explanations why), but I was surprised by Jerry Coyne's response.
First, the personal attack on Judson is unwarranted: when we reach the point where the serious challenge to evolutionary biology is the misuse of a discredited decades-old idea, as opposed to the politically powerful anti-science creationist movement, we're in a pretty good place. She made a mistake--I don't think her motives were self-aggrandizing. Second, if you're going to launch an ad homeniem attack,…
awild | January 25, 2008
Adranes ant-nest beetle
California
The most exciting finds are often the least expected. I stumbled across this odd little beetle while collecting ants several years ago in northern California. It was tiny, only a few millimeters long, with a little blind nubbin for a head whose sole purpose seemed to be supporting antennae that looked like a pair of cricket bats. The Lasius ants whose nest played host to this strange creature did not appear to pay it any particular attention. Ants are normally rather vicious towards interlopers, so their nonchalance often reveals successful infiltration by…
laelaps | January 23, 2008Not long ago I wrote about some of the potential risks for scientists who do much of their work in the field rather than the lab, and according to the Salt Lake Tribune there's a new danger to be on the look-out for; a predator-control device known as a M-44. In 2003 Dennis Slaugh was riding an atv in Utah when he saw what looked like a survey stake stuck in the ground, but what he didn't know was that the "stake" was really a M-44. When he bent down to brush off the device it fell over, and when he righted it again Slaugh received a blast of the poison sodium cyanide in the face, an event…
laelaps | January 23, 2008
According to a news item posted on CNN.com yesterday, at least 50 gharials have died due to unknown causes since early December in the area of the Chambal river in India. Pollution and parasites seem to be the main contenders for a culprit, conservation biologists reporting that the livers and kidneys of the dead animals were swollen and seemed to be affected by an unknown parasite, although lead and cadmium were also found in the bodies of the gharials. At present the gharial is listed as critically endangered by the IUCN, and the problems in the Chambal river area are especially worrisome…
laelaps | January 16, 2008I heard about this on NPR last night and I think it's a great idea; Mark Bent has invented a solar-powered flashlight, and when you buy one someone in an impoverished area that lacks electricity for lights at night also will receive one (and you get to pick where your contribution goes). From what I heard last night the battery in the bogo lights last for about two years (considering you use it every night), so it's definitely a worthwhile investment rather than continuing to buy battery-eating flashlights. From what I've read it seems that solar-powered flashlights aren't the end of the…
laelaps | January 16, 2008
Thanks to conservation efforts, gray wolves in various parts of the United States have made a comeback, enough to potentially be removed from the endangered species list, but not everyone is happy that the wolves are doing so well. Indeed, if plans move forward to remove the protected status of wolves in the Northern Rockies region of the U.S., at least three states (Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana) are planning on setting up public hunts with rock-bottom prices for permits, possibly reducing the population back down to 300. Some members of Congress have protested the potential removal of the…
voltagegate | January 15, 2008It always comes back around... The 13th edition of Oekologie is available today at The Infinite Sphere. Beautiful work as always Jen.
I'd like to thank all the hosts, participants and other bloggers who have helped us get this far. Let's see another year of great ecology posts.
We need hosts for the rest of the year. Email me if you're interested: thevoltagegate [at] gmail.com.