ecology
voltagegate | January 14, 2008This week we have our first avian reference, a strange genus of heron.
In WoW, Nyctanessa is a level 44 demonology lock from the guild "42". There is only one other toon with the name, a 38 undead lock with the traditional spelling, but three others with the alternative genus name of Nyticorax (see below).
I'm assuming the GM is a Douglas Adams fan:
"Forty two?!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?"
"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with…
voltagegate | January 14, 2008There's still time to get your submissions in for tomorrow's Oekologie. Help us celebrate one full year!
We're looking for hosts as well. Shoot me an e-mail if you're interested.
laelaps | January 11, 2008An African elephant (Loxodonta africana).Part of what makes ecology such a fascinating subject is the complexity of interactions between species, especially when things don't happen in exactly the manner we might initially hypothesize. Such is the case with a paper just published in the journal Science by Palmer et al. called "Breakdown of an Ant-Plant Mutualism Follows the Loss of Large Herbivores from an African Savanna," which shows that the loss of large herbivores initiates a cascade of ecological changes, changes which have some important effects for acacia trees and the ants that live…
laelaps | January 10, 2008Feral cats are often portrayed as the scourge of of island ecosystems, killing off or pushing out endemic species at an alarming rate. To an extent such a reputation is deserved, but a new study out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that the elimination of a top-level introducted predator can lead to an explosion in the numbers of other predators that were being controlled by the "top cat."
While cats are certainly a problem in many areas where they were introduced, often preying upon adults and chicks in the nest, rats attack the birds from the other side of the…
voltagegate | January 9, 2008Help us celebrate, if you would. Oekologie started one year ago on January 15 at The Infinite Sphere, and Jen will be hosting again this January 15 for the anniversary edition. Send us your latest and greatest posts about ecology and let's get another year under our belts.
If you're interested in hosting Oekologie, please send me an email. We need some hosts for later this year.
voltagegate | January 9, 2008Man that's an ugly title.
Not much time to post today (until later perhaps) but I did come across an interesting study that improves on geographically-driven predictions of adaptations to climate change. I blogged about a paper on British butterflies earlier this year that studied how much each species depended on the particular climate, and whether or not they would be susceptible to a climate shift based on their environmental preference.
This new study is trying to make migratory predictions based on the organism's physiology, rather than the changing climate of a particular habitat:
Most…
awild | January 7, 2008
Common caricatures of Darwinian evolution evoke nature as a brutal force, one of ruthless competition in which the strongest prevail. In truth evolutionary processes can be much more nuanced. Under a wide array of conditions, species find Darwinian advantage in cooperative relationships.
Some of the most striking cases of evolutionary partnerships involve the planet's dominant primary producers, the plants, and the most abundant insects, the ants. Ants are exceptional predators, and several groups of plants have figured out that by housing and feeding resident ant colonies they gain a…
laelaps | January 7, 2008"One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise."
- Aldo Leopold ("The Round River," collected in A Sand County Almanac)
voltagegate | December 31, 2007Here's an interesting story from Northern Arizona U. A researcher named Brian McRae, a recent forestry graduate who used to be an electrical engineer, used his knowledge of circuit theory to craft a new model for gene flow through landscape corridors:
McRae had been struggling with how to predict genetic effects of landscape pattern while working with Beier on a study of cougars in the southwest United States. "We had maps of cougar habitat and genetic samples spread across four states," he said, "but no way to predict how habitat pattern was driving gene flow across the region."
Using…
laelaps | December 27, 2007Ecological conservation has never been more important than it is right now, but perhaps "conservation" is the wrong term for the movement. To use the word "conservation" implies that something remains to be conserved, that there are still parts of the world that can truly be called Wild, but as Stephen M. Meyer points out in his to-the-point book The End of the Wild we have already lost the fight to save the great wildernesses of this planet. At this point, it's more about damage control;
Since the invention of the first stone tool, humanity has pounded the wild into a shape that fits its…
voltagegate | December 24, 2007To put it mildly, the cards are stacked against the blue crab population in the Chesapeake Bay area. In the past 60 years, the human population of the area has jumped from 3.7 million to almost 18 million and, subsequently, farming and industry has exploded (it is often joked that everyone on the eastern shore of Maryland is a chicken farmer), leading to waterways filled with ferrous compounds, nitrates and phosphates.
Essentially, the Chesapeake has become a sink for these pollutants running through 141 streams and five rivers from six states--New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland,…
clock | December 22, 2007
Is there any kid who does not love giraffes? They are just so amazing: tall, leggy, fast and graceful, with prehensile tongues and a need to go through complex calistehnics in order to drink. The favourites at zoos, in natural history museums and on TV nature shows.
Giraffes were also important players in the history of evolutionary thought and I bet you have all seen, and heard the criticisms of, the iconic comparison between Lamarck's and Darwin's notions of evolution using a comic strip featuring giraffes and how they got their long necks.
Giraffes sleep very little and mostly standing…
voltagegate | December 19, 2007The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science recently published an article discussing some progress in blue crab research and conservation, and mentioned a related report:
The Chesapeake Bay blue crab population has stabilized, but at historically low levels according to a recent report by the Chesapeake Bay Commission's Bi-State Blue Crab Technical Advisory Committee.
Though the news isn't quite heartening, it's better than nothing.
Blue crab populations have been declining tremendously over the past few decades, not only threatening a population of the animals, but also…
retrospectacle | December 18, 2007In the movie The Princess Bride, the hero Wesley is attacked by fearsome Rodents Of Unusual Size (ROUS) in the fire swamp. Turns out, ROUS really exist!
Example of a Princess-Bride-era ROUS
Confirmed ROUS!
A new species of rat, the size of a large cat, was confirmed during a scientific expedition earlier this year to the Foja Mountains of western New Guinea, in a remote region where people have rarely explored. The expedition was reported in National Geographic and yielded other new species of flora and fauna (like a tiny possum).
"The giant rat is about five times the size of a typical…
tsmith | December 17, 2007 In my field, many things that cause the average man-on-the-street to get a bit squeamish or squicked are rather commonplace. My own studies include two types of bacteria that are carried rectally in humans (and other animals), so I spend an absurd amount of time thinking about, well, shit, and the lifeforms that inhabit it and collectively make up our normal gut flora. The vast majority of these species don't harm us at all, and many are even beneficial: priming our immune system; assisting in digestion; and filling niches that could be colonized by their nastier bacterial brethren.
It…
voltagegate | December 17, 2007
There's been a big windfarm project in the works for Shaffer Mountain in PA, which has met with some of the strongest resistance in the area, including an entire resistance organized by a gentleman named Jack Buchan, a resident of the area. From what I've seen, Buchan and other members of Sensible Wind Solutions, a local group, has been a constant thorn in Gamesa's side, publishing giant full page ads opposing the project in local newspapers (more or less like this).
The latest transgression is a supposed suppression of data obtained by Gamesa on the land designated for development. Two…
clock | December 17, 2007George Folkerts was one of those naturalists of the 'old school', interested in everything and excited about learning and sharing the knowledge throughout his life. He died on Friday, suddenly and unexpectedly, at the end of a typically busy day at Auburn University.
Anne-Marie was his student, one of thousands who had the privilege to learn from and with Folkerts, and one of those who now has to carry on his work. She wrote about him in two very touching posts: Huge loss on many levels and Classifying grief.
voltagegate | December 17, 2007Matt's had it up since Thursday and I've been away... Anyway, enjoy another great edition.
voltagegate | December 10, 2007
If you travel I-68 and any of the joining roads in the near future, you will almost certainly see creeping flat beds hauling gargantuan turbines, blades and other pieces of future wind towersup the mountain to join those already adorning the Western MD/PA ridgelines.
One or two car escorts follow close behind in the far right lanes. Some of the pieces are so large that you have to pull halfway in to the adjacent lane to avoid them. Despite your feelings about wind towers, you just can't avoid feeling awe at their sheer size.
I've watched wind towers sprout up rapidly in this area over the…
clock | November 29, 2007When I first read about a new paper about the behavior and ecology of maned wolves, I immediately thought of the blogger most uniquely qualified to write about it. Anne-Marie's research is on maned wolves and in her latest post she describes an ecological love-hate triangle in which the maned wolves flush out birds, mostly tinamous, out of the bushes - just to have them preyed upon by hawks. Anne-Marie provides more details, the back-story and the cute pictures.