ecology
voltagegate | April 24, 2007We have submission guidelines and a full game plan for the next couple of weeks.
As of today, there are 50 participants (including the birth of a new blog). Please send me an e-mail and register at the Google group if you are interested in joining us, and the Flickr group if you plan on photoblogging the event.
Jenn has crafted a fine array of buttons for participants and supporters of the Blogger Bioblitz. Check them out, download and help us spread the word while adding a bit of spring flare to your blog or website.
Greg has contacted a friend from Discover Life, who has graciously lent his…
mikethemadbiologist | April 23, 2007ScienceBlogling Mike Dunford has an interesting post asking whether we should save an endemic Hawaiian plant, the williwilli. It's a good post, but I have two comments, one silly and one serious. The silly comment is that how could anyone let a plant named the williwilli become extinct? It's so damn cute (and is the plural williwillies?) Onto the serious point.
The reason that the williwilli is in trouble is because an invasive, non-native gall wasp is parasitizing the williwilli. Mike writes:
...if the invasive species outcompetes the natives, resulting in the extinction of the native…
chaoticutopia | April 22, 2007
Today is Earth Day, the perfect holiday to kick off a little Blogger Bioblitzing for National Wildlife Week. All around our bumpy sphere, people are going out and getting intimate with nature. Like many other bloggers, I've been scouting out the perfect places to bioblitz.
In Colorado (as everywhere else) ecology depends on the water... and there just isn't much to go around. The earliest humans who lived along the Front Range kept constantly moving, letting the limited natural resources replenish as they went along. Later, fur trappers and miners settled in the region, and eventually…
voltagegate | April 22, 2007Well, Heather and I stumbled out of bed this morning around 5:30 (after two alarms, my clock and my cat), sipped some coffee and watched the sun rise. It could have been a typical school day, actually, but this morning we were heading out for our first bioblitz of the week.
We decided to leisurely browse our campus arboretum for a couple hours this morning. It's a marshy, three to four acre forest with ample water sources, including a small bog (below), a sizable creek and a pond. Our soccer field, softball field and football fields are in close proximity, which limits the relative diversity…
voltagegate | April 22, 2007This clip is from State of the Planet, another BBC gem yet to be released in the US. This is perhaps the best presentation of the story of Easter Island there is, and intimately relevant to this day, Earth Day.
voltagegate | April 21, 2007Jenn over at Invasive Species Weblog wrote a brilliant post about corporations that are distributing seeds as a supposedly "green" gesture of peace and love straight out of 1969. Betcha they don't have answers to her questions:
...someone needs to tell Starbucks that "wildflower" is not the beautiful, perfect embodiment of do-gooding they seem to think it is (I tried, but they have yet to respond). What species are these? Where are they native to? Are they potentially invasive?
[...]
But this is an environmental campaign - isn't anyone looking at the big picture? Sowing seeds from who-knows-…
voltagegate | April 21, 2007Over 40 bloggers will be stepping outside for National Wildlife Week, April 21 - 29, field guides, binoculars and seines in hand and pack to catalogue all the species they can find in a local area of their choosing.
Early tomorrow morning, I'll be heading out to our campus' arboretum, a small, manageable riparian forest. I'll probably be tackling another area in Western Pennsylvania later in the week. The first post from me should be up be tomorrow afternoon.
We have spent the past month refining the process at our forum. Use the following links to access any information you may need. Also,…
voltagegate | April 20, 2007From Planet Earth, the great struggle on the Tibetan Plateau, Tibetan fox vs. pika:
voltagegate | April 20, 2007Not a breath of air stirred over the free and open prairie; the clouds were like light piles of cotton; and where the blue sky was visible, it wore a hazy and languid aspect.
-Francis Parkman (Photo: Mongolian grassland)
Perhaps no where else on the planet can you find a better example of the rise and fall of ecosystems and the rise and fall of human cultures than on the North American prairie. So much of American history has taken place on the Great Plains: the emigration of nomadic peoples from Asia, their domination of the Plains and probable partial responsibility for the loss of most of…
chaoticutopia | April 19, 2007"Hate something. Change something. Make something better." When Garrison Keillor sings it, you can't help but smile.
I played this adorable little game, called Grr several years ago when it was featured on Jay Is Games, and instantly fell in love. The game floated up from my memories this week, as I was trying to develop a better attitude about my housework and writing. While it has always been a cheery distraction from the gloomy doldrums, it also turned out to be well timed.
Yesterday, Nissan announced that they were coming out with a new "green" diesel engine. They are just catching up…
voltagegate | April 17, 2007"No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin who inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal."
-Jacques Yves Cousteau
voltagegate | April 17, 2007Maniola jurtina
Another study was published recently in Ecology that sought to tease out and analyze environmental factors (the other regarded deforestation and albedo), this time with a concentration on species diversity, specifically different native butterfly populations in Britain.
The butterflies were split into two main groups:
...habitat specialists, occupying one or a few localized habitats; [and] habitat generalists, occupying widespread and/or many habitats...
The researchers studied three factors affecting butterfly diversity: the direct and indirect (trophic cascade) effects of…
voltagegate | April 16, 2007No, really. It is. Deep Sea News has the scoop, complete with a nifty marine diversity graph.
voltagegate | April 16, 2007There's a great thread at the Google Group where folks are previewing their Bioblitz plans. Check it out to get a sense of what you'll see in the next couple weeks.
Still time to join. Shoot me an e-mail.
retrospectacle | April 13, 2007
Good news! Florida is opening a public comment period from May 1-June 14, and the decision about whether to downgrade their status from endangered will be postponed until after that period.
The final plan will be presented to commissioners in September. If approved, the state will upgrade the manatee's status from endangered to threatened. That would mean scientists believe the species has rebounded from the brink of extinction.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service had recommended changing the manatee's federal status from endangered to threatened in Florida and Puerto Rico after deeming it no…
voltagegate | April 13, 2007PNAS will print a study next Tuesday that takes a closer look at the effects of deforestation at specific latitudes. The study suggests that deforestation of higher latitudes may lead to a greater cooling effect than leaving areas intact or implementing afforestation plans. Needless to say, their findings have riled some folks.
Part of what they found was already accepted. Forests on and around the equator (mostly rain forests) are exceedingly good at cycling water back into the atmosphere. When the forests are removed en masse, this evapotranspiration is greatly reduced, allowing the…
retrospectacle | April 11, 2007I grew up in Florida, in central Florida to be exact. As a kid we went to Blue Springs and other manatee havens on field trips, to observe these gentle and curious animals. They are huge, and as they tend to inhabit shallow areas of the Florida coastal waterways its easy to see them in the clear springs of Florida, and even swim with them in some cases (not recommended, as you may inadvertently injure them). In the 1980s and 1990s, when i lived there (before I went back for undergrad) manatee conservation was forefront. They were nearly gone; hunted to the brink of extinction in the earlier…
hrynyshyn | April 11, 2007In response to the news that the US Fish and Wildlife Service is even thinking about downlisting the Florida manatee from "endangered" to "threatened," I make this modest proposal: boycott Florida.
Trichechus manatus is considered vulnerable on habitat-wide level by the IUCN - World Conservation Union, and the outlook for Florida's sub-population is not rosy. Carl Hiaasen, a long-time defender of what's left of Florida's wildlife, had this to say last June:
A non-scientist looking at the mortality data might wonder why they're so upbeat. Last year, 396 manatees - more than 10 percent of the…
mikethemadbiologist | April 10, 2007I've mentioned the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) before. Today, I'll be attending the NARMS public hearing which is going to discuss four questions:
1) Why, on this night
1) Are there inherent biases in the sampling strategies employed in NARMS? If so, how can they be improved to ensure that the data and interpretation are scientifically sound given current resources?
2) Are there epidemiological and/or microbiological research studies that would better serve the goals of NARMS and the regulatory work of FDA?
3) Are current plans for data harmonization and…