zoology
grrlscientist | October 27, 2006
A common garter snake, Thnmonphis sirtalis,
with a hitchhiking ladybug, Hippodamia convergens,
on its nose. This photo was taken in northeastern North Dakota.
Image: Justawriter.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image 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: snake, common garter snake, ladybug, insect, reptilia, zoology
grrlscientist | October 26, 2006
Ladybug species, Neoharmonia venusta,
which was photographed near "the willows,"
a hot birding area at Anahuac NWR, Texas.
Image: Biosparite.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image 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: ladybug, insect, Coleptera, zoology
grrlscientist | October 25, 2006
Green Tree Frog, Hyla cinerea.
Nelson Farms Preserve, Katy Prairie Conservancy, Texas.
NABA Butterfly Count, 4 September 2006.
Image: Biosparite.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image 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: green tree frog, frog, Amphibia, zoology
grrlscientist | October 24, 2006
This is a pictorial tutorial on distinguishing
the Cloudless Sulphur, Phoebis sennae (individual on left),
from the Sleepy Orange butterfly, Eurema nicippe (group on right).
This photo was taken just north of US 290 on the east side of Roberts Road at a vacant lot posted "For Sale" for commercial development. Puddling is a social activity of butterfly species. The butterflies are fortifying themselves with dissolved salts from the soil.
Image: Biosparite.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me,…
grrlscientist | October 23, 2006One question that people like to ask me is how I decided to study evolution in birds? The fact is that I had always been particularly interested in birds so I have a life-long history of watching and feeding wild birds as well as breeing and training captive birds, so it would seem natural that I would eventually end up studying them, too .. right?
Well, my journey wasn't as straighforward as that since I worried I would never be able to make a living as an ornithologist, so I instead went into microbiology and studied to be a virologist. Daily, my life was focused on sussing out the…
grrlscientist | October 22, 2006
Clouded Sulfur butterfly, Colias philodice,
nectaring at the garden of the (now defunct) Tierra de los Suenos
Bed and Breakfast near Patagonia, Arizona, mid-July 2003.
Image: Biosparite.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image 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: butterfly, clouded sulfur butterfly, insect, lepidoptery, zoology
grrlscientist | October 22, 2006A friend emailed this picture to me, so I am sharing it with you -- just to let you know that I am here and thinking about all of you. This image has inspired me to share some images with you throughout the day today. I hope that you enjoy them!
Male Indian Peafowl, Pavo cristatus, in courtship display.
Orphaned image.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image 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: peacock, birds, biology, photography, ornithology,…
grrlscientist | October 19, 2006A friend emailed this link and even though I have only begun to poke around on it, but already I find it fascinating. Darwin OnLine is a searchable webbed database that contains more than 50,000 text pages and 40,000 images of publications and handwritten manuscripts. It also has the most comprehensive Darwin bibliography ever published and the largest manuscript catalogue ever assembled. More than 150 ancillary texts are also included, ranging from secondary reference works to contemporary reviews, obituaries, published descriptions of Darwin's Beagle specimens and important related works…
grrlscientist | October 15, 2006
The newly described YariguÃes Brush-Finch,Atlapetes latinuchus yariguierum.
Photo: Blanca Huertas, Natural History Museum.
A previously unknown subspecies of bird was discovered on an isolated South American mountain range. This coloful bird is approximately the size of a stick of butter. It has a fiery rust-red cap, lemon-yellow throat and a sooty-yellow belly streaked with bright yellow that contrast with a black beak, eye patch, wings, legs and tail (pictured). The bird's coloration distinguishes it from its closest relative, the Yellow-breasted Brush-Finch, because its back is black…
grrlscientist | September 21, 2006I am posting another silly quiz for you to play with, mostly to remind you that I am here in the background, checking in and thinking about all of you, dear readers, but I am still unable to post very often due to inconsistent computer access (and I am trying to access my blog using an antiquated Dell computer that loves to crash, which is truly a severe punishment). However, I do read and enjoy your comments, so please keep them coming!
Anyway, my quiz results are hardly surprising in the grand scheme but they are below the fold for you to enjoy. Of course I am curious to know your results…
grrlscientist | July 11, 2006There's some interesting articles in the first issue of the new journal, Integrative Zoology, which is freely available online. You can also register with Blackwell Synergy to receive free email alerts for new content published in a large variety of research topics ranging from medicine to the humanities.
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tags: Zoology, research, open access
grrlscientist | July 7, 2006For those of you who are bird watchers, and those of you who research birds, you will be interested to know that the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) just published its 47th Supplement to their Check List of North American Birds -- its 6th Supplement since the seventh edition was first published in 1998. This Supplement is published after new data -- mostly DNA data -- becomes available to the AOU.
(below the fold)
According to this paper [free PDF], nine main changes are noted in this Supplement;
three species were added because AOU split them from species that already appear on the…
grrlscientist | June 29, 2006
Wild specimen of the butterfly species, Heliconius heurippa.
Researchers recently demonstrated that this species is a naturally-occurring
hybrid between H. cydno and H. melpomene.
Image: Christian Salcedo / University of Florida, Gainesville.
Speciation typically occurs after one lineage splits into two separate and isolated breeding populations. But it is has been hypothesized that two "parental" species with overlapping ranges could hybridize, thereby giving rise to one new but reproductively isolated "daughter species" in the same area. However, this phenomenon has rarely been observed…
grrlscientist | June 15, 2006
Artist's rendition of Gansus yumenensis
on a lake in Changma Basin, China approximately 115-110 million years ago.
Illustration: Mark A. Klingler / CMNH.
In 1984, a paper was published in China (in Chinese) that described a new bird species from the early Cretaceous period, based on part of a fossilized left foot bone that had been discovered in northwestern China by a team of paleoichthyologists in 1981. This bone was determined to be part of an ancient tern-sized bird, later named Gansus yumenensis (for the Chinese province of Gansu, and Yumen, the nearest somewhat large town to where…
grrlscientist | June 12, 2006Gazelles and other large desert-dwelling ungulates can live on very little food and water for long periods of time. How do they do it? This was an evolutionary mystery until recently, when researchers found that desert-dwelling gazelles survive by reducing their breathing frequency, thereby cutting fluid loss and decreasing their metabolic demands during periods of water deprivation. [pictured: Arabian sand gazelle, Gazella subgutturosa. Image: BCEAWS]
According to new research that focused on sand gazelles, Gazella subgutturosa, researchers found that these animals rely on two strategies to…
grrlscientist | June 12, 2006
The elusive and peculiar Okapi, Okapia johnstoni,
a relative of the giraffe that dwells in dense rainforests.Image: Denver Zoo.
One of my favorite mammals is the little-known relative of the giraffe; the shy and retiring okapi. This peculiar animal, which is approximately the size of a horse, is so rare and elusive that no one really knows how many remain throughout all of its range in Africa.
So imagine the delight of scientists when they recently found evidence that this animal still lives in part of its range where it was thought to be extinct because it had not been seen since 1959.…
grrlscientist | February 7, 2006
Male Berlepsch's Six-wired Bird of Paradise, Parotia berlepschi.
Photo by Bruce Beehler.
Click image for larger version in its own window.
I would give anything -- in fact, I'd give absolutely everything I ever had, currently have and could ever hope to have -- to be part of the recent Conservation International (CI) expedition to Indonesia. This month-long expedition was the brain child of scientist and CI vice president, Bruce Beehler. His goal? To explore the mysterious Foja Mountains in western New Guinea, formerly known as Irian Jaya.
Beehler gathered a team of 25 international…
grrlscientist | February 6, 2006When Pittsburgh paleontologist Matt Lamanna jokingly promised his fellow scientists that he would eat a duck foot if they unearthed a rare bird fossil, he never expected that they would discover a large group of them in northwest China. This discovery, the most significant in the past 25 years, was made in the Changma Basin, a desert located more than 1,000 miles away from the famed Liaoning fossil quarries.
"The dinosaur-bird transition is the hottest topic in dinosaur paleontology," says Lamanna.
Some evolutionary biologists think that birds and dinosaurs are too different to be directly…
grrlscientist | January 24, 2006
Okay guys, if you had a choice between having a big brain or big .. er, testes .. which would you choose?
A recent scientific paper reveals that as sexual selection pressures increase in promiscuous bat species, males evolve larger testes and smaller brains. But in bat species where females remain faithful, males had comparatively smaller testes and larger brains. Conversely, male sexual behavior had absolutely no effect on either brain or testes size.
Because brains and testis are the most metabolically expensive tissues to grow and maintain, the balance between their relative sizes…
grrlscientist | January 23, 2006
Ornithologist and Ivory-billed Woodpecker expert, Dr. Jerome Jackson, who has an impressive list of professional accomplishments, including the excellent book, In Search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Amazon (2004), has finally spoken out about the rediscovery of the IBWO in a peer-reviewed paper [free PDF] that was recently published in one of the most respected ornithological journals in the world, The Auk.
In this 15-page paper, Jackson asserts that the evidence put forward by the search party participants simply doesn't rise to the level of scientifically valid "proof" as portrayed by…