Standing out in stupidity

Tags

getting lost, kindness of strangers, running, stories, storytelling

I had something else planned for today’s post, but I had quite the adventure last night, so I thought I’d share.  It’s kind of a long story, and I apologize for that in advance.

Yesterday was a pretty typical day in that I arose around 4:30, went for a swim, biked to work, and then headed out to the field to haul water around to my plants.  In the afternoon, I helped an undergraduate with his field work, and we didn’t get back to the lab until late.  Nonetheless, I had a fairly intensive bike/run (called a “brick” in some circles) workout planned for the evening.

I tell you all this because, by the time I headed out on my bike, I had already had a long and fairly physically intensive day.  Workouts after a long field day can be tough, but I just tell myself to stick it out.

I did the bike portion of the workout, short (15 km) and high intensity.  Then I rolled off my bike and started on the run.  I had planned a 24 km run (15 mi), which is not trivial for me, but it was a beautiful evening and I was soon enjoying myself and moving along at a pretty good clip.

As the sun set, the world filled with fire beetles (I am calling them this in the attempt to dissuade people from using the misnomers of “fireflies” or “lightning bugs”, which are both technically incorrect).  As I ran through them, they landed on me all over until I flashed like a beacon.

I was daydreaming and not paying a lot of attention, so I decided to try running down a road I had never been on before.  I had looked at a map beforehand and the road seemed to connect, so I thought I would be alright.

But as I ran down the road, the sky darkened and the fire beetles vanished.  Dark walls of trees rose on both sides.  “Okay,” I thought, “I am still heading west, everything should be alright.”

Soon enough, the road I was running on turned to gravel.  Another half a mile later and the gravel disintegrated into dirt with clumps of grass.  The canopy closed overhead, blocking out the moonlight until it was black as pitch.  I stumbled to a stop, hands out in front of me.

Clearly, I couldn’t continue this way.  I knew I was going west, but in the pitch darkness and without a road, I could easily have gotten turned around in the forest.

So I took a deep breath, turned around, and ran back the way I had come.  Now, I had been running for over 2 hours at this point, and the thought of doubling back all the way was hard for me to swallow, so I decided to use one of my tricks for finding my way around a new place.  I doubled back until I hit the nearest paved intersection, and took a left, heading north.  The road took me up a long, winding road and my heart sank as it continued steadily north, instead of bearing west again.

The problem with running is that it can get you a whole lot of nowhere fast.

At the top of the hill, the road curled in on itself in a cul-de-sac.  I stopped.  Dead end.  The thought of doubling back at this point was nearly unbearable, so when a woman walked by with two barking dogs, I couldn’t help but say, “Excuse me, I’m so sorry to bother you.”

“I’ve been running for three hours; I think I’m lost,” I blurted, trying not to sound desperate, though I was.

I told her about my plight, and although she thought it odd, she was kind.  She offered to give me a ride back to town, and I must admit I did not fight very hard when I said, “No, I couldn’t possibly…” and when she said, “No, I insist!” I gave in rather quickly.

I must have apologized forty times on the drive back.

But here is my moral dilemma.  She took me back to the lab, where I changed, got on my bike and commuted home.  By the time I had showered and gotten into bed it was near midnight.  This morning, I got up at 4:30, went for a swim, and now am about to head out to the field.

Which means that I probably could have run home last night, but I was too lazy.  I feel like a terrible person, that I took advantage of that woman’s kindness and made her go out of her way to help me because I was stupid and lazy.

I wish there was a way I could repay her kindness.

Happy Tau Day

Tags

mathematics, mathemusician, maths, nerd, pi, Tau day, Vi Hart

Pi is not all it’s cracked up to be.  The problem with pi, is that a pie is 2 pi.  Tau, which is 2 pi, is much better.

Confused?

Here’s my favourite mathemusician to explain.

So, instead of celebrating pi day (3/14 or March 14), I am celebrating Tau Day (6/28, or June 28).  You should too!

Hawk moth beauty

Tags

clearwing moths, Hemaris diffinis, hummingbird moths, insects, nature, photography, Sphingidae, sphinx moths

Hawk moths belong to the moth family Sphingidae.  The family is large and known for the superior flying abilities of its members, many of which are capable of hovering, darting, and manoeuvering quickly.  Its diversity includes groups as drab as the Pachylias:

Pachylia darceta, Alberto Manuel biological station, Costa Rica

And pests like the hornworm caterpillar I posted about before (link here).

But mostly I wanted to mention a special group of Sphingids today, the genus Hemaris, which is known at turns as the Clearwing moths, Hummingbird moths, or Bee Hawk-moths.  This genus utilises the special flying abilities of the Sphingid family to hover at flowers, and they have long probosces for drinking nectar while hovering so that, as they feed, they look rather like hummingbirds.

I had one visit me in the field, and she was so beautiful that I had to dedicate a whole post to her.   She decided to take a rest on my hand for a while (hovering is hard work!).

This Snowberry Clearwing (Hemaris diffinis) landed on my hand in the field yesterday.  Also, that is an awesome common name.

The scales are shed from the clear areas of her wings during her first flight.

Beautiful clear wings

“This is actually my good side, standingoutinmyfield.”

This species is supposedly “patterned like a bumblebee”, but I’m not sure I buy it.

She is investigating one of my vials.

I left her on some Bird’s Foot Trefoil, to rest.

Patterns in the ocean

Tags

Charriere, counting, Field work, obsessive compulsive, ocean, Papillon, pattern

Ocean off the Osa Peninsula, in Costa Rica

I have mixed feelings about the ocean.  As much as I want to love it unconditionally, and as much as I adore swimming, snorkeling, coral reefs, cephalopods, and especially parrot fish, I seem to be fundamentally terrestrial.

I struggle with field work in the ocean, grappling with my equipment to prevent it from floating away.  I can’t hold my breath long enough to sample for long periods of time, or dive very deeply as some of my marine colleagues can (I swear they must be part fish).

And, though I hate to admit it, the ceaseless, senseless noise exhausts me.  I feel like it beats down on me endlessly, so that when I am close to the shore for long periods of time, my senses are battered into submission without reason and I am left numb and speechless.

I needed to fit a pattern to it so that I could understand it, rationalise it (is that an obsessive compulsive thing?).  One day, upon deciding that I would ‘figure out’ the ocean, I swam out to a rocky outcrop and climbed up the sharp rocks barefoot at low tide.  I sat on the pinnacle and counted…I counted the time between waves, the number of small waves before a big wave hit, the duration of a big wave.  I sat patiently for hours, counting endlessly, doing my best to keep track of those three sets of numbers.

At some point, I realised that the sun had set, the tide had risen, and I was shivering uncontrollably.  I was soaked to the bone from the spray, drenched over and over as each big wave hit.

I dove back in and swam to shore.  Frustration was my dominant emotion; after all that time, I had found no pattern.  The sequence of waves seemed completely random and there was no rhyme or reason to it.  It could be five small waves with three seconds between, a big wave of 4 second duration, 8 small waves, a big wave of 2 seconds, a big wave of 9 seconds, so on and so forth.  But nothing ever repeated in all the hours I counted.

The ocean would never fit into a box for me.

Ocean in a box? Off the shore of Hobart, Tasmania

So, imagine my surprise when, upon reading Papillon (by Henri Charriere), I found this passage about him counting waves and finding a pattern!  The waves were predictable enough that he could use them to escape.  I wonder if this is truth or fiction, or if you can only find such predictable waves on small islands in the middle of lots of ocean.

“Only one wave out of every seven was as large as the monster that had flung my sack back against the rocks.  The others were little more than half its size.  From noon to sundown I watched to see if this was always so, if there wasn’t an occasional shift or whim that altered the regularity.

 

“There wasn’t.  The ground swell never came sooner, never came later.  There were six waves about twenty feet high, then, forming about three hundred yards from shore, the ground swell.  It came in straight as a cannonball, growing in size and height as it approached.  There was hardly any spray on its crest compared to the other six, very little, in fact.  It had its own special noise, like far-off thunder.  When it broke on the two rocks and hurled itself into the passage between them, crashing against the cliff, its great mass caused it to choke and turn on itself.  Then, after ten or fifteen seconds, the eddies would work their way out with a wild churning, tearing off huge stones and rolling them back and forth, making a rumble like a hundred wagonloads of stones being dumped.

 

“I put a dozen coconuts in a sack and added a fifty-pound rock.  As the ground swell broke, I threw the sack in.  I couldn’t follow it with my eyes because of the spray, but I saw it for a second as the water was sucked back to the sea.  It did not return.  The next six waves lacked the strength to throw it back on shore, and by the time the seventh had formed three hundred yards out, the sack must have drifted beyond it, for I didn’t see it again.”

Sunset on Magnetic Island, Australia

Lonesome George and Let Evening Come, by Jane Kenyon

Tags

extinction, Jane Kenyon, let evening come, lonesome george, passenger pigeon, tasmanian tiger

I’ve been dealing with a lot of losses lately, and it’s hard.  I guess that’s part of life, losing people, but it doesn’t make it any easier to forget how much you loved them.

It’s just like the big old elm tree that they had to cut down this year.  Forgive me for comparing a person to a tree, but in many ways it was just like losing an old friend.  That elm has seen a lot; it was over 200 years old.  But it caught an infection, just as people do, and now it’s gone and there is a big sad stump 2.5 meters across where it used to stand.

So you can imagine my sadness when I heard that Lonesome George, possibly the rarest animal in the world, died this morning.  Many environmentalists have tried unsuccessfully to get him to breed with a related subspecies.  Instead, as he dies his race dies with him.  Poor George.

Lonesome George, the galapagos tortoise, photo courtesy of wikipedia.org

Poor us; for trying so hard to save a species when it is so late in the game.  There are other examples of this: Benjamin, the last Tasmanian tiger died in a zoo near Hobart.  He was the last representative of an entire family.

Benjamin, photo courtesy of wikipedia.org

My own photo of the now defunct Beaumaris zoo, taken last year, very sad.

Martha, the last passenger pigeon, who died in the Cincinnati zoo in 1914.

Martha, the last passenger pigeon, courtesy of wikipedia.org

What must it be like to be the last of your species?  How lonely?

I’m sorry for the melancholy today, but it is a good occasion to be mindful of the loss of species and the many extinctions that have occurred worldwide.  We shouldn’t close our eyes to it, even if it means shedding a few tears.  At least then it means something.

 

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

- Jane Kenyon

Adorable bee

Tags

bee, cute, insects, nature, Osmia bucephala, photography

Go on, I dare you to tell me that this is not the most adorable bee you have ever seen.

Osmia bucephala, female

“Gosh, do I have something on my face?”

“It’s so hard to hold onto to the side of this thing! Whew.”

 

Accidentally equestrian

Tags

beetle, dressage, equestrian, fieldwork, nature, outdoors, wasp

Yesterday I was working in the field, and a wasp somehow got into my trousers while I was walking from one plot to another, hauling my very serious science wagon full of water tanks.

My serious science wagon, with about 45 kg (~100 lb) of water.

Because I was walking, my leg swung forward, the fabric of the trousers trapped the wasp against my thigh, and it stung me in a frantic panic attack.  I am accustomed to this sort of thing, so I shot a quick glance left and right, evaluated my aloneness, and dropped my trousers to get the wasp out.

Apparently, it had flown in through my pocket, which has a mesh inside through which it stung me.  I don’t think anyone spotted me with my trousers down; I was pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

But this whole situation reminded me of a story.  A while back, I was working in a thick tangle of scrubby brush.  My team and I were searching for the nests of a type of bird that loves thickets and dense vegetation.  It was a lot of work to find the nests; we had to check every branch of every shrub in the reserve, which meant many long days of painstakingly working our way through spiny brush.  Because the nests were fairly rare, it often felt like a thankless job.

One day, while I was working my way north, I pulled down a branch to check it for a nest and a beetle tumbled down and fell into my shirt.  It not only fell into my shirt, however, it also fell into my bra.

Now, if you have ever had a fair-sized beetle in your clothing, you will know that its first response it to stick out all of its legs in different directions and start clawing around.  Given that this beetle had fallen into a particularly sensitive area, and given that it had particularly spiny legs, I let out a loud WHOOP and thrashed around through the thicket, struggling to pull my shirt off over my head.

I finally managed it and, almost simultaneously, tumbled out into an open area.  I had thought we were in the middle of nowhere, in a protected nature reserve, so imagine my surprise when I found that I had stumbled right into the center of an equestrian competition.

A young girl performing dressage on a chestnut mare with an elaborately braided mane gaped at me, someone in the audience gasped.

I was still in dire straits, so I reached in my bra, snatched out the beetle with a “HA!” and dove back into the thicket without so much as a “how do you do?”

I hope I didn’t affect the poor girl’s score too badly.

Funny Onions

Tags

allium vineale, Field work, funny onions, onion, photos of strange looking plants, the onion, wild garlic

There are all these wild onions (or Wild Garlic Allium vineale) standing out in the field where I work (see what I did there?), and I think they are very funny looking.  They are invasive, but they are amusing.  Since it is Friday anyhow, I thought I’d share them with you and maybe you’ll like them too!

And, of course, you know of the other funny onion:  The Onion.

Crazy about dogbane

Tags

Apocynum cannabinum, Chrysochus auratus, dogbane, dogbane beetle, insects, nature, photography

I get a little overexcited about things sometimes.  Things like a new species of bird, or shiny things.  I’m simple like that.  I once caught an iridescent wasp with one hand out of mid air as it buzzed past, just because it was shiny (the wasp was not harmed, just surprised).  I didn’t even think about it; it was a reflex.

So you can imagine how excited I get about dogbane beetles.

Shiny?

Shiny!

Then the brain kicks in and quips: “Dogbane beetle (Chrysochus auratus) on Dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum)”

Shiny feet…

And shiny beetle!

Haha, shiny behind! Oh wait, where are you going?

Can you tell that I have been working long days out in humid 37 C heat (~95 F), with no shade?  Hmm…

Mark Berkery’s Bee

Tags

art, Bees, drawings, illustrations, Mark Berkey, nature, Nature's Place

Mark Berkery writes a blog called Nature’s Place, and if you haven’t been there already, you should gogogo!  He takes the most lovely insect photos and couples them with dreamy and/or thoughtful posts.  I love it.

With his permission, I drew one of his photographs.  It was a lot of fun, and although there are plenty of mistakes, I kinda like the result.  Let me know what you think!

Here’s a link to his photograph:  LINK

I don’t know if anyone is interested in the steps, but I enjoy it when other people put the photos of progress up, so here are some of mine (I’m bad at remembering to do this):

First drawing, black and white. I do this is real quick, maybe 5 or 10 minutes, just by looking at the picture and then drawing what I see.

Coloured pencils! I don’t know anything about art, but gradients and shading are important.
Sorry this is blurry. I have never taken a good photo indoors, ever.

Thorax, highlights on legs.

Wing

Having a hard time with the hind wing.

Background

Tada! Scanned in

Knee-deep in June, by James Whitcomb Riley

Tags

James Whitcomb Riley, knee-deep in june, nature poetry, poem, poets

This is a long poem, but it’s plenty of fun!  See below for an excerpt about the author from The Writer’s Almanac (writersalmanac.publicradio.org), by Garrison Keiler.

Knee-Deep in June

Tell you what I like the best –
‘Long about knee-deep in June,
‘Bout the time strawberries melts
On the vine, — some afternoon
Like to jes’ git out and rest,
And not work at nothin’ else!

Orchard’s where I’d ruther be –
Needn’t fence it in fer me! –
Jes’ the whole sky overhead,
And the whole airth underneath –
Sort o’ so’s a man kin breathe
Like he ort, and kind o’ has
Elbow-room to keerlessly
Sprawl out len’thways on the grass
Where the shadders thick and soft
As the kivvers on the bed
Mother fixes in the loft
Allus, when they’s company!

Jes’ a-sort o’ lazin there -
S’lazy, ‘at you peek and peer
Through the wavin’ leaves above,
Like a feller ‘ats in love
And don’t know it, ner don’t keer!
Ever’thing you hear and see
Got some sort o’ interest -
Maybe find a bluebird’s nest
Tucked up there conveenently
Fer the boy ‘at’s ap’ to be
Up some other apple tree!
Watch the swallers skootin’ past
Bout as peert as you could ast;
Er the Bob-white raise and whiz
Where some other’s whistle is.

Ketch a shadder down below,
And look up to find the crow –
Er a hawk, – away up there,
‘Pearantly froze in the air! –
Hear the old hen squawk, and squat
Over ever’ chick she’s got,
Suddent-like! – and she knows where
That-air hawk is, well as you! –
You jes’ bet yer life she do! –
Eyes a-glitterin’ like glass,
Waitin’ till he makes a pass!

Pee-wees wingin’, to express
My opinion, ‘s second-class,
Yit you’ll hear ‘em more er less;
Sapsucks gittin’ down to biz,
Weedin’ out the lonesomeness;
Mr. Bluejay, full o’ sass,
In them baseball clothes o’ his,
Sportin’ round the orchad jes’
Like he owned the premises!
Sun out in the fields kin sizz,
But flat on yer back, I guess,
In the shade’s where glory is!
That’s jes’ what I’d like to do
Stiddy fer a year er two!

Plague! Ef they ain’t somepin’ in
Work ‘at kind o’ goes ag’in’
My convictions! – ‘long about
Here in June especially! –
Under some ole apple tree,
Jes’ a-restin through and through,
I could git along without
Nothin’ else at all to do
Only jes’ a-wishin’ you
Wuz a-gittin’ there like me,
And June wuz eternity!

Lay out there and try to see
Jes’ how lazy you kin be! –
Tumble round and souse yer head
In the clover-bloom, er pull
Yer straw hat acrost yer eyes
And peek through it at the skies,
Thinkin’ of old chums ‘ats dead,
Maybe, smilin’ back at you
In betwixt the beautiful
Clouds o’gold and white and blue! –
Month a man kin railly love –
June, you know, I’m talkin’ of!

March ain’t never nothin’ new! –
April’s altogether too
Brash fer me! and May — I jes’
‘Bominate its promises, –
Little hints o’ sunshine and
Green around the timber-land –
A few blossoms, and a few
Chip-birds, and a sprout er two, –
Drap asleep, and it turns in
Fore daylight and snows ag’in! –
But when June comes – Clear my th’oat
With wild honey! — Rench my hair
In the dew! And hold my coat!
Whoop out loud! And th’ow my hat! –
June wants me, and I’m to spare!
Spread them shadders anywhere,
I’ll get down and waller there,
And obleeged to you at that!

- James Whitcomb Riley

 

The poet James Whitcomb Riley was born in Greenfield, Indiana, in 1849. He wrote about a thousand poems, and most of them are written in the Hoosier dialect of central Indiana. He didn’t like school, and was often in trouble, but his parents didn’t push him; his father, who was a lawyer, felt he should shape his own education by following his interests — chiefly painting, drama, and literature. He had a keen ear, both for music and for language; he played several instruments by ear, and had a knack for spinning local-color tales and verses.

A 12-year-old orphan girl named Mary Alice Smith inspired one of his best-known poems. His father was away fighting in the Civil War, and his mother took the girl in to help with the running of the household. Riley called his poem “The Elf Child,” and it was first published in 1885. Riley changed the title to “Little Orphant Allie” in 1897, for its third printing, but the typographer made a mistake, and the title ended up as “Little Orphant Annie” instead. The poem and its heroine inspired a comic strip, plays, musicals, radio shows, and movies.

Float like a bee

Tags

Agapostemon, Bees, bees in flight, Ceratina, insects, nature, photography

Isn’t that the famous quote?  Float like a bee, sting like a bee?

Jedi bee

I’ve been trying to capture some bees in flight for you, as I did in those Euglossine bee photos from Costa Rica.  (i.e. this:

Euglossine bee!

But it’s hard for a number of reasons.  Most bees are a lot smaller than that Euglossine above.

This Small Carpenter bee (or Ceratina sp.) is only 3 or 4 mm long.

This Agapostemon sericeus is about 10 or 11 mm.

And the bees don’t hover in front of the scent bait, as the Euglossine did.  Instead, they hop around from flower to flower, and they are very fast and hard to keep in focus.

You bee, hold still!

Instead of one bait to attract them to a central location, there are many flowers that they can visit, so I never know where they will bee next!

Sometimes I get them in this awkward half-taking off position that makes them look like they are levitating.

On Betony (Stachys officionalis)

Landing gear out!

And sometimes I get someone else in the background, like a mystery.

Memories and moments with dad

Tags

Father's Day, fathers, memories

One of my favourite photos of my dad.

My dad is a military man and an astrophysicist.  He is quiet, almost taciturn, not one to readily show emotions.  I think he might be confused by me.  He is very logical (like Spock).  Why would his daughter, who is violently allergic to mozzies (I get lumps the size of goose eggs), want her career to be outside, where she is regularly eaten alive by mozzies, which love her?

He understands my sister, a lawyer, much better.  She has never been paid one dollar an hour at a job, nor has she ever had to clean up after hippos.

Because he is so quiet, I depend on little moments to determine how my father truly feels about me.

I went to an American high school, and I graduated top of my class.  As valedictorian, I gave a speech in front of 5,000 people.  Of course, I started my speech with a quote from Douglas Adams: “There is an art, or rather, a knack, to flying.  That knack is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”

The speech itself was an extended metaphor and it was…a little unusual (just like me!).  After, people were commenting on how “cerebral” it was, but just when I was feeling most low about it, my father said a simple three words that made me feel entirely better, “It was poetry.”

I think it was hard on all of us when he was stationed in the Middle East.  He wasn’t allowed to call us, and all of the email sites were blocked, so he and I stayed in touch by having little digital pets at a website where we could send each other “neomail.”  Because it was a site for children it was not blocked.

When he returned from his deployment overseas, he, who was not one to hug or kiss or say “I love you,” picked me up and spun me around.  I was so surprised, but he never said anything about it, just went along as if nothing had happened.

Another time, on Christmas, we went to midnight mass together and, being very tired, he rested his head on my shoulder for just a moment.

The fact that these moments stand out so sharply in my memory might indicate to you that they were rare, and indeed they were, but maybe that makes the littlest memories even brighter.

I love my father, even when he is a little crabby.

Read the books your father read

Tags

books, clasic sci fi, father, science fiction, stories, storytelling

I got my love of stories and storytelling from my father.  When my sister and I were really young, he would tuck us in at night and tell us a story.  And he wouldn’t just read some children’s book either!  Nope, he always told us 100% unique and original stories that he made up himself.

His main character was John, so we called the stories “the John stories.”  John was a fighter pilot turned astronaut who had intergalactic adventures, mainly battling a race of evil lizard people.  John was the perfect hero, but he relied on his brain and not his brawn to get out of tough situations (although he was also pretty athletic).

My father is a great storyteller.  He has a very deep and pleasant voice and he speaks quietly so that you almost have to lean toward him a little to hear properly.  (Just like Daisy Buchanan in the Great Gatsby.)

My sister and I LOVED the John stories and we begged for them every night for years, but as we grew older they became less and less frequent.  I couldn’t exactly pinpoint when my father stopped telling John stories altogether, but to fill the gap I started raiding his bookshelf.

Now everyone in my family is pretty itinerant and for that reason we don’t keep a lot of things.  Books are heavy and not easily moved, so we had very few books.  The few that my father held onto were therefore of special significance.  Mostly they are ancient magazines of sci-fi and adventure that look a little like this:

from Wikipedia.org

My father kept them from when he was 8 years old (he wasn’t eight in 1926 (or alive), but you get the picture).  I grew up reading magazines like these.

from Wikipedia.org

My father loves sci-fi, so I’m well read in all of the classics: Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Frederik Pohl, Heinlein, and Niven and Pournelle (they have to write together or they are horrible).

From wikipedia.org

By the time I was twelve, I had read the Foundation trilogy and almost every other thing published by Asimov (arrogant as he was).  When most people were reading Harry Potter, I was reading The Voyage of the Space Beagle published in 1950 (now that’s real sci-fi, haha).

from Wikipedia.org

One time, my father took me on a walk in the middle of the night, in the middle of the desert in order to tell me a story properly.  “It’s not dark enough,” he said, “You have to close your eyes.”

Obediently, I closed my eyes as he told me a terrifying story about a planet on the edge of the Milky Way, with no stars at night, and no moon, and of the adventurer who had to find a way home through a canyon in the pitch blackness.

Another time, after I had begged him for a story, he told me that he had written an entire universe, and made himself a character in it, with a wife and a nice family.  He had written such detail into the universe that he had become trapped in it.  “How did you escape?” I asked, eyes wide.

He looked at me, eyes sparkling, “I still haven’t!” he responded.

When I protested that I am not just a character in a story he would reply smugly that he had written me to respond that way.  And I learned that, try as you might, you can never prove to another person that you are not just a figment of their imagination.  (It’s interesting to try though, you should give it a shot sometime.)

I can’t help but love stories.

Sexual dimorphism and crypsis

Tags

crypsis, mating rituals, sexual dimorphism, sexual selection

In nature, it is common for animals to be sexually dimorphic; in other words, males and females look different.  There are some extreme examples of sexual dimorphism.  You may be familiar with peacocks, where the males are elaborately ornamented and colourful.

There are some trends; for example, in general males tend to be the brightly ornamented ones while females are cryptic, or dull-coloured.  Females are often larger because they need to carry the young or eggs.

Perhaps you are not familiar with the peacock spider, which is a Salticid or jumping spider.  Among the jumping spiders, the males are often smaller and more brightly coloured, and they dance to attract the attention of females.

My peacock spider doodle.

If you’re not familiar, I highly recommend this video:

This same trend is often found in birds.  The males are bright (sometimes fantastically so) and the females are dull and cryptic.  The females look after the nest, so it would not be good for them to be bright.  On the other hand, sexual selection acts to make the males ever brighter and more attractive.  Sometimes the ridiculous displays of the males attract the attention of predators, though, so this selection must be balanced.

Bird of paradise with dramatic plumage display, photo courtesy of myopera.com

There are some animals where the trend is reversed, and these examples are very interesting in their ability to illuminate the reason for sexual dimorphism.  For example, the Eclectus Parrot.  The females are brightly coloured and the males are a cryptic green.  The behaviour shows why: it is the male that looks after the nest while the female finds food.

Female on the left, male on the right.  Photo courtesy of eclectusparrot.com

You may argue that some human societies have also reversed this trend.  The females are often brightly ornamented and males sometimes take charge of parental care.

Brightly ornamented female, courtesy of nj.com

Some have not reversed the trend.

photo courtesy of bbc.co.uk

The task of attracting a mate often goes both ways.  Both the male and female choose.  In this way, complex patterns of behaviour are developed: courting rituals, mating rituals, etc.  Not to mention some really beautiful displays.

Asian Paradise Flycatcher, photo credit Zahoor Salmi of flickriver.com

Eight simple rules for dating my daughter

Tags

dating, eight simple rules, fathers, natural selection

Back when I was in school, a book came out called “Eight simple rules for dating my teenage daughter”, by Bruce Cameron.  My father took a real shining to this book, and especially the eight rules put forth by Cameron, which look something like this:

1. Use your hands on my daughter and you’ll lose them after.
2. You make her cry, I make you cry.
3. Safe sex is a myth. Anything you try will be hazardous to your health.
4. Bring her home late, there’s no next date.
5. If you pull into my driveway and honk, you better be dropping off a package because you’re sure not picking anything up (Alternative rule #5: Only delivery men honk. Dates ring the doorbell. Once.)
6. No complaining while you’re waiting for her. If you’re bored, change my oil.
7. If your pants hang off your hips, I’ll gladly secure them with my staple gun.
8. Dates must be in crowded public places. You want romance? Read a book.

If you like these, you should check out the originals on Bruce Cameron’s blog, right here: http://www.brucecameron.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=8-simple-rules-for-dating-my-teenage-daughter.html&Itemid=59

My father’s rule for me was always “No dating until you get your PhD!”  Well, so far so good, and you never could say I wasn’t an obedient child (much to my grandmother’s chagrin).

But for my elder and fairer sisters, my father was constantly fending off unworthy suitors.  There was one particularly bad one who would sneak in through the basement window to see my eldest sister, but there were plenty of just plain inadequate (according to my father) ones that my middle sister flirted with.

So during this whole debacle I did what I normally do, which is to sit back and watch and evaluate.  A father’s role in this situation seems to be clear and there must be obvious selective pressure acting on him.  By vetting prospective suitors to his daughters, he is ensuring the highest possible quality of genetic material in his bloodline.

Feelings of over-protectiveness aside, the eight simple rules are simply a product of natural selection.  Logical enough.  And perhaps this is where natural selection can still act on humans, in spite of our modern conveniences that undermine “survival of the fittest.”  Now we have “survival of the most suitable according to the father.”

But here’s where things get confusing: why does the father’s reluctance toward certain types seem only to encourage wayward daughters?

This story is older than Romeo and Juliet.  Girl meets boy, father says flatly “No way” and girl stubbornly continues to court with boy against her father’s wishes.  Where’s the selection acting on that?

I guess I never did figure it out.

Special kinds of fathers

Tags

Cassowary, catfish, Father's Day, Fatherhood, penguin, Seahorse

This coming Sunday it is Father’s Day in the US.  Before Mother’s Day, I had a whole week of posts about mothers and I surely don’t want to neglect the fathers!

Mother’s Week Posts

E.O. Wilson on Eusociality

Mother, by Ted Kooser

Parthenogenesis, or virgin mothers

Women of a certain age

Mother’s Day Drawings

My mum

Fathers, in general, are not always equal contributors to the parental care.  Now don’t get offended, I’m referring to all organisms here, not humans.  In humans, and some other types of animals, the father can contribute just as much as the mother, if not more.

So, for today I thought I would highlight several special types of fathers that take an unusual amount of responsibility in parental care.

Gafftopsail Catfish (Bagre marinus)

The Gafftopsail Catfish is one example of many different fish species where the father does the majority of the parental care.  In this case, he holds the eggs, and even the young fry, in his mouth to protect them until they are ready to be out on their own.  He goes hungry the whole time.  What a dad!

A dad with a Gafftopsail Catfish, photo courtesy of aquaticrepublic.com

Cassowary (Casuarius casuarius)

The female lays the eggs, but it is actually the male who incubates them.  Once they hatch, he will take care of them until they are young enough to be on their own.  Not just a few weeks either, but nine to eighteen months.

A stand up dad

Penguins

Penguin parents are pretty special in general.  The mother can spend months fasting while the egg is incubating and then she’ll trade off with the father.  Among Emperor penguins, the father can regurgitate a nutritious substance for the chicks, even while fasting himself.

Emperor penguins

Seahorses (Hippocampus spp.)

I can’t write a post about special dads without commenting on seahorses!  Seahorses are exceptional in the sense that he carries a brood pouch.  The females deposit up to 1,500 eggs in the male’s brood pouch and he carries them until they hatch out, making it appear that the male is giving birth!  They are the only fathers I know of that get to share the experience of being pregnant.

Actually…this is pretty weird, photo courtesy of arkive.org

Can you think of any other exceptional fathers?

 

 

When I lost my hands, by Greg Hewett

Tags

fieldwork, Greg Hewett, hands, nature poetry, When I lost my hands

I tore up my hands pretty good doing field work over the weekend, so typing is not a pleasant chore at the minute.  Thought I’d just post a poem for now.  Serves me right for not building up proper calluses this spring.  Problem is, you can’t just stop working!  Hate it when I tear all the blisters open and my fingers stick together.  Gross.

When I Lost My Hands

by Greg Hewett

When I lost my hands I started wearing gloves,
the kind pallbearers wear,
thin and yellowed.

When I lost my hands I started to stare
at my father lifting his wineglass
like a dancer would a rose,

at my aunt shuffling cards,
brittle veins almost breaking
against the aquamarine on her knuckle,

at my grandfather holding his guitar
not so much like a lover as like a god
who has touched the earth.

When I lost my hands I started to see
how doves fold their wings
over their backs
like hands in prayer.

When I lost my hands I could no longer pray.
When I lost my hands I could no longer speak.

“When I Lost My Hands” by Greg Hewett, from Red Suburb. © Coffee House Press, 2002.

Oh honey, bee happy

Tags

Apis mellifera, bee, honeybee, insects, nature, photography, pollinator, Tradescantia ohiensis

I had a lovely visitor to my research plots yesterday.

Honeybee (Apis mellifera) on Ohio Spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis)

Although I am partial to the native and wild bees myself, the introduced honeybee is undeniably gorgeous, wouldn’t you say?

Show off

The ones visiting my plots were so golden too.  Really gorgeous bees.  I think my blogger-friend Emily (site here: Adventures in Beeland) called them “ginger.”  I’d call them rangas myself, haha!

Yum, yum, such a delicious flower!

She seemed to appreciate me too, given that I’d provided these delicious flowers for her breakfast.  I really want a photo of her flying.  These are the best I could do.  Still learning!

Trying to catch a photo of her in flight.

I need a faster shutter speed…or something.

 

The “How to tell when you’re a crazy cyclist” Quiz

Tags

bicycle, cycling, fun, humour, quiz, stories

Some of my crazy biker friends. Note that I am *not* among them.

The other day, in conversation with my friend, I said, “Yeah, but I’m not one of those crazy cyclists.”

She rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah, yeah you are.”

Who me? *innocence*

Well, I decided that I had better come up with a quiz to figure out whether I’m a crazy cyclist or not, and you can check your status too.  Leave me comments if you think I left anything out.

1.  Having fun yet?  Lots of people see bicycles as a thing of convenience, an easy way to commute, or a quicker way to get from A to B.  But if you’re actually having fun while riding a bicycle…well then, that’s just the first step of many, mate.  If you enjoy riding your bike, give yourself a point.

2. Rain or shine  There are a lot of fair weather riders out there, but a little rain (or sleet, or snow) doesn’t bother YOU.  If you’ll ride in any weather, take one point.

3.  Self-repair  All sorts of things can go wrong with a bicycle…flat tires, broken chains, etc.  It’s that moment when you get a flat and have the whole kit for replacing the inner tube on the side of the road–with cars splashing dirty rainwater in your face–in your pack that you deserve another point.

4.  Ba-bling  Okay, so maybe you have the standard repair kits, but what about that shiny new Shimano chain (after all, yours is all worn out), bike lights with 4000 lumens (for predawn riding), racer slicks, and disk brakes?  The list goes on and on.  You know when you find yourself working 9 to 5 to buy nice things for your baby (bike), that you deserve another point.

5.  Mapping your routes  Instead of just a casual ride on a sunny day, you’ve started mapping your routes online.  You know how many kilometers you’ve gone and how long it took and you can start getting average times.  Maybe you’ve even bought a speedometer and/or heart rate monitor.  If you have something with a GPS receiver on it, give yourself two points for this one.

6.  Snot rockets  My least favourite part of biking, but impossible to avoid.  On long rides, or when it’s windy and cold, every once in a while you just gotta blow a snot rocket.  I’ve had just about everything you can imagine go wrong with these, but if you’ve done it while riding, give yourself a point.

7.  Road rage  Hate those road-hogging hummers?  Shaking your fist at horn-happy cars?  If motorized vehicles make you angry, give yourself a point.  If you carry something to throw at cars that come to close, give yourself two points.

8.  Favourite rides  So you’ve not only mapped your rides, but now you have favourite rides.  You know, the kind of rides you do after a stressful day of work.  50 km that you look forward to at the end of a long week.  Give yourself two points if you have done this at dawn just so you could get some extra distance in before work.

9.  Relishing hills  At what point did hills become fun?  As a beginning bicyclist, I loathed them.  Now I relish them.  If you look forward to that next rise in the road, if you seek out mountains and rolling hills, give yourself a point.

10.  Cadence  Everything is a metaphor for life.  Cadence is one of those things.  It’s the same hill, the same bicycle, the same gear, the same you, but it is all about cadence.  If you have the right cadence, you can float up and over that hill, light as a feather.  If you catch yourself making bicycle metaphors, you know you deserve another point.

11.  Ride through  Those 50 k plus rides are gonna require some extra fuel.  If you can eat without stopping on your ride, take a point.  If you can peel a banana with your teeth while riding, give yourself two.

12.  Road rash  It’s inevitable to have a bicycle accident eventually.  I wish it weren’t.  If you’ve had a crash and left a bit of yourself on the road or broken a bone, give yourself a point.  If you still carry a piece of that road somewhere in your body to this day, give yourself two.

13.  Obsession  You’ve named your bike, you talk about biking all the time, you daydream about bicycling.  You even dream about it at night.  If you’re one to sing love songs to your bike while you’re cleaning and oiling its gears, give yourself a point for obsession.

14.  Lycra  You have to look the part.  If you’ve got a proper biker’s jersey and spandex shorts, you know you’re close to crazy.  Give yourself two points if your jersey has crazy artwork on it.

15.  So many bikes!  Now you’re not just happy with one bike.  You have to have SO MANY BIKES.  At least 4: one for commuting (for bad weather), one for riding (you’d never take your riding bike out in bad weather!), one for mountain biking (big tires and suspension), and one hybrid (for mixed terrain).  If you build your own bikes, give yourself FIVE points.

RANKING

0-4  Maybe you’d prefer a tricycle, mate?

5-10  You’ve acquired the stage of ‘casual weekend hobby’ or ‘hard-core commuter.’

11-15  Well on your way to obsession!  Invest in Lycra now before you start chafing.

16-20  Early onset obsession.  Watch it or you might end up breeding bikes in your garage.

21-24  Yep, you’re obsessed.  Might as well give in and bike across the country or something.

 

Okay, so my total is 17 points out of 24 (I only have one bike and I don’t have a GPS receiver or heart rate monitor, and I don’t carry anything to throw at cars).  This puts me at early onset obsession.  Where are you?