Bird call mimicry

Tags

Animals, Birds, nature, ecology, biology, mimicry, bird song, bird calls

Last night, I was walking with a friend, and I pointed out a Catbird that was mimicking a Blue Jay’s call.  He was very surprised because he thought that the only bird that mimics other calls was the mockingbird.

Probably the world’s best bird call mimic is Australia’s Lyrebird.  There is this fabulous video of one mimicking construction noises at the Adelaide zoo, which I think you would enjoy (hey, it’s Friday, treat yourself!).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeQjkQpeJwY

He is literally superb!  According to Wikipedia: “The lyrebird’s syrinx is the most complexly-muscled of the Passerines (songbirds), giving the lyrebird extraordinary ability, unmatched in vocal repertoire and mimicry.”

Attenborough also plays with these birds, showing how they can mimic tourist camera snaps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y

(No offense to my beloved Attenborough, but I actually think the first video is more impressive.)

Closer to home, the most familiar and adept bird call mimic is the Northern Mockingbird.  In a study by Derrickson (1987), he found that a single male mockingbird can have over 400 unique songs in its repertoire!

Grey Catbird

But there are several other North American (and Australian) species that mimic.  For example, other members of the mockingbird’s family (Mimidae) also incorporate snippets of other bird song into theirs: the grey catbird (here is a video), the sage thrasher, and the brown thrasher.  Here’s a page that compares the three: http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/birds/mimics.html

Brown Thrasher

Blue Jays sometimes mimic hawk calls (like this enthusiastic guy).

Heeeeyyyy

And if you really start digging, you find that starlings, buntings, shrikes, tits, thrushes, larks, ravens, bowerbirds… *pant*pant*  http://publishing.bl.uk/cd/bird-mimicry.  In fact, according to a review by Hindmarsh (1986), 20% of Passerine birds mimic occasionally, and 5% are considered habitual mimics.

Perhaps this shouldn’t be so surprising, given that birds learn their songs by mimicking adults.  But why do some birds mimic other birds (and non-avian sounds)?  There must be some disadvantage in that it makes species specific recognition for mating purposes more difficult.

There is substantial evidence that habitual mimics don’t mimic to deceive (Hindmarsh 1986).  It may, however, allow for the identification of individuals (i.e. every male has a unique repertoire) or it may allow for higher fitness of males with a larger memory (i.e. the capacity to remember and repeat more songs), which may in turn be related to other measures of fitness.

Or, as Hindmarsh suggests, it’s possible that Passerine song has no functional significance…but that’s not a very interesting hypothesis, is it?

Honeybee hexagons and the myriad nest structures of bees

Tags

Bees, nature, ecology, science, insects, bee nests, hives, hive structures, honeycomb conjecture

Yesterday’s edition of Krulwich Wonders (which is a science-y NPR blog) addressed the question of why honeybees build hexagonal patterns in the wax combs of their hives.  For example, why don’t honeybees have triangles or circles?

The answer, proved by Thomas Hales in 1999, is that the hexagonal structure is the most efficient and compact of any of the geometric patterns available to the bees.  Here’s a link to the proof, dubbed “The Honeycomb Conjecture”.  (Which is quite catchy, don’t you think?)

So that is all very cool and I love Krulwich and I love Krulwich Wonders, but my biggest problem is that throughout the article, they refer to honeybees as just…”bees.”  And here’s the thing: there is a wide variety of nest structures in the bee world!  Not all bees use hexagons.

For example, you have the bee family Megachilidae (leaf-cutter bees).

Megachilidae: leaf cutting bees cut circles out of leaves and then build nests like the one below, which contains many nest cells.  These figures are courtesy of a U of F extension publication by David Serrano

These solitary bees use leaves (or sometimes petals) to build nests comprising multiple oval-shaped cells, each of which contains an egg provisioned with pollen.

Actually very pretty!  Photo courtesy of J.G. Rozen at wired.co.uk

Bumblebees make honey pots in their hives, so their honey containers are spherical.

Bumblebee hive, courtesy of Elaine Evans, University of Minnesota Extension at scienceblogs.com

And maybe you remember my post about communal aggregations of Halictid bees, which nest in tunnels underground?

“Go away, silly human!”

Or my post about Costa Rica’s social stingless bees?

The stingless bees of Costa Rica form colonies with unique spouts (like this one) near the base of large trees. A certain proportion of the colony is soldiers, which sit around on the outside looking for photographers to harass.

Or Australia’s stingless bees (Trigona carbonaria), which form elegant comb spirals?

An Aussie Trigona on a paperbark (Melaleuca sp)

The spiral combs of the Australian stingless bees, with bumblebee-like honey pots, courtesy of goldcoastpermaculture.org.au

And don’t even get me started on wasps!  I once knew a biologist who could identify the wasp to the species from 12 meters away, just by looking at the shape of the nest.

What does this mean?  There is a mathematical proof to show that honeybee hives are the most efficient use of space, but these other bees don’t exhibit that kind of efficiency.  Does that mean that honeybees are more derived?  Is it related to higher sociality or different caste structures?  Why don’t all bees use hexagons?

So, dear Mr. Krulwich, I love your blog, but when you say “bees”, please be specific!

Yours truly, standingoutinmyfield

Emergency presta valve adapter

Tags

bicycle, bike tires, biking, cycling, MacGyver, presta valve, schrader valve, valve adapters

At the birding cup this weekend, one of my bike tires went flat.  No problem, we thought, we’ll just stop by a gas station and use the air machine to fill ‘er up!

Small problem.

I have a presta valve on my tires (instead of the car tire standard: schrader).

My friend, who is an engineer, said, “That’s okay, we can use a drinking straw as an adapter.”

I told him, with no small amount of skepticism, that if it worked I would call him a genius.

It worked!

He’s a genius!

Bad news for bats

Tags

Animals, bat, Bats, ecology, nature, news, science, white nose syndrome

I have a particular fondness for the only flying mammals, the bats.  Not only do they exhibit superior flight maneuverability and extremely cool hunting strategies (um, echolocation? awesome), but they also consume mosquitoes by the billions.

As a field biologist, anything that eats mozzies is a friend of mine.

And if you are not convinced, definitely watch this awesome video:

http://www.wtop.com/120/3307017/White-nose-syndrome-killing-off-Va-bats

Unfortunately, bats in northeastern North America are suffering from a terrible plague called the White Nose Syndrome.  The disease is poorly understood, but it is characterized by a white fungal growth around the nose of the bat (the fungus is Geomyces destructans).  It was first discovered in a bat colony in New York in 2006 and has, unfortunately, spread like wildfire across the northeast, and as far south as Alabama.

The fungus requires cool temperatures to grow, and the hope was that it wouldn’t be able to spread very far in the south, or would at least have mitigated impacts.

The bad news I heard today was that populations in Virginia this winter suffered up to 99% mortality.  That’s pretty high.*  And worse, there are new confirmed cases in three states this year.

There has been a major population collapse of our most common bat species, the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus), which may be threatened with extinction.  Poor Charlie ((

The fungus seems to spread through bat-to-bat contact, which is unfortunate for such normally cuddly creatures, which often are found together in high densities that help to conserve body heat.

It is all terribly sad, but research is underway to help the bats as much as possible.

*I’m a master of understatement.

Birds don’t have blue pigments

Tags

Animals, Birds, blue jays, Colour, feathers, nature, pigments, plumage, science

Did you know that there is no blue pigment in bird feathers?  They have carotenoids for oranges, reds, and yellows.  They obtain carotenoids from plants, so the intensity of their colour relates to the quality of their diet.

Ranga! The red of the cardinal is due to carotenoids.

Carotenoids are also needed to produce the bright yellow in this warbler.

Birds also have melanins, which are responsible for dark browns, greys, and blacks.

Catbird greys are from melanins

There is a rare third group of pigments, mainly expressed in turacos, but also in some owls, called the porphyrins, which can be red or brown.  In fact, the only true green pigment known in birds is in this group, turacoverdin.

But what about blue?  There are no blue pigments!  Standingoutinmyfield (I am sure you assert) there are definitely blue birds.  In fact, I saw a bluebird just yesterday!

These blue jay feathers certainly *look* blue!

Is everything a lie?

Well…sort of.  The blue of blue jay feathers and bluebird feathers, and all other blue looking birds is not due to a pigment, but to structural colouration.  The way that the feathers trap and refract light makes them look blue (or green in the case of parrots with no true green pigment).  Structural colouration is also the cause for the iridescence seen in some bird species.

If you don’t believe me, you can test this for yourself by either a) hold up a blue jay feather and letting the light pass through it…it will look brown against the light OR b) put a blue jay (or other blue bird) feather in oil…as it draws up the oil, it will change the way light is refracted, making the feather look clear.

I may not be blue, but I am beautiful!

Colour Vision

Tags

biology, Colour, colour vision, cone cells, eyesight, Mantis Shrimp, science, vision

There has been a perfect storm leading up to this post.  It was just inevitable that I tackle the topic, because of several coinciding factors.

The first factor is that it is SPRING and the world is erupting in rich colours, vibrant pinks, baby leaf greens, and the subtle blush of red maples flowering in the mountains.

The second factor is that I have been running long distances, and when I run long distances, I like to listen to science-based radio shows.  Which means that I have been listening to podcasts of Radio Lab for solid hours on end.  It is a popular NPR radio show, and it has one of my favourite science writers, Robert Krulwich, and his charismatic co-host Jad Abumrad.

The third factor was this excellently written post by an online comic artist Matthew Inman on Mantis Shrimp.  If you haven’t read that strip yet, I recommend it.  And here is the Nature article that covers the scientific basis of the Mantis Shrimp (of the order Stomatopoda, which contains ~400 species) colour vision.

And what do all of these things have in common?  COLOUR!  Specifically, colour vision.  While running through green fields bordered by flowering trees, I was listening to Radio Lab’s podcast on colour (excellent!).  Later that day, a friend forwarded the Mantis Shrimp comic, and then the Radio Lab blog covered the comic, and it was just an endless cycle and now I have to talk about colour vision.

Colour!

Yesterday, I had an eye exam, and the doctor gave me a colour vision test. “Don’t you think…” I said slowly, after easily passing it, “I would know by now if I were colour blind?”

And then I said, “Did you know that some humans might have a fourth type of cone?  They may be able to see more colours: red, blue, yellow…extra yellow?”

“And did you know that some animals have up to sixteen types of colour receptors?”

The mighty Mantis Shrimp, courtesy of Wikipedia.org

“That’s nice, honey,” the doctor said, “Put this over your left eye.”

“EVSBN…and did you know that dogs aren’t completely colour blind?  RTNGQ.  They can actually see blue and yellow, just not red.”

I wish I could see red

So I’m sure that answers your question of whether I am this nerdy all the time, or just on my blog.

Anyway, colour vision is a fascinating topic, especially because vision is a human’s primary sense.  If were were like dogs, for example, we would see only three colours (blue, yellow, and green), but we would have a whole new world of scents to explore.  Indeed, humans specifically (or primates in general) have exceptional colour vision for a mammal.

On the other hand, there are many other vertebrates that see at least as well as we do, and many bird species see even more colours (often redder reds, sometimes UV pigments) than humans.

Then there are the invertebrates, which exhibit the whole range from completely colour blind to the 16 cone types of the Mantis Shrimp.

The Peacock Mantis Shrimp (a different species from the one above), courtesy of Wikipedia.org

The Heat Storage Effect

Tags

ecological physiology, fun facts, heat storage effect, nature, physiology, science, temperature

A couple of years ago, I took a course on ecological physiology, which I absolutely adored.  It ranked right up there in my favourite courses of all time, next to the illustrious field botany, vertebrate structure and evolution, and symbiosis.  (Believe it or not, I’ve never taken a formal entomology course!)

One of the many fascinating things I learned in the course was about the heat storage effect.  Simply put, the human body has the capacity to store a certain amount of heat, such that our perception (and physiological response) to ambient temperatures is subjective and dependent on recent activity.

For example, I get very hot when I run, especially when I do speed work.  One winter, I did 5 km (3 mi) worth of sprints on the indoor track.  On my walk home from the gym (another 2 miles or so), I was so hot that I couldn’t be bothered to wear more than my running tank and shorts.

I was listening to the radio as I walked, and upon reaching my front door, the announcer said, “Just a cautionary note to our listeners…the local temperature is 15 below zero (that’s -15 Fahrenheit!), and we are warning people about hypothermia and frost bite!”

Hm…I thought.  Maybe I should wear some trousers (I’d say “pants” but I don’t want my British friends to think I go around without underwear).

Anyway, the point of that little anecdote was that my body was storing heat while I was sprinting, and then was able to keep my body temperature high despite the ambient cold as I walked home.

I have also experienced the opposite effect after swimming in very cold water.  If I swim in water that is cold enough for long enough, my body has a lot of trouble returning to a normal temperature.  The duration of the cold exposure depletes some heat storage and it is difficult to restore.

The heat storage effect also explains a strange indoor heating phenomenon.  I have friends and family who like to set their thermostats higher in the winter and lower in the summer.  Why should their comfortable temperature shift?  Because their outdoor exposure in either case has an impact on their perceived ambient temperature indoors.

If you’re so inclined, you should try and play around with your own heat storage effect…within reason of course.  Don’t walk around in shorts when the temperature is ridiculously cold.  But see if by cooling yourself down sufficiently (for example a cool shower), you can withstand warmer temperatures outside.  Or vice versa.  An interesting experiment!

What’s buzzing in your area?

Tags

Bees, cherry trees, flowers, insects, Love, nature, photography, spring

I was going to title this, “What’s blooming in your area?”  But I got distracted by bees (again (I know, I know, shut up)).

It started out innocently enough.

I was just looking for some blooming trees on campus.

Against the pallet of yesterday’s blue sky

Not all the flowers look alike! This is a birch catkin (male flowers)

Oh, this cherry is quite pretty.

I could stand to take a few photos here…

Aha! What’s this!?

Is that a…?

Yes! An Osmia conifrons!

So cute!

And that shiny black butt…is it…?

A Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa virginica)!

An OF COURSE our old friend, Miss Apis Mellifera.  What a joy it is to have my friends back!

The Marigold Effect

Tags

ecology, garden, gardening, integrated pest management, marigold, organic gardening, pest control, plants, science

Alternative title: All that glitters is not Marigold?

Because I am an itinerant student, I can’t have a home garden of my own.  Happily enough, however, there is a huge community garden in my town.  It consists of 96 garden plots (each 12 ft by 15 ft) and it is organic (no pesticides or chemical fertilizers).

I’ve had a plot in the garden since it was started in 2009, so I have had the opportunity to watch it evolve from a slip shod weed patch behind the baseball stadium, to a location of great beauty, complete with water tanks, a tool shed, and a picnic area.

I’ve also had the opportunity to watch the pests change from year to year.  In the first year of the garden, we were all blissfully pest free.  But by the second year, the potato beetles had found us, and the cucumber beetles in the next year.  Soon it is a constant battle against the herbivores.

Because we cannot use chemical pesticides in the garden, there have been (what seems like) a million organic suggestions for how to manage the pests.  From the highly dubious to the practical, all of the methods require a bit of faith.

But there was one idea in particular that piqued my interest: marigolds.  The suggestion was that marigolds deter insect pests.  But how? I asked immediately.  The friendly gardener just shrugged, so I decided to do some research.

Indeed, the internet is full of suggestions that marigolds have anti-pest properties.  Some claim that their “smell” deters insect pests, while others claim that they release toxins in the soil that kill harmful nematodes, and others still say that they attract aphids and whiteflies away from other plants.  But not everyone on the internet agrees…there are many websites dispelling the marigold “myth”.

As a scientist, of course, I am dubious of anything that is not peer reviewed, so I turned to the literature.  (Science!)  This is a really brief lit scan, so of course you could find more refs if you wanted.

Trap Cropping: Non-crop plants are used to attract pests away from crop species.  Marigolds have sometimes been successfully used to attract away the rape blossom beetle (Meligethes aeneus) (Hokkanen 1989, Hokkanen 1991) and the fruit borer (Helicoverpa armigera) on tomato (Srinivasan et al. 2008)

Natural Enemies: Plants can sometimes be used to support the natural enemies of pest species (such as parasitoids that lay their eggs in pests and ultimately kill them, or predators of pest species).  Marigolds seem relatively undervisited in field trials (Colley and Luna 2000) and may even decrease longevity of adult Syrphid flies (Laubertie et al. 2012)

Nematodes: There is a diverse community of nematodes in the soil, and only some are harmful to crop species.  Nonetheless, the ones that are crop pests are notoriously difficult to control.  The marigold effect on nematodes depends strongly on a) the marigold cultivar b) the crop species and c) the nematode species.  Compounds extracted from the marigold are only weakly nematicidal in the soil, and the effects it has in field trials may be common to many other Aster species (Chitwood 2002).

Deterrence: The marigold may also deter pest insects from crops.  There is some evidence that the marigold deters Mexican beetles from beans, but there was a confounding negative effect of the marigold’s allelopathy (it produces chemicals in the soil that suppress competition from other plants) on the bean crop (Latheef and Irwin 1980).  Otherwise, very little support for this claim.

Unknown mechanism: There is some evidence to suggest that intercropping with marigolds reduces pest attack rates (e.g. Jankowska et al. 2009), but the mechanisms are not clear.  It may be that intercropping with any species acts to confuse the pests.

Conclusions:  Marigolds may be of some use as an organic pest deterrent in agricultural fields where they can be planted along margins at high densities.  However, their beneficial effects are likely to be a) pest specific and b) moderate.  If planted in close proximity to the crops, they are likely to do more harm than good, due to the chemicals they produce in the soil to compete with other plants; this probably eliminates their capacity to assist with nematode control.

In your garden?  Probably not that useful unless you have room for an isolated marigold patch.  Also, you should probably research which variety is best for your particular pest situation.

Romance is a fluke: True monogamy

Tags

Animals, Birds, blood flukes, Love, monogamy, nature, pair bonds, parasites, science

When I take friends on bird hikes, they often ask me about whether birds are monogamous (i.e. have only one mating partner).  There seems to be something unbearably romantic about animals that pair bond.  And birds seem to be the classic example.  It was once thought that up to 90% of bird species exhibited monogamy (see Lack 1968).

While it’s true that some birds exhibit a high degree of monogamy (including turtle doves, for example), even the most faithful exhibit some level of extra pair paternity (or offspring from another male).  Such behaviour was fairly surprising, especially in a species where the male invests so much in parental care.

In fact, with recent molecular methods, we have found quite the opposite of the original expectation: 90% of bird species exhibit some degree of extra pair paternity (Griffith et al. 2002).

So when it comes right down to it, birds are just not satisfyingly monogamous.  They are not monogamous enough.  Then what is?

Blood flukes!

Male blood fluke…note the depression in the center of his body? photo courtesy of wikipedia.org

Blood flukes are endoparasites that live within the blood stream.  In humans, some blood flukes cause the disease Schistosoma (the second worst parasitic disease after malaria).  The female, like a long, thin ribbon, fits inside the male and they stay like that, sometimes for up to forty years.

Joined at the hip! …essentially! photo courtesy of chestofbooks.com

Now that is true monogamy!

In honour of marginal woodlots

Tags

flowers, forest, marginal land, nature, outdoors, photography, spring, woodlots

They may be chock full of invasive species, they may be disturbed and thick with brambles, they may have beer cans hidden under brush piles, but there is something honourable about marginal woodlands.

A marginal woodlot near my house.

We can’t always get to pristine forest, much as we would like to.  Sometimes, we have to soothe our souls with a forest made of survivors.  They still have their beauty, don’t they?

Ornamental crocuses

They still have wildlife.

Downy woodpecker

And they are an excellent place for a nap.

The Mind of the Raven, by Bernd Heinrich

Tags

art, Bernd Heinrich, Birds, drawings, excerpts, nature, ravens, the mind of the raven

Bernd Heinrich is another one of my science crushes. I became a big fan of his after reading Bumblebee Economics (I know you are just SO surprised), but I recently finished reading another of his books, this time on ravens.  It was loaned to me by a friend who adores ravens, and for her birthday I was inspired to draw just that.  Anyway, I thought it would be fun to intersperse the stages of the drawing with quotes from Heinrich’s book.

(This is the first time I’ve done a drawing like this without inks, so let me know what you think!)

Base colours and initial sketch.

The older birds reminded me of my father.  He saw a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the first time when he was fifty-five years old.  It may have amused him, but he would not eat one then, or ever.   He “knew” butter doesn’t come out of peanuts, unless it was very inferior butter, and that was that.

This time with a helper for support, I tried to set a proper field biologist example by traversing a succession of small valleys and hills, crashing through the underbrush.

I could see no practical point to his costly exertions to exclude Goliath from a bath, except maybe to show that he could do it.  There are people like that, but I was surprised to see ravens being so unreasonable.

Odin, the ruler of the Norse gods, also called “Hrafna-gwd” or Raven god, kept two wolves at his side and two ravens on his shoulders.  The wolves and the ravens accompanied him on the hunt and into battle.  Thus, ravens were for thousands of years associated with wolves, and with mind, men, and the gods.  From the wolf-raven associations came the northern name “Wolfram,” from Wolf-rhaben or “wolf-raven”, once a great warrior’s name.

Tada! Raven from just coloured pencils. Do you like it?

The youngs’ first bath of their lives, when they are days out of the nest, is a memorable sight.  They make the acquaintance of the water cautiously with their bill, dipping it in, splashing it back and forth.  They they walk in hesitatingly, perhaps dipping their whole head in and violently shaking it back and forth.  Increasingly more contact with the water is achieve as they gradually first lower their rear end down, followed by the front end.

Groundhog season

Tags

Animals, groundhog, mammals, marmot, rodents, Sciuridae, squirrel, taxonomy, whistle-pig

Yep, it’s that time of year again…the groundhogs are shaking off the winter cold and becoming active once more.  I spotted one bumbling across my path when I was running yesterday.  Silly groundhogs.

Groundhog aka woodchuck or my favourite: whistle pig

Groundhogs are common pests in this agricultural region; I’ve had troubles with them chewing on plants in my experimental plots.

Well, don’t get your feathers all ruffled now.

But I guess I’ve never thought about their taxonomy before.  So yesterday I decided to try and figure it out!

Don’t look so suspicious, whistle-pig.

Congeneric with the mountain-loving marmots, groundhogs are actually in the same family as grey squirrels, Sciuridae (which is to say, they are rodents, or in the family Rodentia).

These guys

Distributed throughout Canada, up to Alaska, and then down the eastern United States, the groundhog is the largest squirrel in its range (up to 14 kg (31 lb)!).  They are mainly herbivores, as evidenced by their love of agricultural crops, and they are prey to most carnivores in their region.

Including red-tailed hawks!

Groundhogs have true winter hibernation, which is rare (most species just enter varying degrees of torpor, from which they periodically rise to feed).

Their breeding season is right about now, from late March through mid to late April, which is why they are suddenly becoming active and, like everything this year, a bit delayed by the continuing cold weather.

Allergic to science

Tags

allergies, field biology, Field work, nature, prickles, research, science, thistles

I am still(!) excited for the gradually warming temperatures and the promise of little green shoots stubbornly persisting through the harsh cold snaps we’re still having.

Spring is one of the worst times of year for my allergies, as it is full of tree pollen.  Some of the earliest flowering species depend on wind pollination, and they therefore have A LOT of pollen.  Now, you might be thinking that it’s ironic for a field biologist (especially one who studies pollination!) to be allergic to pollen, but the fact of the matter is that it is very common for field biologists to not only have the usual hayfever allergies, but also to develop very serious allergic reactions to their study species.

In my particular case, I’ve been working with a species of invasive thistle for five years.  During the field season, we have to tie little baggies around each and every flower head of the individuals in our study to make sure that we are not accidentally dispersing the seeds of the invader.

A colleague in the middle of bagging some thistle flower heads to prevent dispersal.  The thistles get A LOT bigger than this, some up to 2 meters tall.

And during the heyday of the season, when plants can produce hundreds of flower heads every week, it is a full time job to make sure they are all bagged.  During my worst season, I was out at the field by dawn and worked until sunset every day for 18 days straight, trying to keep all of the flower heads bagged while also doing my research.  Some days I ran out of daylight before I could get everything done.

Hundreds of bagged flower heads.

And of course, while you’re tying little bags to hundreds of flower heads on thistles, you’re bound to get pricked thousands of times a day.

Prickles!

So by now I have developed a serious allergic reaction to my own study species!  Even when I am just out for a fun day hike, if I brush up against thistles, I break out in a rash of red bumps.  If I reach out to inspect a thistle flower head, my whole hand swells.

I have heard of researchers developing allergies to the ants or mosquitoes that they study too.

One of the downsides of being a field biologist, I suppose.

This is what 1512.43 miles looks like…

Tags

minimalist running, photography, running, running shoes, shoes, TrekSports, Vibrams

I’ve run more than 1500 miles in my Vibram TrekSports, so I thought I’d share some photos, in case you’re wondering how long and how well the shoes hold up.  (I also run barefoot, but I alternate between barefoot runs and runs with these shoes.)

I’ve run approximately 1500 miles in these shoes…trails, asphalt, bitumen, concrete, cement, bricks, snow, ice, rain…

I am clearly a forefoot runner. This is plus 14 layers of duct tape, two layers of masking tape, and two pairs of bloody injinjis that I have burned through.  Yes, that is my toe visible through the shoe.

The old shoe (on top) compared to a new one (below). They were originally the same colour. They are the same brand, type, size…

Curglaff and other unused words

Tags

buzzfeed, drawings, funny, humour, language, Monday blues, odd words, owls

Buzzfeed recently released a post about unusual words that have fallen out of usage, and it illustrated them all with owl photographs.

So, if you’re feeling grumpish because it is a Monday, if you feel jargogled by your work, if a beef-witted cockalorum of a coworker is brabbling and twattling away at you, visit this monsterful post: http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/27-delightful-obsolete-words-its-high-time-we-revived

Isn’t language amazing?

“The shock one feels upon plunging into cold water.”

Callipygian-ly yours,

SOMF

Bee declines in 2012

Tags

bee declines, Bees, colony collapse disorder, honey bees, nature, neonicitinoids, news

A lot of my friends and relatives have the impression that honey bees are doing better now than in the past.  I think this perception is related to the decline in media coverage…there was a large initial scare about Colony Collapse Disorder when the first losses started occurring, but the media soon lost interest.

In any case, things are not getting better for the honey bee (at least not in the US).  2012 was a year for record losses, including a loss of 80% of hives for some beekeepers.  Those kinds of losses are driving up the price of pollinating bees (a multibillion dollar industry) up 20%, or about 200 US$ per hive (citation here).  At two hives per acre, that’s a big expense.

The beekeepers are really starting an outcry against neonicitinoid pesticides, which have been implicated in the declines, even showing impacts on bee brains.  Others argue that the proof is not water tight, but the correlations are pretty convincing.

So the fight is far from over.  Things still look pretty grim for commercial bee farmers.  A good time to invest in bee biologists?

(Here’s a link to the NYtimes article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/science/earth/soaring-bee-deaths-in-2012-sound-alarm-on-malady.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&hp&buffer_share=7418a&utm_source=buffer)

Some days you are the dragon, some days the frog

Tags

academia, cute frog, desert rain frog, drawings, frustration, grad school, homestarrunner, silly

There is a faculty member who is a coauthor on one of my manuscripts.  He is the source of endless frustration for me because, as a coauthor, he must read and approve of the manuscript before it is submitted for publication.  Yet he never responds to emails, is rarely in his office, and does not carry a cell phone.  Getting a hold of him for this approval is an endlessly frustrating and exhausting process.

So you can imagine my joy when I managed to force him to set up a meeting with me.  The meeting was scheduled for this morning, at 10 am.  At 10:30, I was still standing outside his dark office, banging my head against the wall.

He didn’t show up, he didn’t answer his phone, and he didn’t respond to my email asking if I’d been mistaken about the day/time/place (I wasn’t).

As a graduate student, there is very little I can do to protest.  I want to be like Trogdor (which is a fictional dragon invented by the online comic, homestarrunner.com, as any child of the 90′s will know).

Burninating the countryside…listen, if you really want to understand this analogy, you have to go here and watch the (extremely silly) video.

But I am much more like this little desert rain frog, full of hot air.

Oh well.

“Fear my fury!” (?)

Rule Number 9: Hardcore Cycling

Tags

bicycle, biking, cold weather riding, cycling, hardcore, physics, riding, weather, winter

There’s been some whinging about our late spring going around the cycling listserve in my town.  To stop it in its tracks*, someone sent out a link to this photo this morning.

Rule Number 9, photo by Kristoff Ramon

The caption for this photo (on http://www.velominati.com/the-rules/sur-la-plaque-rule-9/), reads “LOOK AT YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR. IF YOU DON’T SEE ICE, YOU’RE NOT AS BADASS AS GREG. PERIOD.”

That’s rule number 9.

Well, I’ve ridden in with ice on my clothing before, but nothing so solid looking as his helmet!  On my coldest ride this winter (well below 0 F), the contents of my water bottle froze solid on my way to work.  I frequently end up with a rim of ice around my headband and scarf.

But I think I can easily go ahead and say I am not as hardcore as Greg.

Also, if you’re a winter cyclist, you may have noticed that it seems tougher to ride in the cold (i.e. I get tired more quickly in the winter).  On one of the coldest days this winter, I had a strong temptation to stop, curl up into a ball, and take a nap.

Anyway, here is an article discussing why it really is harder to ride in colder temps:  http://velonews.competitor.com/2013/03/bikes-and-tech/technical-faq/technical-faq-why-is-riding-in-the-cold-so-hard_277626

I knew it!

*That’s a pun!

How to pollinate an American Chestnut (and your sinuses)

Tags

American chestnut, awkward, ecology, field biology, Field work, pollen, science, story

When I worked for the American Chestnut foundation a few years ago, one of my primary jobs was to pollinate isolated surviving trees.  (If you don’t know the story of the chestnut, you can read about it here.)  These LSAs (Large Surviving Americans) are all at least over one hundred years old, having persisted in spite of the fungal blight that made their species ecologically extinct.

They tend to be gnarly old things, with huge cankers developed by their immune system to help combat the fungus.  But they’re beautiful to me, because they’re stubborn, and I admire things that just don’t give up, no matter how many times they get knocked down.

Developing chestnuts.

Anyway, because these trees are rare, they are often isolated from each other and therefore cannot produce viable nuts without help from us humans.  Because we want to promote genetic diversity (and hopefully the persistence of the species), the fathers from which we gather pollen are carefully selected.

These are female chestnut flowers, mature after the male catkins have senesced.

Chestnut trees are monoecious, which means that they have male and female flowers on the same tree.  However, the male flowers develop before the female flowers are mature, to prevent self-pollination as much as possible.  That allows us to run around collecting male pollen early in the summer, and then to revisit the same trees when their female flowers have developed with pollen from distant trees.

After we pollinate them, we bag the flowers to make sure they don’t receive unwanted pollen.

The difficulty in this whole process is that because the trees are old, they are tall, and their flowers are hard to reach.  We were lucky enough to have a local power company loan us their massive bucket truck, which we used to access flowers 80 ft (25 m) above the ground.

My friend Deb in a bucket.

So picture this: you are in a small bucket, 80 ft above the ground.  It is swaying in the wind, and so are the branches that you are trying to reach.  You have a makeshift 13 ft (4 m) pole made of bamboo, duct tape, and a clothes hook, with which you can snag a nearby branch.

Very high off the ground!

Pulling it close, you tie the branch with a rope to your belt.  The tension is strong enough to pull you up on your tiptoes, and there is a delicate balance between holding the branch in the bucket and getting flung out of the bucket yourself.

My view from a bucket truck.

This was just a normal day in the field for me back then.  Without thinking a thing about it, I balanced on my toes and reached into my carpenter’s belt to get a film tube full of pollen.  But just as I opened it, the wind tugged at the branch and I slipped.  The tube of pollen exploded in my face and I ended up inhaling a teaspoon full of chestnut gamete.

Twenty minutes later, when I had to meet a wealthy donor, I was still sneezing and crying, my nose running obnoxiously.

I make such a good impression sometimes.