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Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at the National Center for Science Education. He is also a graduate student at the University of Kansas, completing a doctorate in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. When not modeling species distributions or battling creationists, he writes about developments in progressive politics and the sciences.
The opinions expressed here are his own, do not reflect the official position of the NCSE. Indeed, older posts may no longer reflect his own official position.
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Ecology:
Category: Biology
A source tells the Washington Post that Uafter much pressure, the Feds will be listing the Polar Bear as a "threatened" species: The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the U.S. government on record as saying that global warming could drive one of the world's most recognizable animals out of existence.This is a remarkable step, and it is not the least bit surprising that the administration is announcing this between Christmas and New Years, when the minimum number of people read newspapers or the Federal Register. There's little...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 3:23 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biology
Philip Larkin started a poem that way, but it's good advice for the Forest Service, too. We've long known that fire plays an important role in maintaining forests, prairies and other natural ecosystems. A new set of studies show that thinning forests without burning makes subsequent fires more dangerous: Thinning forests without also burning accumulated brush and deadwood may increase forest fire damage rather than reduce it, researchers at the Forest Service reported in two recent studies. The findings cast doubt on how effective some of the thinning done under President Bush’s Healthy Forests Initiative will be at preventing fires...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:23 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biology
Loss of species that pollinate is cause for global alarm, researchers say: Birds, bees, bats and other species that pollinate North American plant life are losing population, according to a study released Wednesday by the National Research Council. This "demonstrably downward" trend could damage dozens of commercially important crops, scientists warned, because three-fourths of all flowering plants depend on pollinators for fertilization.… "Canadian black bears need blueberries, and the blueberries need bees" for pollination, [commission member and U. of Guelph, Ontario professor Peter] Kevan said. "Without the bees you don't have blueberries, and without the blueberries you don't have...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:55 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Ecology
Many years ago, the University of Chicago invited Amartya Sen, who had recently won a Nobel Prize in Economics, to come and speak. He appeared beside Gary Becker, a distinguished professor of the University's famed economic department, and an adherent to the "Chicago School of Economics." At one point, after the speeches, a question was posed about how the two would define the role of economics in society. Becker gave what is probably his standard Econ 101 introduction, explaining how economics studies how rational human behavior influences the aggregate behavior of markets, etc. After several minutes of this, the question...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 6:07 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biology
On Fridays, we like to highlight some of the remarkable and beautiful things you find right under your nose. This week, a reader sends in some photos of Lycoperdon pulcherrimum, Latin for "most beautiful wolf-fart." What we see is the fruiting body of a fungus. Most of the biomass of fungi is below ground, thin threads called hyphae that reach out and absorb nutrients and break down dead material. Some fungi grow into roots (forming what are called mycorrhizae) get sugar from trees and in exchange help extend their ability to gather water and nitrogen. There have even been studies...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 6:25 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biology
In Science, two biologists reported on the effects of fishing in South American rivers. Removing a large fish, Prochilodus mariae, from the river causes rapid changes in how carbon (stored energy) passes through the river, decreasing the cycling of carbon. In fact, they explain, "Impacts of removing Prochilodus on carbon flow equaled or exceeded effects of removing [in different studies] all fish, invertebrates, shrimps, and predatory fish in other streams and lakes." The removal of one species from one side of a river reduced flow of organic material by 60%, and changed the sort of growth on the bottom. Previous...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:59 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biology
Saying "This compares with any treasure anywhere in the world,": Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and the Nature Conservancy on Friday announced the donation of a conservation easement encompassing 10,000 acres [of tallgrass prairie in the Flint Hills].The tallgrass prairie once stretched in a giant sea of grass from Alberta down to Texas, a continuous swath of grass across the continent. Pioneers describe having to stand in their stirrups to see over the grass. Giant herds of bison migrated across it, with native people and the prairie wolves trailing the herds. A prairie lives in its roots, with more biomass below...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 2:33 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biology
Ask A ScienceBlogger: The destruction of the rainforest was a hot-button topic in the early '90s, but I haven't heard anything about it in ages. Are the rainforests still being destroyed wholesale? Are they all gone? Is it still important? Is the coffee I drink making it worse, and is "free trade" and/or "shade grown" coffee any better?It is still a problem, and I've been remiss in not answering this question. The simplest guide can be seen in this satellite image of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. On the Haitian side, where forests nationwide have declined 5%...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 12:57 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Ecology
Reposted from the old TfK. I suggested at the bottom of a longish post that the Endangered Species Act ought to be supplemented with an Endangered Ecosystem Act. The reason begins with thinking like a mountain. If you've read the last post and my Thinking Like a Savannah and you haven't read Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac, or at least its essay “Thinking Like a Mountain” just do it, and come right back. …...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:06 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Ecology
Reposted from the old TfK. A few years ago, I someone gave a presentation here, arguing that we should reintroduce a bunch of extinct Pleistocene species into North America. Cheetahs were on the list, along with lions and Asian elephants (like these from the Bronx Zoo). The idea was that human hunting caused these species, and many more, to go extinct, so we ought to bring them back. The ecologists in the room all thought this was madness incarnate....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 12:06 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
