Life Sciences
edyong | March 11, 2008
Some of us have enough trouble finding the food we want among the ordered aisles of a supermarket. Now imagine that the supermarket itself is in the middle of a vast, featureless wasteland and is constantly on the move, and you begin to appreciate the challenges faced by animals in the open ocean.
Thriving habitats like coral reefs may present the photogenic face of the sea, but most of the world's oceans are wide expanses of emptiness. In these aquatic deserts, all life faces the same challenge: how to find enough food. Now, a couple of interesting studies have shed new light on the…
grrlscientist | March 11, 2008tags: mystery snail, marine life, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
Mystery snail -- can you name the species?
as portrayed in tiles on the downtown stairway landing of the NYC subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008. [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
grrlscientist | March 10, 2008tags: mystery snail, marine life, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
Mystery snail -- can you name the species?
as portrayed in tiles on the downtown stairway landing of the NYC subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008. [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
clock | March 10, 2008Lots of interesting stuff in PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology this week, as well as a special, one-day-in-advance paper in PLoS ONE:
Small-Bodied Humans from Palau, Micronesia:
Newly discovered fossil assemblages of small bodied Homo sapiens from Palau, Micronesia possess characters thought to be taxonomically primitive for the genus Homo. Recent surface collection and test excavation in limestone caves in the rock islands of Palau, Micronesia, has produced a sizeable sample of human skeletal remains dating roughly between 940-2890 cal ybp. Preliminary analysis indicates that this material is…
grrlscientist | March 10, 2008tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter
Populations of the Southern cassowary, Casuarius casuarius,
around Mission Beach in North Queensland, Australia, are still suffering
from the effects of Cyclone Larry two years ago.
Image: iStockphoto.
Birds in Science
In humans, as in all mammals, sleep consists of two phases: deep, dreamless slow-wave-sleep (SWS) alternates with dream phases, called Rapid Eye Movement (REM)-sleep. In newly published study, sleep researchers found that pigeons can engage in "power sleep" just as mammals can to make up for lost sleep…
grrlscientist | March 9, 2008tags: octopus's garden, coral reef, marine life, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
This image is a gift to my friend PZ Myers, on the occasion of his 92nd birthday, which is today. Cephalopods are PZ's favorite critters and so, because this octopus is hanging around the AMNH subway platform, I thought it would be a fitting tribute to give a photo of this mosaic to him, both for the subject matter and also as a reminder of the happy time when I met him, his wife and daughter in NYC.
I have taken dozens of pictures of what you see here, but because I have a broken arm, the previous images were…
bioephemera | March 6, 2008Zooillogix posted this video of an elephant that paints "realistic paintings of other elephants:"
It's a fluff piece, granted, but it gestures towards credibility by bringing in an "art expert" (and, I'm guessing, cutting 98% of her comments). The genial narrator, anticipating our astonishment that an elephant could learn to paint portraits, reassures us that it is indeed possible, and that "what makes it possible is the trunk." Uh, no. The trunk is what makes it possible for the elephant to grasp a human-style brush and execute fine motor movements. The brain is what makes any artist an…
grrlscientist | March 5, 2008tags: fish, marine reef fish, photography, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
Unknown species (to me) of tropical marine angelfish
as portrayed in tiles on the walls of the NYC uptown subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008. [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
clock | March 4, 2008Giant Fossil Bats Out Of Africa, 35 Million Years Old:
When most of us think of Ancient Egypt, visions of pyramids and mummies fill our imaginations. For a team of paleontologists interested in fossil mammals, the Fayum district of Egypt summons an even older and equally impressive history that extends much further back in time than the Sphinx.
Are Wolves The Pronghorn's Best Friend?:
As western states debate removing the gray wolf from protection under the Endangered Species Act, a new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society cautions that doing so may result in an unintended decline in…
edyong | March 4, 2008The transformation from caterpillar to butterfly or moth is one of the most beguiling in the animal world. Both larva and adult are just stages in the life of a single animal, but are nonetheless completely separated in appearance, habitat and behaviour. The imagery associated with such change is inescapably beautiful, and as entrancing to a poet as it is to a biologist.
According to popular belief, within the pupa, the caterpillar's body is completely overhauled, broken down into a form of soup and rebuilt into a winged adult. Richard Buckmister Fuller once said that "there is nothing in a…
grrlscientist | March 4, 2008tags: fish, photography, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
Unknown (to me) species of schooling reef fishes
as portrayed in tiles on the walls of the NYC uptown subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008. [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
pharyngula | March 4, 2008There's going to be a meeting this summer in Altenberg of a small subset of evolutionary biologists to discuss the next step in the evolution of evolutionary biology, which this article describes as a "Woodstock of evolution", populated with scientific "rock stars". All I can say is "bleh." This meeting sounds like it will be wonderfully entertaining, but get real: it will not settle or even define much of anything. These are interesting times in biology, with a lot of argument at a high level about levels of selection and evo-devo and modes of speciation and self-organisation and etc., etc…
zooillogix | March 4, 2008Don't usually do this but the Wikipedia Picture of the Day is just too cool.
Glaucus atlanticus
Info from Wikipedia: These two Glaucus atlanticus, a species of nudibranch, were washed up on Surfers Paradise Beach in Queensland, Australia. The larger one is about 35 mm (1.4 in) in length. G. atlanticus preys on the Portuguese Man o' War and other surface-dwelling sea animals. Occasionally Glaucus will feed on others of its kind.
This guy looks like a ship from Star Trek... or so I would imagine if I ever watched that kind of show... The fact that they prey on Portugese Man of Wars makes them…
bleimanb | March 3, 2008When Andrew and I were five and six years old, we used to sit on the old, dusty couch in our living room and try to memorize a 1,300 page, illustrated animal encyclopedia. Not in our wildest dreams would we have imagined anything like the Encylopedia of Life. With 30,000 entries up so far and a whopping 1.77 million on the way, the EOL boldly plans to document every living species on this planet of ours.
But the much anticipated site debuted last week to some technical glitches- it was so popular with 11.5 million hits the first day that the site crashed- and some pointed criticisms. We're…
laelaps | March 3, 2008A pair of male cobras grapple with each other in a clip from Life in Cold Blood;
Oddly enough, I was just thinking about dominance contests between males and various armaments this morning. Although violence is a part of nature, there are many species in which males compete for territories or mate access that have evolved traits or behaviors to minimize risk in such contests (elongated canines, like among the dinocerata, and the horns of kudu were what primarily occupied my thoughts this morning). Mating systems and systems of male competition may vary widely, though, and as strange as it…
retrospectacle | March 3, 2008
A few weeks ago Andrew from Zooillogix suggested that we jointly interview entomologist Justin O. Schmidt, creator of the infamous 'Schmidt Pain Index.' Both Andrew and I had found the index fascinating since it cataloged in (literally) excruciating detail the subjective feeling of being stung by a bevy of venomous insects, rating them on a scale from 0 to 4. We were finally able to track Dr. Schmidt down and send him a few quick questions to pick his brain about venoms, pain, his work at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson. Thanks very much to Dr. Schmidt for being such a great…
zooillogix | March 3, 2008A few weeks back we brought you a story on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, a system developed to compare the relative intensity of Hymenoptera (bees, wasps and ants) stings. The index was developed through personal "research" conducted unintentionally by Dr. Justin Schmidt, an entomologist who has devoted his life to these ornery critters.
As the Index combines all the things Zooillogix readers love (i.e. science and non-life threatening personal injury) the response to the post was strong. Therefore in collaboration with Shelley Batts, formerly of Retrospectacle and now the brand new…
pharyngula | March 2, 2008
What are the key innovations that led to the evolution of multicellularity, and what were their precursors in the single-celled microbial life that existed before the metazoa? We can hypothesize at least two distinct kinds of features that had to have preceded true multicellularity.
The obvious feature is that cells must stick together; specific adhesion molecules must be present that link cells together, that aren't generically sticky and bind the organism to everything. So we need molecules that link cell to cell. Another feature of multicellular animals is that they secrete…
grrlscientist | March 2, 2008tags: Nautilidae, Cephalopoda, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
Nautilus (but which species?)
as portrayed in tiles on the stairway of the NYC subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008. [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
grrlscientist | February 29, 2008tags: sloth, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
This is a three-toed Bradypus species of sloth (but which one?)
as portrayed in tiles on the stairway of the NYC subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008. [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.