birds
clock | June 14, 2007An interesting paper came out last week in PLoS-Biology: Projected Impacts of Climate and Land-Use Change on the Global Diversity of Birds by Walter Jetz, David S. Wilcove and Andrew P. Dobson. You can view some bloggers' responses on The DC Birding Blog, Field Of View and Living the Scientific Life and media coverage here, here and here.
The authors of the paper collected information about all known ranges of land birds and made a mathematical model for predicting how those ranges will be affected by global warming on one hand and the land-use on the other by years 2050 and 2100. They use…
grrlscientist | June 13, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, dinosaur, bird, fossil, Gigantoraptor erlianensis, China
An artist's painting of the newly discovered Gigantoraptor dinosaur, depicted with other smaller dinosaurs. Fossilized bones uncovered in the Erlian Basin of northern China's Inner Mongolia region show the Gigantoraptor erlianensis was about 26 feet in length and weighed 3,000 pounds. The discovery of the giant, birdlike dinosaur indicates a more complicated evolutionary process for birds than originally thought.
Image: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology (Beijing, China) [larger…
revere | June 11, 2007Two Associated Press articles over the weekend suggest to me the US poultry industry is getting ready for avian flu, in earnest. One story reports how news of bird flu in US poultry would affect consumer habits. One reports on the practical problem of having to kill hundreds of thousands of birds quickly and efficiently -- kill the, that is, for purposes other than sating our appetites. Here's the essence of the first story, about consumer attitudes. The results are about what consumers would do in a hypothetical instance and are always subject to how events actually unfold. They also have…
revere | June 8, 2007We've written here about China's failure to share viral isolates, but we hope we've also made clear that many Chinese scientists have been forthcoming in sharing much other scientific information with colleagues in other countries about their experience with bird flu. A good example of interesting and valuable information has just appeared (published Ahead of Print in CDC's journal Emerging Infectious Diseases). The paper has details on six H5N1 cases that occurred in China between October 2005 and October 2006. The cases were all in urban areas and had no known exposure to sick poultry or…
grrlscientist | June 7, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, archaeopteryx, dinosaurs, mammals, fossils
Archaeopteryx fossil showing the distinctive head-back death pose of many articulated fossilized birds, dinosaurs and early mammals. Archaeopteryx is an ancient feathered dinosaur. This specimen is at the Humboldt Museum, Berlin. The skull is approximately two inches long.
If you've looked at the articulated 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx fossils, you probably have noticed that they all have a weirdly similar pose; their heads are thrown over their backs, mouths open and tail curved upwards. Scientists have been…
retrospectacle | June 6, 2007Yours truly is currently on a plane which left Detroit at 2pm today (well, or I will be shortly) and is headed towards Shanghai, China. I'm off to visit my parents in Suzhou and then a week each in Malaysian Borneo and Phi Phi/Koh Phenang Thailand. I'm so unbelievably psyched! I'm posting an open thread on China, Malaysia, and Thailand for anyone who is familiar with the area to give me tips about what to see/do/eat/dance/drink/etc. I'll be live blogging my trip (when I have access to the internet that is) so stay tuned for some funny stories and photos from the other side of the world.
Now…
clock | June 2, 2007From John I learned that Serbia is becoming a birding hot-spot!
Two species of pelicans (Pelecanus crispus and Pelecanus onocrotalus), which used to nest in Serbia before but were driven out by draining of marshland for agriculture in the late 19th century, are back (not nesting yet, but some individuals are back) and you can see a picture of one of them here.
A journalist for 'Birdwatch' magazine went to the very first birding tour in Serbia back in 2004 and he wrote about his trip and his impressions.
This website provides a lot more information about birds and birding in Serbia. I wish…
clock | May 30, 2007Welcome to the Fiftieth edition of I And The Bird. It's been a while since I last hosted an edition of this carnival (#19) and it has obviously grown a lot since then. With such diversity of posts, I decided it was impossible to categorize them, so they are presented here in the order I received them. So, to cut my unimportant intro short, let's dig in:
Grrrl of Living The Scientific Life reports on a conservation triumph story in The Return of the Rimatara Lory.
The Ridger of The Greenbelt took pictures of some goslings walking around looking like little feathered dinosaurs (post in two…
retrospectacle | May 25, 2007Lab ducks. What the heck are these two mallard ducks doing outside the entrance to my lab building? Every single day (since it got warm) they sit happily by the door, soft quacking at everyone who walks in and out, like benign and protective duck-buddhas. Why they are there, well, I have no idea. There's no water or ponds around medical campus. But I look forward to seeing them everyday (and sometimes sneak them a peice of bagel. Happy quacking ensues.)
There's a male and a female mallard duck, and the female has begun to build a nest. Right outside the door. This reminded me of the female…
clock | May 24, 2007Fortunately, Janet Reno is still OK.
The police brought Bill Clinton to the Orange County Animal Shelter, where he later died.
With perfect quote-mining, I made you look, didn't I?
retrospectacle | May 22, 2007A friend of mine in the Neuroscience program just got back from Hawaii (nice spot for an academic conference, I'll say) and sent me some entirely amusing parrot pictures. FYI, the title of the email was "You in 40 Years?" Hrm.
"In Hilo, at "Bear's Cafe," I saw a retired lady eating breakfast with her African Grey "Yullie" or "Yummie" or
something like that. Notice he had has own plate and was eating breakfast. The lady knew who Alex was; I told her I had just met Dr. Pepperberg the week before...."
If only I could be so lucky as to be brunching with Pepper in Hawaii one day! Although, I…
revere | May 19, 2007Influenza is primarily a disease of birds. Most emerging infectious diseases in humans are started out as diseases of animals, what are called zoonoses. We worry about zoonoses for that reason. It is one of the hardwired tendencies of any species to think of their own survival first -- that's natural -- but humans are only one species amongst many. And while we worry about viruses we might catch from animals, the animals are also getting sick. It's not just influenza we share with birds. Birds suffer from other diseases they can pass on to humans, too, and one of these is West Nile virus (WNV…
clock | May 6, 2007Tatjana Jovanovic is a fellow escapee from Serbia and a fellow biologist. She got her MS in Biology at the University of Belgrade and has collected enough data before emigrating to be able to immediately get a PhD if someone would sponsor her here. She is currently in Arizona, but she is moving to North Carolina later this year. She will send you her impressive CV on demand - her publications range from immunology to pest control, but most of it is focused on small rodents, their avian predators and the dynamics of predator-prey relationships. She has combined lab and field work, from…
grrlscientist | May 4, 2007tags: evolution, birds, orioles, Icterus, research
"Oriole."
Image appears here with the kind permission of the photographer, Pamela Wells.
[Larger image].
I often think about differences in morphological and behavioral traits in closely-related species and wonder whether the speed and character of changes in these traits reveal anything about the evolutionary relationships between taxa. For example, in birds, both visual and auditory cues, such as plumage and song patterns, are essential for identifying members of their own species. However, these phenomena have rarely been…
clock | May 1, 2007...because weird sex does not only happen on Fridays....
Remember this? Many have asked themselves (I did) where does it go, i.e., what kind of female genital tract can accomodate such a large penis. But one person actually did not stop at wondering but set out to find out. You can find out who and how and why in Carl Zimmer's today's NYTimes article about today's PLoS-One paper.
retrospectacle | April 29, 2007I just got back from picking up Irene Pepperberg from the Detroit airport and dropping her off at a hotel here in Ann Arbor. A while back I interviewed her for Friday Grey Matters, and afterwards suggested to the UM Neuro peeps on high that she be an invited speaker for the Neuroscience Spring Symposia! Well, they agreed, and Irene agreed, so now she's here to give a talk on some really new fascinating work with Alex (I'll be blogging it, so no spoilers except some of it deals with visual illusions in parrots. Cool!!!).
Tonight is the student dinner with Irene, which is pretty much me, Irene…
clock | April 26, 2007John James Audubon was born on his father's plantation in Haiti on this day in 1780. Despite being born of his father's mistress, he was raised in France by his father's wife and educated with other young aristocrats. He took an early interest in drawing birds, when he found himself without an income he proceeded to paint some of the finest images of North America's avians. The modern Audubon Society approves of his art but would hardly approve of his methods: He got the birds to pose for him by first shooting them.
It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.
- Aesop
The birds I…
grrlscientist | April 26, 2007tags: online books, ornithology, birds, anatomyAvian Anatomy Handbook, Julian Baumel
For those of you who study birds or who like to look at them, Julian Baumel's celebrated Handbook of Avian Anatomy: Nomina Anatomica Avium, 2nd Edition, published in 1993 by the Nuttal Ornithological Club, is now available as a free PDF download. It's a big file (400 pages; 49MB), so it might take some time to download, but it is free (shall I add that even though Julian Baumel was retired at the time, he came out of retirement for a short time to guest lecture the anatomy lab portion of my Ornithology course…
grrlscientist | April 25, 2007tags: Solomon Islands Frogmouth, Rigidipenna inexpectatus, Podargus ocellatus inexpectatus, birds, birding, ornithology
Gone are the days when animals were classified to taxon based solely on bone structure (osteology), body structure (morphometrics) or behavior (ethology), or some combination of these characters. Currently, scientists have a suite of powerful tools for classifying creatures to taxon, and analyses using a combination of these methods is allowing us to come to a deeper understanding of all animal life. As a result of using these techniques, a new species of bird has been…
grrlscientist | April 13, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, Tyrannosaurus rex, dinosaurs, birds, fossils
Repeated analysis of proteins from a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex reveal new evidence of a link between dinosaurs and birds: Of the seven reconstructed protein sequences, three were closely related to chickens.
Image: NYTimes
It was once thought impossible to obtain actual soft tissue, such as proteins, from fossils, but the impossible has happened and now, two research teams who published reports in this week's Science describe their findings: the closest relative to the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex is .. a chicken.…