ecology
tfk | December 27, 2006A 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…
tsmith | December 21, 2006Ho ho ho, and welcome to the early Christmas edition of Animalcules. Sit back, grab some hot cocoa, and click below to open your Christmas gift of some of the most interesting microbiology-themed blog posts over the past month.
To start us off with, in a new blog to me (the Cornell Mushroom blog), we learn how a fungus assists in the transmission of a nematode from the environment to the host--in this case, cattle. It's a fascinating example of commensalism.
From the same blog comes another post on Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (or Bd), a fungus which is a cause of skin infections in…
clock | December 20, 2006The new ecology carnival now has detailed submission instructions. You have about three weeks to dig out your best ecology post from the past or write new one and send (up to two posts) to the first host, The Infinite Sphere.
clock | December 19, 2006Apparently, I am not the only one to see a hummingbird in Chapel Hill of a species that should not be found around here. While I am quite confident that the visitor to my porch was a female Blue-throated Hummingbird, usually not found this far North, these neighbors of mine have found a Rufous hummingbird. As far as I know, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird is the only species that should be seen around here.
One individual of one species is an anecdote. Another individiual of another species is another anecdote. But if there are more and more such sightings over the next couple of years, we…
clock | December 17, 2006The first edition of Oekologie will be on January 15th on Infinite Sphere. Send your best serious ecological science posts the day before to be included in the new carnival.
Last week, RPM of evolgen asked his readers to find blogs that cover ecological science (and not just nature and conservation) and they came up with quite a few good ones. Spread the word - let's make Oekologie a success and an incentive for ecologists to write more about the nitty-gritty science. Nice nature pictures and stories are great for Friday Ark, I And The Bird or Circus of the Spineless, and environmental…
retrospectacle | December 14, 2006The New York Times was reporting this story like it was surprising in the slightest:
A rare, nearly blind white dolphin that survived for millions of years is effectively extinct, an international expedition declared Wednesday after ending a fruitless six-week search of its Yangtze River habitat.
The baiji would be the first large aquatic mammal driven to extinction since hunting and overfishing killed off the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s.
For the baiji, the culprit was a degraded habitat -- busy ship traffic, which confounds the sonar the dolphin uses to find food, and overfishing and…
clock | December 13, 2006Oekologie is a new blog carnival focused on ecology and environmental science. While Carnival of the Green is focused more towards conservation issues and sustainability, this carnival is going to focus on the science behind it. It will appear monthly on the 15th of each month, starting in January. You can start sending submissions or signing up to host.
clock | December 8, 2006Did mammoths scratch themselves against rocks?
Parkman believes, and he has a growing body of evidence to prove that mammoths and other large Ice Age creatures once used these very rocks near Duncan's Landing, along the Sonoma Coast State Beach, to scratch their backs. He claims the giant mammals rubbed so much that large swaths of rock have been buffered smooth.
Bears scratch against the trees, but which species is which? Lumpers vs. Splitters.
clock | December 7, 2006Interspecific Communicative and Coordinated Hunting between Groupers and Giant Moray Eels in the Red Sea:
The article offers a description and accompanying videos, such as the one showing a grouper and eel swimming side by side as if they are good friends on a stroll. It also offers quantification, which is truly hard to achieve in the field, of the tendencies involved in this mutually beneficial arrangement. The investigators were able to demonstrate that the two predators seek each other's company, spending more time together than expected by chance. They also found that groupers actively…
clock | December 7, 2006Amanda just reviewed Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma and also recently wrote a post on the same topic while under the influence of the book. I agree with her 100%, so go and read both posts.
I have read the book a couple of months ago and never found time to write a review of my own. I also remember that I finished the book on a Thursday afternoon - an important piece of information as it is on Thursday afternoons that there is a Farmers' Market here in Southern Village, barely a block from me. The first thing I did when I closed the book was to walk up to the Farmers' Market…
tsmith | December 1, 2006Revere over at Effect Measure has an excellent post linking together the current bird flu situation with John Snow's investigations of 19th century cholera outbreaks. It's an interesting take on the situation--check it out.
clock | November 29, 2006A paper just got published in PLoS - Biology - "A Human Taste for Rarity Spells Disaster for Endangered Species" - describes how high monetary value of rare species leads to a vicious spiral in which each capture reduces the remaining number of individuals at the same time as increasing the monetary value - until the last individual is captured and stuffed in some rich guy's collection:
"This phenomenon, the authors explain, resembles an ecological process called the Allee effect, in which individuals of many plant and animal species suffer reduced fitness at low population densities, which…
mikethemadbiologist | November 25, 2006One topic that I don't discuss enough is the role that the agricultural use of antibiotics plays in the evolution (and ecology) of antibiotic resistance. A recent review in Clinical Microbiology and Infection describes how the illegal use of nitrofuran antibiotics in Portugese agriculture led to an increase in highly virulent Salmonella.
What are nitrofurans? There are several different nitrofuran antibiotics (furazolidone, nitrofurazone, and nitrofurantoin), but the one drug some readers might have heard of (or taken) is nitrofurantoin, which is used to treat urinary tract infections, in…
clock | November 19, 2006Imagine an ecosystem in which all the players are groups defined by their religion: fundies, liberal believers, apathetics, atheists, etc. Then, use the ecological and evolutionary priniciples, e.g., competitive exclusion, niche-construction, arms-races, parasitism, camouflage, symbiosis, etc. to model the interactions between these entities ("populations").
Amanda made a first stab at it. Can you do more?
How do Unitarians fit in that environment? Or Humanist Jews? How does the US ecosystem differ from that of other countries (island biogegraphy?)? What are the lessons for atheists…
mikethemadbiologist | November 16, 2006A few weeks ago, an FDA expert panel by a vote of 6-4 decided against the approval of the use of the antibiotic cefquinome in cattle. Unfortunately, I've heard through the grapevine that the political appointees at the FDA plan to overrule the expert panel and approve the use of cefquinome. The chairman of the panel is under pressure to alter the panel's findings, and the FDA has not posted the minutes of the meeting, which is apparently required by law.
About the post title: cefepime, like cefquinome, is what is known as a fourth-generation cephalosporin antibiotic. While cefquinome is…
tfk | November 14, 2006Philip 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…
tfk | November 10, 2006Loss 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…
clock | October 18, 2006Since this is another one of the recurring themes on my blog, I decided to republish all of my old posts on the topic together under the fold. Since my move here to the new blog, I have continued to write about this, e.g., in the following posts:
Preserving species diversity - long-term thinkingHot boiled wine in the middle of the winter is tasty....Global Warming disrupts the timing of flowers and pollinatorsGlobal Warming Remodelling Ecosystems in Alaska
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Clocks, Migration and the Effects of Global Warming (December 23, 2005)
Circadian systems…
tsmith | October 6, 2006I've mentioned frequently how my kids are fascinated with bugs and things creepy-crawly, whether it's spiders, giant moths, or butterflies. On that topic, via Bitch PhD comes this article from yesterday's New York Times on monarchs, their endangered habitat, and what just about anyone can do to help out.
(More after the jump...)
Pinching a bright orange butterfly in one hand and an adhesive tag the size of a baby's thumbnail in the other, the entomologist bent down so his audience could watch the big moment.
"You want to lay it right on this cell here, the one shaped like a mitten," the…
clock | October 4, 2006In these days of global warming it is important to realize how important temperature is in regulation of a variety of biological processes. Here is today's sampler of examples:
Why Do Cold Animals Make Bigger Babies?:
Reproduction involves a critical decision: Should an organism invest energy in a few large offspring or many small ones? In a new study from the American Naturalist, biologists used a new statistical approach that can test multiple theories at the same time, an approach they hope will shed light on many evolutionary problems. They used data from many populations of Eastern…