I found a new blog the other day that I thought I would share. It is called "Bug Girl's Blog: Entomology. Gardening. Ranting. Nerdery." How can you go wrong with a title like that? Check it out here.
From her blog I found a couple of other science/nerd blogs that also look like they might be worth keeping an eye on:
The Science Creative Quarterly
Science Mole
Weird Science
Young Female Scientist
Just thought I would share.
You know how you always see these fantastic photos of ants (live ants, not pinned ones like mine) on people's blogs, on their websites, or in their presentations? Well, most of them are taken by Alex Wild. Today I found out (via Ontogeny) that he has started a new blog focused on ants and photography. Check it out at Myrmecos.
I meant to post this story when it first came out but I got distracted. You're always hearing about dogs that save their owner's life or cats that wake their families up in time to escape the fire, but you never hear about the lowly ant stepping up to save somebody's life. Now you have...
Via MiamiHerald.com:
BY JONNELLE MARTE
jmarte@MiamiHerald.comNo one saw 18-year-old Adrian Gregorio's car veer off the Don Shula Expressway early Sunday and plunge into a canal, Florida Highway Patrol officials said.
He still managed to pull himself out and swim to shore.
Then, he waited alone for help for at least 10 hours in the morning chill before a family found him lying on the grassy embankment next to the water, blood gushing from his head, they said.
They called police, and Gregorio was air-lifted to Ryder Trauma Center. His condition was unavailable Sunday.
Gregorio's 2006 Nissan 350Z sank into a canal just north of Florida's Turnpike and was barely visible to drivers, FHP Lt. Pat Santangelo said.
''If those people hadn't stopped in that particular spot, he may never have been found,'' Santangelo said.
The teen was apparently driving northbound on the Don Shula at about 1:30 a.m. when he swerved off the road, Santangelo said.
THANKS TO AN ANT
Gregorio, who had been reported missing overnight, was found purely by chance -- and thanks to an ant.
At around 11:40 a.m. Sunday, Reynaldo Acosta and his family were driving by the same canal when his 4-year-old son Sebastian complained that an ant was biting him.
Acosta, 42, pulled over to the side of the road near Southwest 117th Avenue so his girlfriend could swat the ant out of the boy's car seat, he said.
When Oskarina Martinez stepped out of the car, she saw Gregorio lying on the grass by the canal. Unable to move, he raised his arm to get their attention, she said.
''Thank God that we stopped there because of that ant,'' Martinez said in Spanish. ``He must have felt so desperate. The truth is that no one could see him.''
Acosta approached the faint teen, who told him he drove his car into the canal hours earlier. Acosta's older son called 911. Acosta also called Gregorio's mother to let her know her son was OK.
When Miami-Dade Fire Rescue arrived, Gregorio was in and out of consciousness.
''So in a way, the boy owes his life to the ant, partly also to my son, but more importantly to God,'' Acosta said.
Abstract
Background
Soil ecology has produced a huge corpus of results on relations between soil organisms, ecosystem processes controlled by these organisms and links between belowground and aboveground processes. However, some soil scientists think that soil ecology is short of modelling and evolutionary approaches and has developed too independently from general ecology. We have tested quantitatively these hypotheses through a bibliographic study (about 23000 articles) comparing soil ecology journals, generalist ecology journals, evolutionary ecology journals and theoretical ecology journals.
Findings
We have shown that soil ecology is not well represented in generalist ecology journals and that soil ecologists poorly use modelling and evolutionary approaches. Moreover, the articles published by a typical soil ecology journal (Soil Biology and Biochemistry) are cited by and cite low percentages of articles published in generalist ecology journals, evolutionary ecology journals and theoretical ecology journals.
Conclusion
This confirms our hypotheses and suggests that soil ecology would benefit from an effort towards modelling and evolutionary approaches. This effort should promote the building of a general conceptual framework for soil ecology and bridges between soil ecology and general ecology. We give some historical reasons for the parsimonious use of modelling and evolutionary approaches by soil ecologists. We finally suggest that a publication system that classifies journals according to their Impact Factors and their level of generality is probably inadequate to integrate “particularity” (empirical observations) and “generality” (general theories), which is the goal of all natural sciences. Such a system might also be particularly detrimental to the development of a science such as ecology that is intrinsically multidisciplinary.
Have a bunch of Pheidole that need identifying and don't know what to do? Here are a couple of resources:
Pheidole Working Group (John Longino)
Pheidole of Costa Rica (John Longino)
Pheidole of Tiputini (Amy Mertl)
Pheidole of Africa (Brian Taylor)
Pheidole of Egypt (Brian Taylor)
Pheidole of Iran (Brian Taylor)
MCZ Type Database of Pheidole
Pheidole of Mississippi and Alabama
Pheidole of Japan
Pheidole of Borneo
Many of these keys are works in progress, so if you use them and find some problems with them, most folks are happy to get feedback about their keys.
Nothing to do with ants, but I enjoyed this blog entry about embiopterans. Via A Catalogue of Organisms:
A work colleague and I got into a conversation a while ago about collective nouns, and of course that eventually got onto the question of making up appropriate terms for groups of animals that currently lack collective nouns. One suggestion that I came up with that I still rather like the sound of was a "seclusion of embiopterans". From now on, I urge you to use the term when discussing embiopterans.
If through some bizarre oversight you haven't regularly found yourself discussing embiopterans, then you really should be. Also known as webspinners or embiids, embiopterans are one of the definite contenders for the total of world's coolest insects. I have personally come across a specimen in the wild just once that I found clinging to a piece of bark I pulled off its tree - unfortunately, I have to admit, no-one around me quite got what I was getting so excited about.
Webspinners are small insects that live in silken galleries they build in secluded areas such as under bark or rocks (the picture above from the homepage of Janice Edgerly-Rooks shows a female webspinner peeping out of its home). There is something of an esoteric contention about what exactly the correct name for the webspinner order should be - Embioptera, Embiidina or Embiodea all can be found. I'm going to stick with Embioptera for no good reason. The name means "lively wings" and is wildly inappropriate - webspinners are not noticeably lively, and more often than not lack wings (females are invariably wingless, males can sometimes be). It has been suggested that the name refers to the flicking movement of the male wings. The wings of male webspinners have large blood sinuses developed from the veins that are pumped full of haemolymph to make the wings rigid when they fly. When the haemolymph is drained from the sinuses, the wings become limp and floppy, able to move in whatever direction is required to let the male crawl through a female's silk nest, even bending forward over the head if the male goes into reverse.
Webspinners are often referred to as semi-social and females may share inter-connected galleries. Females also show a high level of parental care. However, females will not show any care for the young of others, and social interactions between females should probably be regarded as opportunistic rather than required (Grimaldi & Engel, 2005). The female and juvenile webspinners emerge from their silken palaces at night to feed on vegetation and detritus. Adult males, on the other hand, do not feed.
The webspinner's silk glands are located along the edge of the third segment of the forelimb tarsus, which is noticeable broadened as shown in the diagram above from BugNetMAP. The German name for embiopterans, "tarsenspinner", is therefore entirely apropos. The stunning "Life in the Undergrowth" series that I've had cause to mention before included spectacular footage of a webspinner constructing its silken fortress, waving its forelimbs in front of itself in a motion that can only be described as "wax on, wax off". So impermeable is the resulting wall that the spinner must actually cut through it with its mandibles in order to drink from water drops lying on the surface if it is not to dry up completely.
This looks awesome! From PBS NOVA:
Deep within a termite mound in Africa, soldier termites spring into action, slicing their smaller opponents in half with a snap of their powerful jaws. But the attacking driver ants use strategy to overwhelm the defenders. Little do these six-legged combatants know that their marching orders come from a drought-plagued human village that is counting on them to drive out the termites.
Filmed in High Definition with advanced macro-shooting techniques, "Master of the Killer Ants" garnered best film awards at the Shanghai Film Festival and Japan's Wildlife Film Festival. The stunning footage includes different castes of termites coursing through their intricate tunnels—and the monstrously egg-swollen queen herself, rippling with the contractions that deposit thousands of eggs per day. (For more on the queen phenomenon, see Being Queen.) The climax comes as the invading driver ants close in on the queen's royal cell.
Although known for their ruthless aggression, driver ants also have a beneficial side. This is traditionally exploited by the Mofu people of northern Cameroon, who call the local species of red driver ants jaglavak. (To hear more of the Mofu and their traditions, go to Jaglavak, Prince of Insects).
"Master of the Killer Ants" tells the story of the Mofu's intimate relationship not only with jaglavak but with other insects. For instance, the people know that a crablike, bright-red insect serves as a harbinger of rain and a sign that it is time to prepare the earth. Winged insects and grasshoppers make a valuable food supplement and are especially tasty when grilled. (For more on edible insects, see Bugs You Can Eat).
But the insects provide a guide to behavior as well as an aid to survival. The Mofu say that they must work as hard and selflessly as the ants and termites if they are to survive, and they attribute drought and misfortune to their moral shortcomings.
One special quality of jaglavak above all concerns the village elder Matsgrawaï. When the film opens, he is called to inspect a neighbor's house. Termites have infested the earthen floor and are attacking the walls and roof. Worst of all, they threaten the adjacent granary with its crucial stock of grain sorghum.
From past experience, Matsgrawaï knows that jaglavak can drive the termites away, thereby securing the grain sorghum stores on which the villagers' lives depend. Under special circumstances, driver ants will attack termite colonies, and Matsgrawaï begins with prayers and offerings to jaglavak. When the ants fail to show up, he sends children to seek them out. (Play the Amazing Ants Game).
Thus commences a charming, instructive true-life fable on how to fight fire with fire—termites with ants—and not get burned, or rather too badly stung, in the process.
Via National Geographic:
Cockroaches will often choose shelter unwisely when under the influence of robots, a new study shows.Usually when the creepy crawlers are let loose in a brightly lit area, they gather under the darkest shade they can find.
"Nice means dark, for a cockroach," said lead study author Jose Halloy, a social ecologist at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium. "They look for shadows."
But when the bugs were joined by tiny robots designed to smell and behave like roaches, the machines were able to control the insects' behavior.
If the robots lingered beneath a less desirable, more brightly lit shelter, for example, the cockroaches did too—a choice they rarely made when the robots weren't around.
The findings show that such robots can influence group behavior in animals, the authors report in this week's issue of the journal Science.
This means that the tiny machines could be valuable tools in helping to understand how animals that move in swarms make collective decisions.
Susan Brown
for National Geographic News
November 15, 2007
Read rest of link here
Law enforcement key to saving Borneo's rainforests
An interview with Borneo scientist Rhett Harrison
Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com
November 13, 2007
Via mongabay.com:In an interview with mongabay.com, Dr. Rhett Harrison, a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) associate researcher and Secretary for the Asia-Pacific Chapter of ATBC, says that law enforcement could be the key to safeguarding biodiversity contained in Borneo's lowland parks.
"Simply investing in protecting the existing protected area system and enforcing wildlife protection laws would achieve far more [than "Heart of Borneo]," he said. "If the current protected area systems were actually protected things wouldn't be so bad. However, throughout Borneo hunting and wildlife collecting are rampant (both inside and outside protected areas), and in parts of Kalimantan (Indonesia) you even have logging in some parks."
Harrison, who is helping organize the 2008 ATBC-Asia-Pacific Chapter meeting in Kuching on sustainable land use, further states that there may be opportunities for conservationists to work with oil palm to developers to ensure that existing forests are not converted for plantations and that palm oil can be produced in a sustainable manner. He adds that carbon offsets may eventually offer a means to fund conservation and sustainable development efforts in areas that still have standing forest.
read interview here
Image: Forest clearing near Tanjung Puting National Park in Central Kalimantan. Courtesy of Google Earth.
Via Antomatic:
Yesterday’s New York Times Science section has a lengthy article that looks at some of the recent work by mathematical biologists Daniel Grunbaum and Iain Couzin on the instinct to swarm.
The graphics that accompany the article are quite interesting, although unfortunately that’s not always obvious from the thumbnails displayed in the margin. Better descriptions would be most helpful.
Via EurekAlert:
Exceptions prove rule of tropical importance in biodiversityEven a group of shellfish that appear to violate the overarching pattern of global biodiversity actually follows the same biological rules as other marine organisms, confirming a general theory for the spread of life on Earth. The University of Chicago's David Jablonski and his colleagues present this finding this week in the advanced online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"There's more of everything in the tropics. More genetic diversity, more diversity in form, more diversity of species," said David Jablonski, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor in Geophysical Sciences at Chicago. Biologists call this the "latitudinal diversity gradient." They have known about this phenomenon for more than a century, "but there's remarkably little agreement on how it's formed," Jablonski said.
Scientists have offered dozens of different theories to explain the evolutionary underpinnings of the tropics' rich biodiversity. In their Proceedings article, Jablonski, the University of Chicago's Andrew Krug and the University of California, Berkeley's James Valentine present findings that highlight the importance of the tropics in maintaining the entire planet's biodiversity.
Scientists had debated for three decades whether the tropics were a cradle of diversity, where new species originate, or a museum of diversity, where old species persist. Last year Jablonski, Valentine and Kaustuv Roy of the University of California, San Diego, potentially resolved the debate by showing that the tropics is both a cradle and a museum of biodiversity.
But there is a problem nagging at all research on the latitudinal diversity gradient. "So many variables correlate with latitude" - temperature, environmental stability and many other features of the oceans - "that it is tough to separate cause and effect," said Krug, a Research Associate in Geophysical Sciences at Chicago. To do exactly that, the team sifted through a database consisting of 4,600 species of bivalves that occurred in more than 200 locations worldwide.
The research focused on bivalves because of their rich fossil record. "They're known from the shallowest intertidal zone to the deepest of the deep sea," Jablonski said of the bivalves, a group that includes clams, scallops and oysters. "They're known in every latitude, from the north polar ocean to the Antarctic."
The vast majority of bivalve groups show the standard pattern: a peak of diversity in the tropics, tailing off into less diversity in the higher latitudes. "We found one major group that didn't do that. We call that a contrarian group," Jablonski said. That group, called the Anomalodesmata and dubbed the Anomalos by the Chicago-Berkeley team, displayed a striking diversity pattern. Contrary to virtually all other marine life, Anomalo diversity peaked in the mid-latitudes of both hemispheres, but dipped in the tropics.
"We knew we had to take a closer look at these guys," Jablonski said. "We had to see how they fit into the bigger picture, how they got into this strange state. They could've shown a whole new evolutionary dynamic." But they didn't, which actually excited the scientists even more.
"We found out that they do follow the same rules, that they are an exception that proves the rule," Jablonski said. "This was really exciting: science is always about the search for rules, generalizations that can explain nature in new ways." Krug agreed: "The results of the research were a bit surprising, as general rules governing natural systems can be hard to come by."
The origin of new Anomalo lineages was concentrated in the temperate zones, coinciding with their peak diversity. The coincidence between peak diversity and prolific evolution was seen in that group's relatives, too, and because both fell in the tropics, a normal diversity resulted.
"You could imagine a situation in which all their evolutionary action was still in the tropics, but they just had so much extinction there that by default their diversity peak was in the temperate zone," Jablonski said. "But if you know where the diversity peak is, you can predict where evolution is the most prolific."
"Thanks to the fossil record, we can show that their weird diversity pattern is because of a failure to diversify in the tropics and not because of supercharged evolution in the temperate zones. Our rule came through with flying colors."
These results show how important the tropics are for life on Earth: "The tropics are the engine of biodiversity. As the tropics are undermined or deteriorate for a whole variety of reasons, that actually undercuts evolutionary production on a global scale," Jablonski said.
Contact: Steve Koppes
skoppes@uchicago.edu
773-702-8366
University of Chicago
Back at Scifoo I met Anna Kushnir. And then we met again. And then, inspired by the conversations at Scifoo, Anna decided to organize a day-long, student-hosted conference about the future of scientific publishing - Publishing in the New Millennium: A Forum on Publishing in the Biosciences. And she decided to invite me to appear on one of the panels.So, later this week, I will be in Boston, more precisely Cambridge MA, discussing Open Access and Science 2.0. I am arriving on Thursday in the early afternoon and leaving on Saturday in the early afternoon, so there is plenty of opportunity to meet me, even if you cannot make it to Harvard on Friday afternoon (and I hope you can - it promises to be quite exciting!). Just let Anna know about. Apart from Anna, I also hope to meet some other old friends, like Corie Lok, Alex Palazzo, Evie Brown, Moshe Pritsker, Kaitlin Thaney and YOU! So, check out the conference schedule and try to be there if you can.
Via Make:
Photos and more from The Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest, a Secret Science Club event held at Union Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn, last Friday night - [via] Link & more.I'm not sure why this appeals to me, but it does...More:
- Obscura Antiques & Oddities, 280 East 10th, New York City - Link.
- "Dogseat's" Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest" photoset on Flickr - Link.
Via MAKE Magazine
LanBo, the folks who distribute the gel-based ant habitats have a fun story about a DIY ant experiment from the famously curious physicist Richard Feynman -"I wanted to see how long it would take the other ants to get the message to go to the 'ferry terminal'. It started slowly, but rapidly increased until I was going mad ferrying the ants back and forth." After a while, he started taking the ants from the sugar to a different spot. None of them went back to the original starting place, which would have returned them to the sugar. They followed one another, but not to the sugar.Feynman and ants - Link.Feynman did other experiments with ants. In one, he laid out glass microscope slides and got ants to walk back and forth on them to some sugar. When he rearranged the slides or replaced an old one with a new one, the ants got confused and couldn't figure out how to reach the sugar. "It was pretty clear, from rearranging the glass slides that the ants left some sort of trail." He concluded.
He tried to figure out whether the trail indicated which direction to take to the sugar or only that an ant had been on the slide already. He also wanted to know how long the trail lasted. "I tried at one point to make the ants go around in a circle, but I didn't have enough patience to set it up." He wrote.
More than ten years later, after he had worked on a number of important projects, including the Manhattan project, Feynman was still wondering about ants. He was frustrated because the experiments he had done to demonstrate the ants' sense of geometry had not worked. He still wondered, "Why do ant trails look so straight and nice?" By this time he was teaching at the California Institute of Technology.
Posted by Phillip Torrone | Nov 5, 2007 02:00 AM
Via antbase:
Some months ago, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City was granted official authority to award it own Ph.D. degrees. What this mean is that, starting in the Fall of 2008, a first generation of graduate students will be able to pursue a full state-of-the-art program in Comparative Biology at the best setting possible: an institution devoted to collection-based science.
The AMNH has already a long history in graduate level education through its join programs with Columbia University, NYU, CUNY and Cornell University. Many courses are already taught right in situ by the Museum's curators, and the students enjoy use of the various resources for their research (besides the collections, there are molecular laboratories, digital imaging with a SEM facility, and the fastest computer clusters for phylogenetic analysis ever assemble, just to name a few). However, further governing autonomy will surely create a more cohesive atmosphere and save a few headaches to its students. Nevertheless, as far as I know, the AMNH will keep its join programs with the universities.
This post was prompted by the launching of the new Ph.D. program website. The application deadline is December 28, 2007. I highly recommend anyone interested to contact some of the curators and apply for this or subsequent academic years.
Via AntVisions:
Been surfing through the literature for signs of multiple recruitment mechanisms in any single ant species. I assumed there would be some work on Camponotus species as they exhibit tandem running (one-on-one & group recruitment), solitary foraging, and mass recruitment. Though there is quite a lot of work carried out on recruitment behaviour in Camponotus, they all seem to address one strategy in each species.
But, I found this interesting paper by non other than 'the duo', Holldobler and Wilson. Of the several interesting points in this article is that when the major workers cannot cross gaps to reach a terrain, they build bridges, to which other workers are visually attracted. However once the chains are formed, workers lay trail pheromones on this 'bridge' to recruit nestmates. The five different recruitment systems used by the African Weaver ant, Oecophylla longinoda as documented in this article are:
(a) recruitment to new food sources, mediated by odor trails produced from the rectal gland, coupled with tactile stimuli during mouth-opening, antennation, and head-waggling
(b) recruitment to new terrain, mediated by odor trails produced from the rectal gland and tactile stimulation through antennation
(c) emigration to new sites
(d) short-range recruitment to territorial intruders, during which the terminal abdominal sternite is maximally exposed and dragged for short distances over the ground to release an attractant from the sternal gland
(e) long-range recruitment to intruders, mediated by odor trails from the rectal gland and by antennation and intense body jerking
There are some fantastic sketches and close up photographs of these ants in the article.
Holldobler B and Wilson EO. 1978. The multiple recruitment systems of the African Weaver Ant, Oecophylla longinoda (Latreille) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Behav Ecol Socio 3: 19-60.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/69223
Repeat: the queen is unharmed!
Science on a shoestring
Nature Medicine 13, 1128 (2007)
doi:10.1038/nm1007-1128aMicroscopes made from bamboo bring biology into focus
Paroma Basu1
- New Delhi
Abstract
Funding is tight. Grants are rejected. Research equipment is too expensive. And these are complaints heard in well-heeled laboratories in the US and UK. In the following pages, we present inspiring examples of scientists who, using materials as simple as litmus paper, bamboo and blenders, prove that science on a shoestring is possible—and sometimes even better than the alternative.
Introduction
In a remote village in eastern India, dozens of underprivileged children are for the first time marveling at the elaborate details of flower petals with the help of a microscope—made out of bamboo.
Fitted with a
20 lens, the light, compact and ecofriendly microscope is proving a boon for dozens of cash-strapped schools, granting students firsthand access to an otherwise unaffordable scientific tool.
Clear vision: Members of the Delhi-based nonprofit Jodo Gyan have made about 2,500 microscopes from bamboo.
This nifty device is a product of the creative minds at Jodo Gyan, a small nonprofit in New Delhi. "Indian children are not getting to experience all the joy and wonder of science because there is too much emphasis on the memorization and repetition of concepts," says Usha Menon, a government researcher who founded Jodo Gyan in 1999. "Hundreds of thousands of children are learning without understanding anything."
Priced at 150 rupees (roughly $4), the microscope is just one of the educational tools created by Jodo Gyan, literally translated as 'linking knowledge'. Other tools include mathematical card and board games and sticky geometric shapes in a variety of colors. The 30-member group has also led more than 700 teacher-training workshops and runs an alternative primary school that enrolls 54 underprivileged students.
But the microscope remains the star attraction. Jodo Gyan has supplied the instrument to several organizations such as Chennai's Goodbooks Teacher's Center and New Delhi's Pragya, a nonprofit that provides services to neglected, high-altitude areas. These organizations then distribute the microscopes to schools in their localities. Jodo Gyan has also secured two big orders in the last few years from the UN Children's Fund for use in alternative learning centers in India.
But with no external funding, Jodo Gyan is run on a shoestring budget, particularly because the group sells its learning aids for not much more than it costs to produce them, says Menon. The group's base of operations is a ramshackle building in Delhi's impoverished Shakurpur area that also doubles as Menon's home.
To meet the demand for its popular microscope, Jodo Gyan has fashioned a makeshift microscope factory right on the building's roof. Sitting up there amidst bamboo shards, members have so far chopped and carved about 2,500 microscopes for use in schools, educational nonprofits and, in at least one case, research.
Debal Deb, an ecologist who has set up a rural seed exchange to conserve dozens of endangered folk rice species in West Bengal, routinely uses Jodo Gyan's microscopes to study the surfaces of rice grains. More important, Deb's microscope has caught the attention of dozens of curious children from nearby villages, who stop by after school to peer through its lens.
"The microscope has opened up a whole new world for these children," says Deb. "They could never have imagined that an ant could have tiny antennae or that dragonfly wings could have such beautiful and intricate patterns."
