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I’ve noticed that many of the people on my blogroll have moved to ScienceBlogs in the last few months (Pharyngula and GrrlScientist were there already, of course): Good Math, Bad Math, Discovering Biology in a Digital World, and Carl Zimmer’s The Loom.
It doesn’t surprise me–ScienceBlogs is a good collection of blogs with some very smart and articulate people writing for it–but it does amuse me that it’s happening so quickly.
I have a private bet with myself on who will be the next one from my blogroll to join the hive mind (I don’t mean that in a bad way–it’s a very smart and awesome hive mind). Who do you think will (or should) be next?
National Park Service Director Fran Mainella resigned yesterday after six years of service. During her time as NPS director, Mainella helped create Great Sand Dunes National Park and Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail. She led the effort to get 6,000 park improvement projects started or completed and tripled cyclic park maintenance funding.
Her most important contribution was to foster a culture of partnership within the NPS. During her term, most national parks have formed partnerships with other federal and state departments, local residents, private museums, and friends groups.
Mainella will continue to serve as Director through the planning and celebration of the 90th anniversary of the National Park Service and through the completion of the 2006 National Park Service Management Policies.
Here’s to you, Ms. Mainella: you lasted longer in a tough job than most of us could.
On Saturday I took another of the Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds seminars, “Focusing on Exceptional Nature Photographs,” taught by Kevin Snyder (Event Code: portfolio) of the Catamount Institute.
It was a very basic class–since most seminar students are seeing teacher recertification or education credit, most seminars assume little or no background in the subject–and I’ve already taught myself the basics of photography, but it was useful for students with no background. I personally would have liked to spend more time on composition (my weakest point besides the limitations of my camera), but I had fun.
After the morning lecture, we headed out to the Barksdale Picnic Area (the east side of the park, off Teller Co. #1) for lunch and photography. This is the most easily accessible wet area in the park, so it’s a decent spot for plant photography.
Moth pollinating thistle, Barksdale Picnic Area, Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. Photo (c) 2006 Melissa Barton
f/8.0, 1/200 sec
The moth was a very uncooperative subject! I’m trying to convince myself that I like the blurred wings here, but this was the best composition of the shots (almost all of which had blurred wings).
The stream had some interesting opportunities as well.
While we were waiting for birds to fly into the mist nets, we walked around the Manitou Experimental Forest and talked about other signs of bird activity.
A woodpecker nest cavity in an aspen trunk, Manitou Experimental Forest. Photo (c) 2006 Melissa Barton
I don’t remember exactly, but I think this nest cavity was made by one of the medium-sized woodpeckers. Woodpeckers, flickers, and sapsuckers play a vital role in this ecosystem, since they use each nest cavity only once. Secondary cavity-nesters, like mountain bluebirds and the rare flammulated owl require woodpeckers for their own nesting purposes.
Flickers make the largest cavities, and the only ones the flammulated owl (Otus flameolus) can use. The Manitou Experimental Forest hosts the longest-running flammulated owl study, and our instructor, Brian D. Linkhart, is perhaps as close to a flammulated owl expert as anyone.
The Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds sponsor a summer seminar series every year, on topics ranging from paleontology to flint-knapping. Today I attended Ecology and Conservation of Forest Birds in the Pikes Peak Region, taught by Brian D. Linkhart, a professor of biology at Colorado College. A former Forest Service (USFS) employee and teacher, Linkhart has studied forest raptors for 26 years now.
We started at 7:00 a.m. at the Manitou Experimental Forest near Woodland Park, Colorado. The Manitou Experimental Forest has been a USFS research station since 1936.
We got a relatively late start for bird observation; it heats up quickly in the Rocky Mountains in summer, and the best time to set up mist nets is around 5:30 a.m. Mist nets are nearly-invisible lightweight nylon nets that ornithologists use for catch-and-release trapping of small birds.
Linkhart and students set up the first mist net. Photo (c) 2006 Melissa Barton
Mist nets work best when set up at the ecotone, which is the border or transition zone between two ecosystems, such as aspen forest and meadow. Many songbirds fly between ecosystems while foraging.
Yami at Green Gabbro, a fellow geoscientist and awesome blogger, has passed along a call for interviews of women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine, including women trained in those fields who no longer work in them, and women who work in science but not research.
It’s for a book called Where the Girls Aren’t (from Seal Press, which is publishing the forthcoming She’s Such a Geek), and it sounds like a really interesting project. If you want to participate and think you fit the description (there’s an extensive list of possible types in Yami’s post), you can email the author at linleywriter at mac dot com or get further contact information from Yami.
Today at work we did a little preliminary fossil exploration in a nearby basin with a little-studied formation of near the same age (latest Eocene or earliest Oligocene). This formation hasn’t been studied much, both because it’s not very consistently fossiliferous and because most of it is on private land.
We found none of the documented sites we set out to find–the publications listed only to the quarter-section, which is a pretty big area compared to the average fossil locality–but we did find one nice site with loads of mountain mahogany (Cercocarpus) leaves and a few conifer bits and insects.
We’re just getting started on this project, but I expect it’ll be quite interesting. My supervisor thinks I should work on it for a doctoral dissertation (the thought is tempting, but I’m not currently planning on a Ph.D.), but regardless, we could use a couple doctoral students.
As the project progresses, I may write a little more about it.
The ability to spot venemous snakes may have played a major role in the development of primate eyesight, according to a study in the July issue of the Journal of Human Evolution.
New World primates like these capuchins (genus Cebus) may have less acute eyesight than Old World primates because they’ve had less time to adapt to snake threats. Photo: Fraans de Waal (public domain)
Primates have good close-up eyesight, as well as the ability to manipulate their environments. Scientists previously thought that these traits developed for handling and examining food. Lynne Isbell, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, proposes that close vision may have developed to spot venemous snakes.
“A snake is the only predator you really need to see close up,” Isbell said in a press release. “If it’s a long way away it’s not dangerous.”
Neurological studies suggest that vision is more closely tied to the “fear module,” brains structures involved in vigilance, fear, and learning, than to grasping and handling.
Fossil evidence indicates that snakes were the first major predators of modern mammals, which evolved about 100 million years ago. This sets the stage for an evolutionary arms race, with snakes becoming more venemous and better-camouflaged, as primates developed better eyesight and avoidance techniques.
Modern primate groups with less danger from snakes also exhibit less visual specialization than primate groups that are regularly threatened by venemous snakes. Primates reached South America, for example, millions of years before venemous snakes; New World monkeys, like the capuchins above, tend to have less accute eyesight than Old World monkeys.
Here’s the reference for the article, which I haven’t read yet:
Isbell, L.A. 2006. Snakes as agents of evolutionary change in primate brains, in Journal of Human Evolution, vol. 51, p. 1-35.
Edit 21 July 2006: Check out this article on LiveScience for more.
Every summer, brown bears (or grizzlies) gather at the McNeil River in Alaska to fatten up on salmon for winter. A few observation permits are selected by lottery every year.
For the rest of us, the National Park Service (NPS), National Geographic, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG), and the Pratt Museum in Homer, Alaska offer WildCam Grizzlies.
The McNeil Sanctuary, which is administered by ADFG, is located between two NPS sites, Lake Clark National Park & Preserve and Katmai National Park & Preserve. The sanctuary supports one of the world’s largest known gatherings of coastal brown bears* (inland brown bears are usually called grizzlies, although both belong to the same species, Ursus arctos).
Viewers can watch the bears interact with each other and hunt for salmon via the webcams, which are on from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. Alaska time. The cams require the RealPlayer plugin.
The best time to view the bears is from 4:00 - 11:00 p.m. Alaska time (8:00 p.m. - 3 a.m. EST). From 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. Alaska time, an interpreter will work the cameras.
*They’re not kidding: there are a lot of bears! And seagulls, I think.
110-million-year-old spiderweb preserved in amber. Photo: American Museum of Natural History
Scientists from the American Museum of Natural History and the University of Barcelona have found the oldest known spiderweb, preserved in a piece of Spanish amber. Spiderwebs are rare in the fossil record; this piece of amber preserves 26 strands, many connected, as well as droplets of glue and several insects that were trapped in the web.
The web was probably made by an orb-weaving spider (family Araneidae) or a comb-footed spider (family Theridiidae). Orb-weaving spiders build webs in the classic spiral shape, while comb-footed spiders build haphazard cobwebs. Features of the preserved web seem to suggest a spiral shape. The web contains a fly, a wasp, and a beetle, all of which are common food for modern spiders as well.
“The advanced structure of this fossilized web, along with the type of prey that the web caught, indicates that spiders have been fishing insects from the air for a very long time,” said David A. Grimaldi, a curator of invertebrate zoology at the AMNH and second author of the paper. “Spiders today have a huge impact as predators on insect populations, along with birds and bats. This new finding suggests that spiders exerted a similar selection pressure on insects 110 million years ago, around the time when certain groups of insects were radiating to become major pollinators of plants.”
The paper appears in the June 23 issue of the journal Science.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:
110-million-year-old spider web with insect prey found preserved in amber. June 2006. American Museum of Natural History. [press release]
Peñalver, E.; Grimaldi, D.A.; Delclòs, X.
Early Cretaceous Spider Web with Its Prey. 23 June 2006. Science. [abstract]
I need to get a subscription to Science already, since 90% of the exciting paleobiology findings are published there.
A friend of mine posted a link to an article called Killer Kangaroo and ‘Duck of Doom’ Found. In addition to presenting some painful hyperbole and amazingly silly quotes from the scientists involved (they’re better in context; the Reuters article AOL News used is pretty bad), it fails to make a carnivorous kangaroo with a skull all of 13 centimeters (5 inches) long terrifying. It also brings up the question: why is this news?
Ekaltadeta (the “killer kangaroo”) has been known since 1985, from the Riversleigh site in northwest Queensland. In July of 2001, it was exhibited at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. It has been the subject of many scientific papers and popular press articles, many of the latter by the apparently rather dramatic Michael Archer quoted in the Reuters article (you can find them in this Riversleigh bibliography).
Ekaltadeta belonged to the subfamily Propleopinae (giant rat-kangaroos). Giant is relative compared to modern rat-kangaroos (family Potoroidae); Ekaltadeta, as I mentioned above, wasn’t very big. Current scientific thought tends towards a consensus that Ekaltadeta was probably carnivorous, although it may have been omnivorous with a preference for meat.[1][2] “Killer” is pushing it, though.
Other kangaroos found at Riversleigh had “fangs” that they probably used as a defense against predators or in dominance struggles, like modern mouse-deer. These kangaroos were herbivorous.[3]
The “Demon Duck of Doom,” Bullockornis, stood about 2.5 meters tall (8 feet), and may have weighed up to 250 kilograms (550 pounds). That’s a good deal more intimidating. Like other members of the family Dromornithidae (thunder birds), Bullockornis was probably carnivorous or omnivorous, although it may have been a scavenger. It was discovered in 1979, although it wasn’t well-known from a variety of specimens until the 1990s.[4][5]
DISCLAIMER: This post reflects only the views of Melissa Barton, and is not sanctioned by the National Park Service (NPS) or any other organization or individual.
I’ve seen a lot of discussion, mostly among amateur photographers, about the new National Park Service photography policy. This often goes with indignation about having to pay for a commercial photography permit (funny, I thought professional photographers understood about permit fees) and anger at charging Mom and Dad Smith to take photos of their children (the NPS has no intention of doing this).
There’s also a fair amount of vitriol about “stupid” rangers who are “difficult.” These rangers probably don’t exist; almost all rangers are well-educated, and all of them are trained to be polite, friendly, and helpful to the public. Mean people don’t generally become rangers; they wouldn’t last long. Neither would stupid people. Antagonizing the public is discouraged–just look at how the NPS trains rangers to handle antagonistic visitors who don’t believe in science (very politely and carefully).
The policy is simply a service-wide standardization of the commercial photography and filming policy many parks already had in place.
Here’s what the policy says about when a permit is required:
All commercial filming activities taking place within a unit of the National Park system require a permit. Commercial filming includes capturing a moving image on film and video as well as sound recordings.
Still photographers require a permit when
1. the activity takes place at location(s) where or when members of the public are generally not allowed; or
2. the activity uses model(s), sets(s), or prop(s) that are not a part of the location’s natural or cultural resources or administrative facilities; or
3. Park would incur additional administrative costs to monitor the activity.
So I went to see that pirate movie yesterday, and as the first, it was a slightly bizarre experience. For a movie filmed in the Caribbean, it really captures impressively little of the feel of the place, or any of the scenery to speak of (it did, at least, rain a lot in this one).
Dominica was my favorite island. I highly recommend doing the hike through the Valley of Desolation to Boiling Lake–it’s a painfully grueling hike, especially if you have bad joints, but the geothermal area produces a lot of eerie scenery (and great opportunities for photography of black pyrite deposits, blue-gray geothermally heated water, and other interesting colors and textures).
Sunset over Champagne Hot Springs, Dominica. Photo (c) 2005 Melissa Barton
We ended our second day at Champagne Hot Springs. The hot springs are actually offshore, and there’s a decent (according to my classmates) reef there. This was where I saw what is so far the most amazing sunset I’ve ever seen. I’m not normally a big fan of sunset photos–they’re often cliched–but I think this one captured the scene decently. No, I didn’t oversaturate the colors.
The purple blobs along the horizons are clouds, by the way, not land.
(And yes, I did enjoy the movie, even if it’s woefully bad on the nautical aspects.)
Baby beaver in a Colorado Springs city park. Photo (c) 2005 Melissa Barton
This baby beaver’s pose reminds me of the Rodents of Unusual Size in The Princess Bride–adult beavers are the second largest living rodent, after the South American capybara. The largest recorded beaver weighed 110 pounds (a rather obese specimen, though).
Unlike the R.O.U.S.es, though, this little fellow wouldn’t try to eat a human. Trees are more his or her speed.
(I never really could blame the R.O.U.S.es–if I had to live in a Fire Swamp and eat nothing but icky Fire Swamp denizens covered with mud, I’d probably think Westley looked pretty tasty, too.)
Last December, I spent a couple weeks in the Caribbean, studying coral reefs and volcanoes (uh…they both have minerals in them?). At the time, I didn’t realize that we were there during a major bleaching event.
Bleaching occurs when unusually high ocean temperatures stress corals, causing either (a) the corals to expel their symbiotic algae or (b) the symbiotic algae to abandon ship. It’s one of the most visible consequences of global warming,* and one of the most scary, given how vital our oceans are to the planet’s health–not to mention our own.
And here we go again. The Caribbean has reached its annual high two months ahead of schedule. All it would take is one more degree in the next two months for a repeat of last year, which would be disastrous for still-recovering coral reefs.
Stressed reefs are also especially susceptible damage from storms, fertilizer runoff, and uncautious divers.
*Scientists usually hedge this one, but it’s the most likely explanation for freakishly warm ocean temperatures.
A Nature Conservancy-funded study to be published next month in the Journal of Environmental Management found that today’s kids prefer watching TV to seeing real things like trees, moose, and killer volcanoes.
“When children choose TVs over trees, they lose touch with the physical world outside,” said Steve McCormick, President and CEO of The Nature Conservancy. “A simulated waterfall can never compare with the wonder of Niagara Falls.”
Um…duh?
University of Illinois ecologist Oliver Pergams, the lead researcher, said that video games, home movie rentals, going out to movies, Internet use, and rising fuel prices explained almost 98 percent of the decline in people visiting national parks.
Now we’re getting somewhere. What percentage of that 98 percent is rising fuel prices, I wonder?* It seems to be one of the top two factors, judging by the press release. Not to mention that it’s parents who drive, and parents who make the ultimate decision about whether their kids will watch TV or go visit Yosemite.
Ironically, the other major story on InsideNPS today was about how visitors are increasingly walking up to the moose and doing other less-than-brilliant things and getting trampled, kicked in the head, and otherwise damaged by wildlife at national parks. Maybe they’re better off watching TV.
Seriously, though, this is depressing news.
Source: Nature Conservancy press release, 6 July 2006
*I’ll be looking for the article next month to find out, I guess.
I’ve briefly stated my qualified support for Wikipedia before; I think it’s a project with worthy goals, and their decision to require citations for all new articles and edits (and effort to revise older articles to meet the new standards) has greatly improved the quality of entries. I don’t have a problem using Wikipedia to look up a quick definition or date. But it does have some serious problems. The April 2006 issue of Geotimes had an article rather dramatically called Wikipedia v. Britannica: Reader Beware about a comparison published in Nature.
The average number of errors per entry was similar–4 for Wikipedia, 3 for the Encyclopaedia Britannica–but the errors in Britannica tended to be minor errors, such as slightly incorrect dates, rather than major errors, such as claiming that diploblasts do not have internal organs. You can see a comparison of the errors in the respective “Cambrian Explosion” entries in the web exclusive.
Wikipedia’s problems stem largely from the fact that anyone can edit entries. I suspect, although I have no proof, that most science entries are not written by scientists but by enthusiasts, who may not be aware of the subtleties or most recent developments in the field. I do support the right of enthusiasts to write about science–I am one–but we are not and will never be on a par with a scientist who has spent 40 years studying, say, Precambrian trilobites.
