When food was scarce, the team found that the spiders built larger webs to improve their chances of catching prey, but at the expense of the plants.
BBC News – Plants and spiders ‘compete for the same food supply’.
Abstract from Proceedings of the Royal Society B is here.
Wow – that was fun. Up early to run dogs and then off to the southwestern corner of NH, where the cacti and mesas frolic (or not). First stop was at Callahan & Co. Booksellers to sell some dupe/no longer needed sporting books. Hard to imagine, but I came out of Mr. Callahan’s barn upside down (I spent more than he paid me).
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From there to the Toadstool in Peterborough to see the Noted Nature Writer do a talk and book signing event. I got there early, so first I had some pie for breakfast:
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And did a little looking around:
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The talk was wonderful – from there the posse went to Deering where I helped put new bracelets on a gos, much hawking was talked and I met more interesting people. Back home, another dog run – they’re all fast asleep now – and that’s it for me!
Lotte and I went in search of cottontails yesterday, after work. We didn’t find any but she got more experience working heavy cover and a bunch of exercise (didn’t stop her from carrying on with the shorthairs when we got home, though).
I did find a huge patch of trout lilies.
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And a couple leg bones. I’m assuming they’re from a whitetail – I need to do a little more nosing around to figure out which bones. Regardless, they’re a matched set; one shows evidence of healed trauma. Infection? Bullet wound? Break (I don’t think so, but what do I know)?
Mirror images.
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The uninjured bone.
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Ouch.
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I’m thinking about making a flute from the uninjured bone. I’ll stick with a pennywhistle when I attempt to form up the Innsmouth Drum and Whistle Corps for the Halloween parade, but the bone flute would be fun to fool with.
Via a retweet from @bibliodyssey, an addition to the blogroll – Next Nature. I knew I’d hit paydirt when I saw that the most recent post talked about aurochs and Heck cattle – a topic we’ve visited here previously. On (to the blogroll) you go!
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Over at Ride the Machine – one of my favorite two-wheeler blogs – s.a. has posted some great Velocette (not to be confused with velocet – or drencrom) cover art.
I love this one for the aeroplane, the pants (plus-fours? maybe even plus-sixes?) and the mystery of what the heck is going on. Courier? Passenger checking in, as a motorcycle valet rushes in (out of frame)?
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The way the ‘L’ and the ‘TT” (Tourist Trophy) are used is wonderful.
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On a personal note – I had a wonderful time Tuesday and Wednesday – Noted Nature Writer was in town to do a talk/signing event at a great local indie bookstore. We had a great time discussing birds and frogs and spiders and…
That’s Sy, waaaay back at the table.
The complete mitochondrial DNA genome of an unknown hominin from southern Siberia : Nature.
Here we report a complete mitochondrial (mt) DNA sequence retrieved from a bone excavated in 2008 in Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia. It represents a hitherto unknown type of hominin mtDNA that shares a common ancestor with anatomically modern human and Neanderthal mtDNAs about 1.0 million years ago. This indicates that it derives from a hominin migration out of Africa distinct from that of the ancestors of Neanderthals and of modern humans. The stratigraphy of the cave where the bone was found suggests that the Denisova hominin lived close in time and space with Neanderthals as well as with modern humans.
Hobbit version 2.0: the undiscovered hominin
As my students have heard me say many, many times, gene trees are not species trees. The different genetic loci within a population have diverse genealogies. Often, when two populations diverge from each other, their gene genealogies will show similar patterns of divergence. But not always.
When we look within a single population, gene genealogies are likewise diverse. but within a single population, there is no population divergence. There must be an oldest branch point in the genealogy of any single gene. Here’s a question: how many individuals do you have to sample so that you are sure you will find this deepest branch point? The answer to that question depends on the frequencies of the lineages on either side of that branch. If one of them happens to be rare, you’re unlikely to find it unless you sample lots and lots of individuals.
And if the population is spread across a substantial amount of space, it is very likely that one of the clades will be geographically limited compared to the other.
Put these two things together, and apply them to a widespread population like the Neandertals. It is pretty likely that if we sample a dozen Neandertals across a subset of their range, that we will miss the deepest divergence in the genealogy of a single gene. That may be what has happened here. By extending the known mitochondrial sample of Neandertals even further to the east, this study may have discovered a deeper branch point than was previously known within the Neandertal population.
Indeed, a million-year-old clade divergence would be entirely normal for a large mammal. That’s what we see in chimpanzees, and as I pointed out yesterday, it’s smaller than the clade divergence we see among mammoth mtDNA across a similar time range and geographic extent.
In this case, at least, plastic needlepoint mesh has shown itself to be a suck substrate for Java moss. After seven months of very little progress, I decided to re-do the back wall of my West African stream tank. I ordered a random selection of driftood from AES and picked up a couple pieces of red lava rock.
Layout:
The masked-off section to the left is space that needs to stay free for the filter plenum.
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Foamed in (hooray for Handi-Foam!):
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Detail – with placeholder hose section – of where the water will return to the tank, producing a nice waterfall/drip wall.
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The waterfall in action with unidentified W. African fern, Bolbitis heudelotii and Anubias:
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More Anubias, some African begonia and an Aeranges biloba:
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The tank looks 100% better and I think it’ll only improve as the begonia grows in and covers everything – I’ll post some pix once things start to grow.
There’s a lot more going on beneath those huge sheets of Antarctic ice than you might think. NASA researchers say they uncovered a major surprise in December: The team drilled an eight-inch hole and stuck a video camera 600 feet down, hoping to observe the underbelly of the thick ice sheet. To their amazement, a curious critter swam into view and clung to the video camera’s cable [Washington Post].
Not all bettas are bubble-nest builders (in fact, not all bettas are the long finned fish you see in little tiny bowls at the pet store). I have a trio of Betta macrostoma; they are, like many stream-dwelling bettas, mouthbrooders. Yesterday the female went from having a rounded belly to being quite slim – at the same time, the dominant male’s throat expanded. Keep your fingers crossed – this is attempt #2 for them and I wouldn’t be surprised if it took a couple more attempts for the male to get it right.
Apologies for the poor picture quality. I was trying to just snap a couple quickly; I didn’t want to raise too much of a ruckus.
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The etsy hat – not my fave.
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This one, that illustrated the Regretsy post though – great!
Naming things, categorizing them and distinguishing them from each other is an essential human activity. It’s not an exclusively human thing, but I’m betting we’re the only ones that can categorize the same object in abstract, multiple ways and then discuss it. Categories/distinctions are a double-edged sword; they can illuminate and they can obscure. One of my least favorite distinctions is between ‘the human world’ and ‘the natural world’ – as if people can stand outside the systems that run the planet. We are just another variety of critter – an unusual and very successful one – but critters nonetheless.
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Amy Stein’s Domesticated series looks at our efforts to enforce the human/natural split. I chose Watering Hole for this post because there are so many mutually reinforcing messages. There’s the vulnerable girl on the diving board. There’s the chain link fence that the girl’s folks put up to keep things out. And there’s the bear. In the Domesticated dioramas, Ms. Stein uses mounts from a taxidermist in Matamoras, Pennsylvania – the town where all the Domesticated scenes are set. Hunter’s (as opposed to museum) taxidermy mounts are often an attempt to freeze a moment and are also opportunity to manipulate that moment. The percentages are that the black bear was not standing when the hunter shot it but a standing mount is impressive and the taxidermist can make the bear appear to be curious, quiet or fierce. We can’t see the bear’s expression; we’re left to assign to the bear whatever expression we need, just as the taxidermist was free to to fit the bear to the hunter’s wishes. When we look across the categorical fence we’ve created at the ‘natural world’ on the other side we see what we want to see.
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The talk that Ms. Stein and Stephen DeStefano gave at the Harvard Museum of Natural History was excellent (video above). Dr. DeStefano works with suburban and urban ecosystems: “You might be living in the biggest city in the world and you’re part of an ecosystem. You’re not separate from that, no matter how big the city.” At 23:30 or so Dr. DeStefano puts up a population slide that looks something like:
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“A biologist that looks at this growth curve says, well that population is imminently going to crash.” It’s all connected and the rules apply to everything. The sooner we knock down that chain link fence and see ourselves as a part of the landscape, a part of the ecosystem, the better.
A report on the Stein/DeStefano discussion to follow soon, I promise…
Pickled Coelacanth
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Chinese Water Deer
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The redone Hall of Mammals
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…and one for Steve
