1. Can moving threatened species from one location to another actually be detrimental? Could conservationists be spreading parasites and/or diseases? (link)

2. Coffee is dominated by one species, C. arabica. But arabica plants do not grow well at higher temperatures, such as those expected under climate change. Another species of coffee can tolerate higher temperatures and its beans seem to be as flavorful. (link)

3. Environmental DNA – how a tool used to detect endangered wildlife ended up helping fight the COVID-19 pandemic. (link)

4. 142 years ago, a professor at Michigan State buried a large number of bottles. Each bottle contained 50 seeds of 21 different kinds of plants. His purpose was to see how long the seeds remained viable. Initially, every 5 years one bottle would be dug up and the seeds tested. Later the interval was extended to 20 years. This year another bottle was unearthed. (link)

5. Antibiotics and the Foods We Eat. When it comes to the animals that humans raise to eat, a quick look at their numbers proves sobering. Worldwide, there are some 650 million pigs, 1 billion heads of cattle and 26 billion chickens. Such numbers cannot be achieved by traditional animal rearing practices that use extensive surface areas. (link)

6. No Transgenerational Effects of Chernobyl Radiation Found, The genomes of the children of people exposed to fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear accident appear to carry no trace of the incident. (link)

7. What a Video Game Can Reveal About Monkeys’ Minds. Researchers find that the animals can account for others’ behavior and circumstances in their strategies.
(link)

8. Interactive Infographic: How Salt Transforms Coastal Forests. Rising sea levels are pushing salty tides and storm surges farther inland, leading to the forest death and a shift from forested habitats to marsh. (link)

9. DNA of Giant ‘Corpse Flower’ Parasite Surprises Biologists. The bizarre genome of the world’s most mysterious flowering plants shows how far parasites will go in stealing, deleting and duplicating DNA. (link)

10. All the world’s penguins in one short video! (link)

11. Will reforestation offset our carbon emissions? (link)

12. Naturally GMO: Crops steal genes from other species to accelerate evolution. Grass crops borrow genes from their neighbors, giving them a competitive advantage, a new study has revealed. (link)

13. Bile and Potatoes, 1921. One hundred years after its invention, BCG has stood the test of time as a vaccine against tuberculosis. (link)

14, Radiolab podcast featuring a 17 year Periodical Cicada song segment begins at 9:50. (link)

1. Some Magnolia flowers have built-in heaters. (link)

2. Michigan State botanist Beronda Montgomery this month published a book that explores what plant behaviors and adaptations can teach people. In an article for The Conversation, she creates a rich picture of how plants can communicate, share resources among themselves and fungi, and self-isolate when necessary. (link)

3. The New Historian of the Smash That Made the Himalayas.
About 60 million years ago, India plowed into Eurasia and pushed up the Himalayas. But when Lucía Pérez-Díaz reconstructed the event in detail, she found that its central mystery depended on a broken geological clock. (link)

4. Why Earth’s Cracked Crust May Be Essential for Life.
Life needs more than water alone. Recent discoveries suggest that plate tectonics has played a critical role in nourishing life on Earth. The findings carry major consequences for the search for life elsewhere in the universe. (link)

5. Researchers identify a bacterium that enables its host to breathe nitrate instead of oxygen. (link)

6. Years after Marie Curie won her second Nobel prize, she couldn’t afford a gram of radium, the element she codiscovered. It cost today’s equivalent of $1.3 million. This podcast recounts how a magazine editor named Marie Meloney raised the money in small donations from women around the US – enough to buy a fresh gram of radium for Curie’s research and to establish a trust fund for the scientist and her daughters, one of whom would go on to earn a Nobel Prize of her own. (There’s a transcript if you can’t listen.) (link)

7. Rosemary recommends this Zoom recording that discusses the history of alpha-gal sensitivity: how it was discovered and the ensuing problems it presents to medical practice. (link)

8. From The Guardian: Just 3% of world’s ecosystems remain intact, study suggests. Pristine areas in the Amazon and Siberia may expand with animal reintroductions, scientists say. (link)

9. Another piece from The Guardian. ‘A poor man’s rainforest’: why we need to stop treating soil like dirt. The mysterious world under our feet is under threat. Protecting it is as vital as tackling the climate crisis, scientists warn. (link)

10. Pharma and the US government plan for covid-19 booster shots. It’s unclear how long protections against infection will last from the initial vaccinations. People could need booster shots, but only time will tell. (link)

11, Gary Crider recommended: Ants that can regrow their brains. (link)

12. Those mysterious “Fairy Circles” are back in the news with a new hypothesis of how they are formed, at least in Australia. Known for years only in Namibia, the Australia proposal could be different from how they are formed in Namibia. (link)

13. Find an earlier summary of the causes of Fairy Circles here.

1. Rosemary liked this video of a scarlet siphonophore. (A siphonophore is in the phylum Cnidaria (jellyfish, sea anemones, corals, Hydra, siphonopores (think Portuguese Man-of-war)). (link)

2. Are Huge Tree Planting Projects More Hype than Solution? High-profile programs aimed at planting billions of trees are being launched worldwide. But a growing number of scientists are warning that these massive projects can wreck natural ecosystems, dry up water supplies, damage agriculture, and push people off their land. (link)

3. Kelp Pathogen Has Spread Across the Southern Ocean. (link)

4. Got Cicadas? Take a Picture and Help Entomologists Map Their Arrival. Periodical cicadas will emerge soon in N. Georgia. Here’s a chance to help scientists determine their exact distribution. (link)

5. Early Humans’ Brains Were More Apelike than Modern. Impressions that ancient brains left in fossilized skulls reveal that the first human ancestors to migrate out of Africa had much more primitive brains than previously thought. (link)

6. Bees in Your Backyard; an Intro to Bee Diversity in the U.S.; webinar with author and biologist Olivia Carril, coauthor of the book. (link)

7. I found this webinar really interesting: Intro to Phenology with Denise Ellsworth. A webinar about phenology and how to develop one for your area, using Ohio as an example. (link)

8. Ted LaMontagne likes this story by UGA graduate student James Chapin. It’s about Florida’s role as a beachhead for invasive species. (link)

9. Local honey is often recommended as a treatment for hay fever. Does it have any effect? (link)

10. A world in a bottle of water. Revolutionary techniques using traces of environmental DNA are analyzing entire ecosystems “from microbes to whales.” (link)

11. Animal culture is so common that even fish and flies have it. (link)

12. Bees learn to play golf and show off how clever they really are. (link)

13. Human-like intelligence in animals is far more common than we thought. Stories of clever animals abound, from pigs playing video games to monkeys trading mobile phones – now tests reveal that they don’t merely act on instinct but can think flexibly, like us. (link)

14. Invasive earthworms, invasive plants and their effects on native species. (link)

15. How a Carnivorous Mushroom Poisons Its Prey. Scientists have known for decades that oyster mushrooms feasted on roundworms-and they’ve finally figured out how their toxins work. (link)

16. Crown-shyness, tree crowns avoid colliding in 3D. A new metric quantifies the “puzzle-shape-ness” of tree crowns. (link)

1. Rosemary recommended this article: There are seed banks that are storing seeds to preserve present and past crop genetic diversity. Little did they know that they are also storing fungi that may be essential for the plant’s viability. (link)

2. Invasive Species Found In Pet Store Product: We Need Your Help! Zebra mussels have been found in an aquarium product called Moss Balls. If you have an aquarium and have used this product you need to check the moss for mussels. (link)

3. In FINE Things 42 I placed a link to Doug Tallamy’s webinar presentation about Oaks, based on his new book, The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees Hardcover. Now a garden writer has summarized Tallamy’s book in the New York Times. (link)

4. Using fake news to protect breeding shorebirds, (link)

5. Green coffee is truly for the birds. (link)

6. Where Dung Beetles perch and why. (link)

7. Heads or Tails? Dung Beetle Attraction to Carrion. (It happened in Kansas.) (link)

8. Fresh Air interview with naturalist/conservationist Scott Weidensaul on migratory bird conservation. Recommended by Georgia Birders Online via Linda Chafin. (link)

9. From Hakai Magazine: The ocean faces many threats-climate change, pollution, and overfishing among them. But can all of the ocean’s woes be solved with one action-stop eating fish-as the new Netflix film Seaspiracy suggests? Within the scientific community, particularly among ocean conservation advocates, the film is largely seen as doing more harm than good-it ignores the inequity in fisheries throughout the world, makes sensational leaps while ignoring complexities and nuance, reinforces stereotypes, and ends with the notion that one action (veganism) will solve all of the ocean’s problems. On April 8 at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time, a panel of experts, will discuss the film. (link)

10. Jan Coyne recommends: Reforestation as a means of combating climate change is confronting a supply chain problem. Where are all the seedlings coming from? And where are all the seeds coming from? (link)

11. Rosemary likes: How do you find out what pollinates a Ghost Orchid? (link)

    1.Bald Eagles were dying of a mysterious disease.
Now the cause is identified by a team led by a UGA scientist. Here are two
versions, one from The Scientist, the other from The Atlantic (may be behind a
paywall).  

     2.Whiteflies can disable a plant toxin because
they have a gene that does the job. But it didn’t come from another whitefly.
Called horizontal transfer, it is not uncommon between insects and microbes,
but this is the first time it has been detected from a plant to an insect.
(link) 

    3. A webinar from Doug Tallamy, talking about Oaks, based on his latest book: The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees. Well worth the hour spent watching! (link)

    4. Ohio State Plants and Pollinators symposium. Five speakers, including Doug Tallamy. The others are less well known but real authorities. (link)
5. How a hidden world of fungi was discovered inside the world’s biggest seed bank. (link)

    6. Why do flowers smell? A curious kid’s explanation for kids of all ages. (link)

    7. I like to read book reviews to see if a book is of interest. Then I can look for it in a library or even purchase it (if I trust the reviewer’s judgement). Here’s a review of a book about the origin of wheat. What do you think? Would you read it? (link)

    8. Bob Ambrose brought my attention to this essay by Margaret Renkl: What You May Not Know About Those April Flowers. Americans have cultivated nonnative plants and flowers for so long, it has skewed our experience of spring. (link)

   9. Speaking of Bob Ambrose and poems, you should visit his website, Reflections in Poetry, (link)
      

1. Disturbing finds in the Greenland ice sheet. (link)

2. A blogger discovers why wooden shoes are practical after all. (link)

3. The definitive article about periodical cicadas, especially brood X. (link)

4. Jan Coyne recommends this thread on animals interrupting wildlife photographers. (link)

5. There’s a movement to make the Ocmulgee river corridor area into a national park and preserve. If you’re unfamiliar with the area read this article by Janisse Ray.
(link). The national park service has a page for public comment: (link). The public comment period ends March 26.

 A Rambler sent me the following comments: 

    There are over 400 NPS sites of various types, seven regional offices,
HQ in D.C., and every entity wants more staff and money to fulfill it’s
mission. When a new park is established, e.g. Flight 93 National
Memorial, Congress may or may not provide additional
staffing and funding, but require the NPS to “do more with less.”

    We are coming up on the 250th of the American Revolution. Kettle Creek
battlefield is now an “affiliated” are of the NPS.  It is a nice little spot,
good wildflowers, good county park. Many congressmen
has his/her little site to add to the NPS so they can tell the home
folks about the great park they have established.

    There are billions of dollars of current infrastructure needs in
existing parks. Visitation will be incredible after the Covid crisis is
over. We can spend fifty billion or so a year in A’stan, but the NPS
gets less than three billion.

    The NPS has not had a permanent director in over four years, just a series of temporaries. No way to run an organization.

    I could rant on, but from my view the current organization is in
desperate need of cash for annual operations, as well as special
projects such as infrastructure. Also a sore need for more high quality
personnel.

6. A Guardian article that summarizes recent research: sperm whales in 19th century shared ship attack information. Whalers’ logbooks show rapid drop in strike rate in north Pacific due to changes in cetacean behavior. (link) Here’s a link to the free research publication. (link)

7. Green bridges in Germany are keeping a growing gray wolf population – and their prey – safe. Road accidents account for over 75 percent of all known wolf mortality in Germany (link)

8. How did the bear cross the road? Wildlife corridor’s success caught on video. The important project allows safe movement for even some of the largest mammals in North America. (link)

9. Painting the blades of wind turbines helps birds avoid them A Norwegian study found avian fatalities fell 70 percent after painting one blade black. (link)

10. The next two articles are related: A weird underground plant has been rediscovered after 151 years. (link) 

11. Fairy lantern flower has a gaping ‘mouth’ and saps energy from fungi. (link)

12. Some frogs have noise-cancelling lungs to dampen other species’ calls. (link)

13. Planting a tree? Choose a native species and save some insects. (Be sure to read the comment by DeLisa). (link)

14. Tardigrades, natures great survivors. (link)

15. As climate changes, so does life in the planet’s soils. To understand what might be lost, ecologist Janet K. Jansson taps molecular methods to explore Earth’s underground microbes, from the permafrost to the grasslands. (link)

16. How is a frog’s tongue like a bottle of ketchup? First, read about the ketchup (link). Then listen to a podcast about frog saliva. (link)

1. My pick of the week: Talkative Bacteria and Eavesdropping Viruses. The molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler is deciphering the chemical languages that bacteria use to coordinate their assaults on a host. Don’t shy away from this – it’s not about chemistry. It’s a down-to-earth discussion with a passionate researcher who can simply explain what she does and why. It’s available as a podcast or a transcript, your choice. (link)

2. A BBC podcast: The Life Scientific. Inside the mind of a forensic botanist, Mark Spencer tells Jim Al-Khalili how plant evidence can help to solve crimes. (link)

3. How a plant in Mexico’s tropical forests revolutionized life for women. (link)

4. Pandemic reports for Georgia. Medical microbiologist Amber Schmidtke, Ph.D., has been posting very informative pieces on the progress of the pandemic in Georgia. You can see the current report at this link. They are lengthy, but informed and informative. If you want accurate explanations of everything related to the pandemic, her posts are the way to find it.

5. Earth is in the midst of an insect apocalypse, with thousands of species dwindling over the past several decades. Scientists have often blamed habitat loss or pesticide use. But a new study of butterflies in the western United States has found that warmer fall weather may be taking as big, if not a bigger, toll. (link)

6. This sea slug cut off its own head-and lived to tell the tale. (link)

7. Technological advances offer new ways to investigate the contribution that changing climate and genes have made in shaping past migrations by peregrine falcons. Can this help to predict the fate of future migrations? (link)

8. How science wiped out the invasive pink bollworm in the u.s. (link)

9. Richard Saunders recommends this NYT Sunday Review article: The Secret Life of a Coronavirus. It’s by Carl Zimmer, an outstanding science journalist and author of 13 books. (link)

10. In case you missed this: Is this the end of forests as we’ve known them? ‘Now’s a good time to go visit national parks with big trees.’ Trees lost to drought and wildfires are not returning. Climate change is taking a toll on the world’s forests – and radically changing the environment before our eyes. (link)

1 January warm spells, March freezes: How plants manage the shift from winter to spring. (link)

2 This Guardian article is a must-read: Is this the end of forests as we’ve known them? Trees lost to drought and wildfires are not returning. Climate change is taking a toll on the world’s forests – and radically changing the environment before our eyes. (link)

3 If you read the piece in FINE Things 38 about the “marshmallow test” you’ll be interested in this interview with the researcher. (If you didn’t read it, this is a better read.) Cuttlefish delay gratification, a sign of smarts. The cephalopods resisted temptation for up to 130 seconds to earn their favorite food, hinting at sophisticated cognitive abilities such as planning for the future. (link)

4 The essential fly. Think before you swat: The much-maligned fly could be the key to ensuring future supplies of many of the world’s favorite foods. (link)

5 Recommended by Lili Ouzts: Yaupon: The rebirth of America’s forgotten tea. It is North America’s only known native caffeinated plant and once threatened the British East India Company. So why has the world forgotten about it? (link)

6 Pokeweed (AKA Poke sallet) is a green that’s toxic if prepared incorrectly. This forgotten food of the American South was a dietary staple throughout Appalachia and the US South for generations. (link)

7 Recommended by Rosemary Woodel: Optical illusion; ship hovering above the sea. (link)

8 If you’re confused about vaccine efficacy read this New York Times explanation. (link)

9 Here’s a NYT podcast (and a transcript) with science journalist Carl Zimmer. It’s about the pandemic and what awaits us this spring and summer. (link)

10 How the Silverswords of Hawaii evolved from a single seed, carried by a Golden Plover from California. Plus, what it means to be a “native” plant. (link)

11 2021 is a year when 17-yr. cicadas emerge in N. Georgia. This website has a lot of cicada information, great photos and even information about preventing damage to your trees. Return of periodical cicadas in 2021: Biology, Plant Injury and Management by Michael J. Raupp, Ph.D. (link)

12 Another great site for exploring information about cicadas. (link)

13 Rosemary Woodel recommends: How goats (and perhaps people) make up their minds. (link)

Continue reading →

Zoological Society of London Podcast: Habitat loss and human health – understanding the links between ecosystem degradation and infectious disease outbreaks. Look for podcast ZSL #31. The second speaker was born and raised in Athens, GA. She’s the daughter of Rambler Lynn Faust. (link)

How do geese know how to fly south for the winter? A combination of landscapes, stars, and experience guide the geese & gander migrations. (link)

Concerns that captive breeding affects the ability of monarch butterflies to migrate. (link)

Peregrine falcon migration, is it genetic? (link)

The search for animals that harbor Corona virus and why it is important. (link) Continue reading →