Here are the links to articles and videos for this week’s FINE Things. Let me know which ones you enjoyed the most and I’ll try to find similar types next week.

Sea Otter preening Photo by “Mike” Michael L. Baird, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

How Sea Otters keep warm in the frigid Pacific waters: [link]

From Science magazine: German forests have been devastated by drought and fires. What lessons can be learned from their experience? [link]

From The Scientist Daily: Ancient and modern human genomes reveal that a variant of the human growth hormone receptor likely helped our ancestors survive when food was scarce. [link]

From Knowable Magazine: Around the world, marine creatures from the smallest to the largest rise from the depths after dark to eat and reproduce. When the great vertical migration reverses before daybreak, the organisms bring carbon from the upper ocean into the deep sea, and scientists are working to disentangle what motivates these important movements. [link] 

From the New Humanitarian: Bangladesh’s annual monsoon rainfalls submerge lowland areas for months on end. But in the rural southern district of Pirojpur the crops rise with the floodwaters. [link]

Your metabolism and what it means. [link]

Is ethanol production worth it? [link]

The genes vampires lost. [link] 

 
Why the ocean needs salt. [link]

David Miller recommended a video on Plate Tectonics: [link]

From Quanta magazine: Wildfires can have mixed effects on ecosystems. [link]

From Knowable Magazine: Why there’s no such thing as pristine nature. [link]

Until next week,

Dale

A male Glassfrog guards his eggs. photo by by Juan Camilo Manquillo Franco, Wikimedia Commons

Hi Ramblers!
I thought it would be appropriate to continue FINE Things while we’re on hiatus. Just to refresh your memories, FINE stands for Fun, Interesting, Novel and Exciting articles and videos available on the internet.

If you come across any on-line, nature, science or environmental resources that you think other Ramblers would enjoy, send me the links and I’ll share them with everyone.
Here are the FINE Things for this week:

Linda recommends this article about “imping.” If you don’t know what that is (I didn’t), read this article from the StarTribune.

Ed Wilde and Emily recommend this article about a suburban Long Island couple who have given up their lawns, replacing them with native perennials.

Science writer Carl Zimmer  talks about whether viruses are alive or not. You will learn some mind-blowing things about viruses. (link to video)

Embryos of many different animals listen to their environment and react to the things they hear. [link]

That’s all for now. I’ll post some more links next week.

This old Oak in Alexandria, VA, is producing two crops this year. The first is the mass of periodical cicada “shells” at the base of the tree. (The second crop will be the acorns in the fall.) Photo courtesy of a Rambler’s relative in VA.

1, A Black scientist was an early cicada researcher. His work has been mostly overlooked. [This website also has a short podcast on the same subject] (link)

2, The Lysenko affair (link)

3. Fewer car crashes with deer in Wisconsin, perhaps thanks to wolves. In areas where gray wolf populations have grown, motorists have fewer collisions with deer, likely due to the predators keeping deer away from roadways. (link)

4. Rosemary passed this on: Wonderful video showing how Hydra regenerates. (link)

5, 6, 7. California pipevine swallowtail and its relation to the California pipevine. We have the same species of swallowtail here in Georgia, but different pipevines. (link)
More about the California pipevine swallowtail here: (link)
Meet the scientist who’s been counting California butterflies for 47 years and has no plans to stop. (link)

8. The Quiet Rescue of America’s Forgotten Fruit. One man is responsible for roughly half of the country’s stone fruit collection. (link)

9. Planting for Pollinators: Native pollinators are facing growing threats. Here are some fun and easy ways you can help them! (link)

10. A Gene Facilitates the Evolution of an Animal Weapon. A single gene regulates not only the size and proportions of a water strider’s massively long third legs, but also how it uses the limbs in fights. (link)

11. The origin and rapid diversification of flowering plants is a
long-standing “abominable mystery”, as Charles Darwin put it. Part of
the puzzle – the origin of the protective covering of flowering-plant
seeds – is nearing resolution. (link) 

12. An absolutely wonderful film about fungi. Time-lapse photography, brilliant colors, shapes, sizes, glow in the dark fungi. Don’t miss this! It will be one best half hours you’ve spent. (Thank you, Kathy Stege.) (link)

1. Ted recommends this article with videos: Why Your Kid Likes Comparing Neptune to a Dust Mite. (link)

2. Eugenia recommends this article about microplastics. (link)
 

3. Linda recommends this article about duckweed. And so do I. (link)
 

4. At Mating Time, These Ants Carry Their Young Queen to a Neighbor’s Nest — The royal matchmaking service may help these insects avoid inbreeding. (link)

5. Recommended by Linda: Global Cactus Traffickers Are Cleaning Out the Deserts — A recent raid in Italy involving rare Chilean species highlights the growing scale of a black market in the thorny plants. (link)

7. Hitchhiking with Bloodworms. Invasive species are sneaking around the world, nestled in the seaweed used to ship bait worms. An easy solution exists, but the industry is resisting change. (link)

8. If you read the article above you might be interested to know that bloodworm is also the common name for the aquatic larval stage of a non-biting midge, an insect. (link)

9. How a bearded dragon STI controlled the minds of a cricket colony. The discovery, made by accident, tells us about insects’ behavior and gives insight into our own. (link)

10. Mating plugs and other weird butterfly sex habits. Male butterflies want monogamy. Females, not so much. (link)

11. There’s a neurological reason you say ‘um’ when you think of a word. These little utterances, called disfluencies, can shed light about what’s going on in the brain as we speak. (link)

12. Controversial forestry experiment will be largest-ever in United States. At the Elliott State Forest in Oregon, researchers will explore how best to balance timber production with conservation. (link)

13. How much can forests fight climate change? Trees are supposed to slow global warming, but growing evidence suggests they might not always be climate saviours. (link)

14. Sleep Evolved Before Brains. Hydras Are Living Proof. Studies of sleep are usually neurological. But some of nature’s simplest animals suggest that sleep evolved for metabolic reasons, long before brains even existed. (link)

15. Two New Coronaviruses Make the Leap into Humans —Two viruses from dogs and pigs were isolated from human patients, but neither was proven to cause severe disease or to transmit to other people. (link)

16. Long time Ramblers may remember two Witch Hazels next to the sidewalk in the Shade Garde. Each year we point out the Witch Hazel conical leaf galls that are either green or red in color. We finally have an answer to what makes the color difference: an aphid salivary gene may regulate gall color. (link)

17. Fireflies need dark nights for their summer light shows – here’s how you can help. (link)

A Multipurpose Gene Facilitates the Evolution of an Animal Weapon. A single gene called BMP11 regulates not only the size and proportions of a water strider’s massively long third legs, but also how it uses the limbs in fight. (link)

Warming is clearly visible in new US ‘climate normal’ datasets. The US is shifting to a new set of climate ‘normals’ – data sets averaged over the past 30 years. But normal is a relative concept in a time of climate change. (link)

 
Mushroom That Eats Plastic May Help in Fight Against Plastic Waste, Pestalotiopsis microspora can turn polyurethane into organic material, naturally (link)

Pollen is not plant sperm.(link)

 
This Old Bee House: Study Deems Hive Boxes Drafty, Inefficient. (link)

Plant Story–Ground Ivy, Creeping Charlie, Glechoma hederacea. This post from one of my favorite Botanical bloggers tells you most of what you’d want to know about this pest of lawn and garden. It also used to preserve beer. (link)

 
Just when you think you’ve read about the most bizarre animal along comes Ramisyllis. It lives inside wild sponges, but that’s not what makes it so unusual. I won’t spoil it for you. You’ll have to visit the website to see the FINE animal of the week, maybe of all the FINE posts. (FINE stands for Fun, Interesting, Novel, Exciting.)(link) 

Think the 17 yr. periodical cicadas are strange? Ace sience writer Ed Yong (The Atlantic) tells us about the microbes that the periodical cicadas must host. It is, paraphrasing J. B. S. Haldane: “Not only is nature stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.” (link)

Firefly Tourism Can Put Insects in Peril. A new study shines light on how bug spray, flashlights, and foot traffic can spell disaster for the fragile creatures behind brilliant synchronous displays. (link)

Nature Curiosity: Why and How Do Turtles Breathe With Their Butts? (link)

And, just to let you know, even mammals can breathe through their intestines. (link)

1. First US Field Test of Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Begins in Florida. After years of push back, the first batch of Oxitec’s engineered mosquitoes, designed to reduce population numbers, have been released in the Keys. (link)

2. Mixing It Up in the Web of Life. Many types of marine plankton are either animal-like or plant-like. But a huge number are both, and they are upending ideas about ocean ecology. (link)

3. Picozoans Are Algae After All. Phylogenomics data place the enigmatic plankton in the middle of the algal family tree, despite their apparent lack of plastids — an organelle characteristic of all other algae. (link)

4. Opinion: Western Canada Must Stop Clearcutting Its “Mother” Trees. Feeding the world’s insatiable appetite for wood products is sacrificing the future of a crucial ecosystem. (link)

5. Book Excerpt from Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard. In the book’s introduction, “Connections,” Suzanne Simard relates how her “perception of the woods has been turned upside down.” (link)

6. Fatal attraction to light at night pummels insects. Summary only; the rest of the article is behind a pay wall. (link)

7. How many Giraffe species are there? A new study suggests four. (link)

8. What is ethical beekeeping and why should we care? An excellent, lengthy discussion of many aspects of beekeeping in relation to other people and other bees. (link)

9. The climate solution actually adding millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. New research shows that California’s climate policy created up to 39 million carbon credits that aren’t achieving real carbon savings. But companies can buy these forest offsets to justify polluting more anyway. (link)

10. This recommendation comes from Rosemary Woodell. It’s an effusive meditation on a new book about hummingbirds, by Sy Mongomery, the author of The Soul of An Octopus.  (link)

11. Parasitic plants often share a common structure, the haustorium, that connects them to their host plant. But is it a root? Or a stem? Find out what is known about this structure. (link)

12. Secrets of the dead wood: ancient oaks hold key to new life. (link)

1, Eyes on the deep. Decades of exploring the seafloor have helped UGA professor and oceanographer Samantha Joye tackle marine issues – from the underwater movement of oil from Deepwater Horizon to the biology of remote microbial communities. (link)

2. Beware Of Humans. We – not animals – are the coronavirus carriers now. (link)

3. Preventing the next pandemic: Exploring the origins and spread of animal viruses. EVENT: Watch Knowable Magazine’s conversation about how infectious agents are transmitted from one species to another, and what can be done to prevent future pandemics. (link)

4. Show me you care: female mate choice based on egg attendance rather than male or territorial traits. (link)

5. Thriving Together: Salmon, Berries, and People: The salmonberry plant has nourished and healed Indigenous communities of the Pacific Northwest coast for countless generations, but its significance goes far beyond its value as food. (link)

6. A Tiny Gecko with a Big Personality and Even Bigger Problem. In the United States, the Florida reef gecko could be the most vulnerable reptile to sea level rise. (link)

7. Can Single Cells Learn? A controversial idea from the mid-20th century is attracting renewed attention from researchers developing theories for how cognition arises with or without a brain. (link)

8. Hybrid Animals Are Not Nature’s Misfits. In the 20th century, animals such as mules and ligers that had parents of different species were considered biological flukes, but genetic sequencing is beginning to unravel the critical role of hybridization in evolution. (link)

9. Some Viruses Use an Alternative Genetic Alphabet. In a trio of studies, researchers follow up on a 40-year-old finding that certain bacteriophages replace adenine with so-called diaminopurine, perhaps to avoid host degradation. (link)

10. When Pursuing Prey, Bats Tune Out the World. As they close in for the kill, the flying mammals use quieter echolocation to focus on the chase. (link)

11. Bill to Greatly Expand Wolf Hunting in Idaho Heads to Governor
If signed, the law would boost funding for independent contractors to kill wolves and would allow for more than 90 percent of the population in the state to be taken by hunters. (link)

12. Why we faint and other animals don’t. (link)

13. More about Periodical Cicada broods and mapping. (link)

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)