The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
The second is by the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu:
What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.
Here are this weeks FINE Things:
Keeping with the butterfly theme, one species, the Large Blue, had been extinct in Britain for 150 years. Recently it has been restored and the story demonstrates that you can't just plop a species down and expect it to survive.
We think of the caterpillars of moths and butterflies as committed herbivores. But, here in eastern NA, there is a carnivorous butterfly known as the Harvester. The caterpillar feeds on aphids. It's the only carnivorous caterpillar known in the continental US. But in Hawaii there are numerous species of carnivorous moth caterpillars in the genus Eupithecia. You can read about them here and see one in action here.
750 Million GM mosquitoes will be released in the Florida Keys.
What could we learn from the history of the 1918 influenza epidemic? Watch this video.
The gardeners among you probably already know this, but a New Yorker article advocates The therapeutic power of gardening.
With future population growth plus climate change we can expect food security to become more and more important. We'll not only have to change our current crops to adapt to new conditions, we'll have to change the things we eat. Perennial vegetables may play a role in this adaptation. A recent study surveys these vegetables and is reported on in this article:
Perennial Vegetables Are a Solution in the Fight Against Hunger and Climate Change
The world is a muddy place, but it wasn't always that way. Knowable magazine explores The Origin of Mud. "For most of Earth's history, hardly any of the mucky stuff existed on land. It finally started piling up around 458 million years ago, changing life on the planet forever."
Most ramblers will remember that many of the spring wild flowers produce seeds with nutritious "handles" (called elaiosomes) that attract ants. The ants carry the seeds to their nest, feed the elaiosome to their larvae and discard the seed. That much is known. A virtual Ecological Society of America meeting this month updated our knowledge of this ant-plant symbiosis. It is beautifully summarized by science writer Elizabeth Pennisi in this very accessible article.
The world is a muddy place, but it wasn't always that way. Knowable magazine explores The Origin of Mud. "For most of Earth's history, hardly any of the mucky stuff existed on land. It finally started piling up around 458 million years ago, changing life on the planet forever."
Most ramblers will remember that many of the spring wild flowers produce seeds with nutritious "handles" (called elaiosomes) that attract ants. The ants carry the seeds to their nest, feed the elaiosome to their larvae and discard the seed. That much is known. A virtual Ecological Society of America meeting this month updated our knowledge of this ant-plant symbiosis. It is beautifully summarized by science writer Elizabeth Pennisi in this very accessible article.
That's all for this week.
Dale
