1 Starlings were not only introduced to the United States, but also to South Africa and Australia. In each of these areas their numbers rapidly increased. Did they evolve in their new habitats? Are they genetically different from their ancestral populations? Read the answers here.
2 Did Guano Make The Inca The World's First Conservationists?
3 Fall has officially begun and now is the time when streams renew their food supply.
4 Orchids are known for their sexual deceptions. Some orchid flowers resemble female wasps. They attract male wasps that attempt to mate with the flower. In the process, bags of pollen become attached to the male and get transferred to the next orchid he attempts to mate with. This video has some stunning shots of the process. The presentation begins after about 5 mins. It's sort of technical in spots, but you'll learn some amazing things if you stick with it. Sexual deception in Australian Orchids Video (~45min).
5 Free, from the Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh, an online course on Plants and Climate Change
6 On Sept. 17 the UGA Dept. of Microbiology had a guest speaker, Dr. Joshua Weitz, speaking on: Dynamics of Covid-19: Near- and Long-Term Challenges. The seminar was recorded and is on the MIBO website under the "News" tab here. (You'll have to click on the photo of Dr. Weitz and then click in the "Read more" link.
7 Do Vultures and Condors Spread Diseases?
8 In non-fiction writing do we need to support every fact with a reference? What about things "everyone knows?" Example: "What are root hairs for?"
9 And, speaking of root hairs, are they more or less beneficial to a plant than mycorrhizal fungi? Here is a look at this question.
10 Here are two links about the same story, the discovery that some protists eat viruses. First, the NY Times piece; second, a more technical account.
Here's an explanation of some of the things mentioned in these two articles:
When most ramblers were in school the unicellular organisms were called "algae" and "protozoans." The algae were photosynthetic and the protozoans weren't. This proved unsatisfactory for a number of reasons: Some of the algae turned out to be photosynthetic bacteria and some of the photosynthetic algae had more in common with protozoans than they did with the other photosynthetic algae. With the advent of molecular genetics it became possible to determine the underlying similarity of these unicellular organisms. They turned out to be very dissimilar. So much so, that it became foolish to put them all in one taxonomic basket -- it was like calling cars, trucks, buses, hammers, stoves, microwaves, televisions and dishwashers appliances. So the protozoa and algae were split apart and recombined into a grab bag basket called the protists. The protists are split into about two dozen groups, one of which shares a common ancestry with land plants and another that shares a common ancestry with animals and fungi. The remaining groups have names that few people recognize, but include some organisms that you might remember if you took biology in high school: euglena, amoeba, paramecium, diatoms and other "protozoans."
One of these protist groups is called choanozoa (or choanoflagellates). They are unicellular, sometimes colonial, non-photosynthetic organisms. On end of the cell has a flagellum that is surrounded by a collar, which is what the "choan-" prefix refers to. The other end of the cell is stalk-like and can be attached to objects in the surrounding water. The choanozoa cells are very similar to the collar cells (choanocytes) in sponges. The sponge choanocytes create the water currents that move water into and out of the sponge. The choanocytes capture dissolved material as the water flows past them. It is thought that sponges may be super-colonial choanozoans that have additional cell types.
It is these choanozoans that seem to eat viruses. The other protist that is mentioned in the articles is called a picozoan. The name is a reference to its extremely small size; the picozoans are the smallest known eukaryotic cells (cells with a nucleus), which is why they were only discovered a few decades ago.
Because viral DNA was found associated with individual choanozoans and individual picozoanas it was thought that they had actually eaten the virus.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.
