FINE Things 50

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)

FINE Things 49

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)

FINE Things 48

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)

FINE Things 47

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)