I saw a news story today on a bacterium that can withstand very high radiation exposure, freezing cold, & exposure to vacuum. Cool stuff. Said bacterium isn’t alone in this, mind you, as I know from my colleague Allan Green that lichens have had much the same treatment, shot up into space & reviving once in […]
Continue readingCategory: ecology
a sponge makes the top 10
Sponges are strange organisms – classified as animals, they definitely look the odd one out. I rather like them: no real tissue development, no organs, immobile, & a growth habit that looks distinctly plant-like. Instead, what you get is an organism formed from just a few types of loosely-organised cells, all sitting (& moving) on […]
Continue readingthink before you write (or at least, before you hand it in)
I’ve spent a lot of time lately marking essays from my first-year students. For many of them, this may be the first essay they’ve written in a while, & along with getting their heads around the essay-writing process, they’ve also got to come to terms with the academic environment that they’re working in. That means: […]
Continue readingmore on bone-eating snotworms – the fossil years
A while back I wrote about some fascinating little deep-sea creatures – the ‘bone-eating snot-worms’ (Osedax sp.) that colonise the corpses of dead whales falling to the ocean floor. Now Brian Switek, over on Laelaps, has reviewed a paper suggesting that this bone-boring habit has been around for millions of years. The evidence is in the […]
Continue readingarmed and dangerous…
… the intriguing title of a brief news item in the latest edition of Science. The story (anon, 2010) outlines some of the most serious plant & fungal threats to agricultural production. One of them is the potato blight fungus, Phytophthora infestans. The leaves & stems of an infected plant blacken & fall, & the tubers […]
Continue readingavatar
The family finally got its act together & went to see Avatar. In 3D 🙂 (Actually our act was arranged by friends, who also organised us into an al fresco meal of fish’n’chips beforehand.) I carefully didn’t read anything much about the movie before I went, so I’m aware that what I’ve got to say has probably been said before – but […]
Continue readingcauliflory (but not with cheese)
Plants have a fascinating array of adaptations that function to maximise the odds of successful reproduction. Flamboyantly shaped & coloured flowers spring to mind, not to mention nectar rewards & attractive scents (which are not necessarily pleasant to the human nose, but then, Rafflesia isn’t out to attract us!). One of the more unusual adaptations is […]
Continue readinga wide froggy mouth – but not on a frog
When I was an undergraduate a joke about wide-mouthed frogs went the rounds… Frog mouths are quite interesting, actually. Look into that gape & you’ll see a tongue (which is rooted at the front of the mouth, allowing it a greater forward reach). Back of the tongue is the glottis, opening into the trachea, & […]
Continue readingcassowaries: crucial to rainforest ecology
This is the only photo we got of a cassowary, on our recent jaunt to Australia. (I’ll stop rubbing it in soon, I promise!). She was sitting in the corner of an enclosure at the Habitat in Port Douglas. Like our own kiwi, cassowaries belong to the ancient flightless group of birds known as ratites. Cassowaries […]
Continue readinggreat balls of sand
We went for quite a few walks on the beach while we were in Port Douglas, usually in the early morning before things got too hot! We were surprised by the near-total lack of shells washed up on the sand (the copious cuttle-fish ‘bones’ didnt’ count). And fascinated by the way that the sand between […]
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