Today I saw an image that reminded me of a recent newspaper article that discussed a proposal to introduce ‘foreign’ dung beetles into New Zealand. (I’m assuming it’s a follow-up to an earlier news item from 2009.)
Continue readingTag: ecology
beery bladders & other oddities
Beery bladders… yes, OK, if you drink enough beer your bladder will fill up, but that’s not the focus of a delightful post by Scicurious on Neurotic physiology. It’s a tale of how doctors followed their noses to find that several seriously ill patients had yeast infections – and a decidedly beery odour. And no, they […]
Continue readingour lives with dogs, & other interesting reading
I have a dog. As a result, papers to do with dogs tend to catch my eye 🙂 On his blog Neuroanthropology, Greg Downey reviews an upcoming book by Pat Shipman and discusses humanity’s long relationship with canines. Beginning with the point that "the first animals domesticated were not food sources, but a fellow predator and […]
Continue readingfungal parasites & zombie ants
Parasites are ubiquitous. I remember watching a video (years ago, while I was teaching at secondary school) about parasites that make humans their home. Lice, eyelash mites (yes, really!), various intestinal worms… I tell you, I had psychosomatic itching for days after seeing that! Then I got my hands on Carl Zimmer’s wonderful book, Parasite Rex – […]
Continue readinga solar salamander
This is a new story & potentially a very exciting one (& I must thank Grant for drawing this story to my attention!). A Nature News item (Petherick, 2010) describes the discovery of green algae apparently living within the cells of salamander embryos. I’ll wait with interest for the published paper, but if this finding’s […]
Continue readingnorthern rata – first it’s an epiphyte, then it’s not
Last year’s Level 3 paper on ‘plant responses & animal behaviour’ (AS 90716) had a question on northern rata – rather a lovely tree; I remember that we had one on our section back in Wairoa, when I was a kid. For some reason that tree & the big totara next to it had been left […]
Continue readingarctic foxes in arctic winters
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 readinga 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 reading