What I would have the US (and other G20 govts) do to protect biodiversity

A few days ago, I noted a call for concrete actions that G20 nations can take to protect biodiversity, made by Guillaume Chapron and George Monbiot through the Guardian. Ever since a friend alerted me about this call on twitter, and nagged me to respond, I've been scratching my head and mulling over options that fit the criteria (scientifically supported; concrete action achievable over reasonable timeframe; with significant political costs). Given the list of G20 nations (which include both my home country of India and my current home, the US) and the huge amounts of damage they are causing to biodiversity individually and collectively, I could think of a number of things that must be done, and that fit those criteria. As I'm sure most of you can as well. So which one to pick? And which one was not likely to be picked by too many others (assuming there would be redundancies)?

After going back and forth over this (with a brain slowed down by a severe cold/fever over the weekend), and reading a bunch of papers and websites, I finally submitted my suggestion a short while ago. It is a concrete legislative action based on solid scientific evidence that can have far reaching positive consequences for biodiversity, if only the politicians can muster up the will to stand up to the vested interests lobbying against this action. And it is also one action that doesn't seem to have been submitted by anyone else on this list of suggestions on the Guardian website!

I thought of writing a separate blog post detailing my suggestion, but in the interest of time—and of catching up with other things that have piled up while I've been in bed—I'll defer that, at least for now. Instead, you can read my complete response to the questionnaire below. And please let me know your thoughts.

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What action do you recommend? *e.g. pass a law, sign a regulation, stop a development project, reintroduce a population, etc.
The United States government (and those of its states, and indeed other G20 nations that haven't done so) must pass laws prohibiting the use of lead in bullets and other "sporting" ammunition and fishing lures. Lead from these sources has become a major environmental pollutant and health hazard, especially for carnivorous/scavenging species like the endangered California Condor, which ingest lead from dead animals short by "sport" hunters, or through bioaccumulation, esp in aquatic food chains. Alternatives are available, but expensive (unless subsidized) for individual hunters, and expensive politically because of vested interests arrayed against any legislative action to get the lead out. Yet, this ought to be a simple, straightforward action that can easily be accomplished within a short period of time, and produce measurable improvements in the status of many wildlife species, including globally endagared ones, that are currently suffering from excessive lead pollution from hunters' guns. The benefits are clear, the costs are clear, and the opposition is also clear on this issue. All that is needed is some political will to act in the interests of biodiversity.

Which wild species or area will benefit from your action? *e.g. a threatened animal or plant, a forest, a wetland, etc. Please avoid a general target, e.g. "all species"

California Condor, and a number of other carnivorous/scavenging species throughout the US.

Which interest groups or lobbies oppose this action? *e.g. a particular industryNational Rifle Association, through its lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action. Other Hunting and Fishing interest groups and lobbies throughout the US.

Is there any further information you would like to add? (optional)e.g. links to websites, details of NGO campaigns, scientific information supporting the action

1. A recent review of the effects of lead ammunition on terrestrial birds notes that: "Fifty-nine terrestrial bird species have so far been documented to have ingested lead or suffered lead poisoning from ammunition sources, including nine Globally Threatened or Near Threatened species." http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2006.02.018

Many other peer-reviewed papers on this topic are available.

2. Center for Biological Diversity is a leading NGO that has been fighting to get lead ammunition banned in the US. Here's a link to the campaign page:

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/get_the_lead_out/

3. Last week, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied a petition from several environmental action groups to ban lead in ammunition under the Toxic Substances Control Act claiming lack of jurisdiction. The AP report of this news: http://is.gd/eNXbS

4. The NRA-ILA lobby wrote a strong letter against the petition to the EPA: 

http://www.nraila.org/legislation/read.aspx?id=6004

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Attenborough on Plastic Oceans

 

via youtube.com

The trouble with plastic: it just ain't plastic enough! Especially in the biological sense:

plastic |ˈplastik|nouna synthetic material made from a wide range of organic polymers such as polyethylene, PVC, nylon, etc., that can be molded into shape while soft and then set into a rigid or slightly elastic form.• informal credit cards or other types of plastic card that can be used as money : he pays with cash instead of with plastic.adjective1 made of plastic : plastic bags.• looking or tasting artificial : long-distance flights with their plastic food | she smiled a little plastic smile.2 (of substances or materials) easily shaped or molded : rendering the material more plastic.• (in art) of or relating to molding or modeling in three dimensions, or producing three-dimensional effects.• (in science and technology) of or relating to the permanent deformation of a solid without fracture by the temporary application of force.• offering scope for creativity : the writer is drawn to words as a plastic medium.• Biology exhibiting adaptability to change or variety in the environment.

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What would YOU tell the wealthy nations to do to halt biodiversity loss?

All their talk and rhetoric hasn't really worked, say Guillaume Chapron and George Monbiot (an I agree completely):

It's on course to make the farcical climate talks in Copenhagen look like a roaring success. The big international meeting in October which is meant to protect the world's biodiversity is destined to be an even greater failure than last year's attempt to protect the world's atmosphere. Already the UN has conceded that the targets for safeguarding wild species and wild places in 2010 have been missed: comprehensively and tragically.

In 2002, 188 countries launched a global initiative, usually referred to as the 2010 biodiversity target, to achieve by this year a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss. The plan was widely reported as the beginning of the end of the biodiversity crisis. But in May this year, the Convention on Biological Diversity admitted that it had failed. It appears to have had no appreciable effect on the rate of loss of animals, plants and wild places.

In a few weeks, the same countries will meet in Nagoya, Japan and make a similarly meaningless set of promises. Rather than taking immediate action to address their failures, they will concentrate on producing a revised target for 2020 and a "vision" for 2050, as well as creating further delays by expressing the need for better biodiversity indicators. In many cases there's little need for more research. It's not biodiversity indicators that are in short supply; but any kind of indicator that the member states are willing to act.

A striking example was provided last month by French secretary of state for ecology, Chantal Jouanno. She announced that there would be no further major efforts to restore the population of Pyrenean brown bears, of which fewer than 20 remain. Extensive scientific research shows that this population is not viable. European agreements oblige France to sustain the population. Yet the government knows that the political costs of reintroducing more bears outweigh the costs of inaction. Immediate special interests triumph over the world's natural wonders, even in nations which have the money and the means to protect them.

via guardian.co.uk

So, with help from the Guardian, they are collecting suggestions from all of us, to share with the wealthy G20 nations when they meet to discuss biodiversity in October. You still have time, until the end of August, to submit your suggestion. Note, however, that they're not looking for general, vague platitudes about "more education" or "empowerment" or "law enforcement" and the like - the G20 politicians are full of those already! What're being sought, instead, are specific concrete solutions that are backed up by science, are realistically achievable in a reasonable timeframe, and are opposed by political/financial special interests. So what political cost should the governments of wealthy nations be forced to pay (to at least put their money where their mouths are, so to speak) to conserve biodiversity?

I'm working on my own suggestion and will share it here soon.

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That steady drip, drip, drip you hear...

... is time running out on your "civilization"!

via reflectionof.me

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Think college has become too expensive in California? Think again.

Here's an infographic to set you straight! It turns out that California is near the low end (7th) when it comes to how much debt the average student accumulates by the time they get out of college. More than half of California's students graduate without any debt at all! And within California, the CSU system (of which I am a part) remains among the cheaper options, so our graduates' average debt is quite likely even lower than the state average (likely making up a bulk of the 52% debt-free CA graduates). Although the CSU system is one of the biggest university systems in the world, try finding any CSU campus on this list, for instance. Given the state's ongoing fiscal woes, when we're being squeezed to the point of having to turn scores of students away from our classes, are students willing to pay a little bit more for college education? Especially if it means we can keep those extra class/lab sections open to let them finish their degrees on time? They'll still come out ahead of graduates from more than half the other United States, no?

See for yourself, and read more on the Mint blog:

via mint.com

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Heart-string-tugging film, yes! But what bird IS that?

This film has vexed my saturday morning! And not merely because it was posted on Facebook by my elder sister who has always elected to live close to our parents and take care of them while I've been half a planet away for the past two decades. Nor just because our father passed away 5 years ago and I didn't much get to sit on any bench reading the paper or watching birds with him in his last decade. Although he did visit my field site during my Ph.D. research in southern India, and we shared some hikes in the forests of Mundanthurai.

No - the film has just the right touch of sentiment to tug at one's emotions without becoming too maudlin - so that doesn't vex me either. The film is obviously popular, with over 2 million views and ~3000 comments for this YouTube version alone. But none of those comments seem to answer the question that has me scratching my head!

No - what has me vexed this morning is that I'm not sure what species the sparrow in the film actually is! It has distinctive enough color markings to be easy to identify (see esp. the closeup shots in the HD version near minutes 1:52 and 2:32), yet I can't find anything quite like it in the one European bird field guide I have at hand. Nor does it quite fit, from images I've searched online, any of the sparrows or finches on the list of birds in Greece, which seems to be the location of the film. The white eyebrow and the black and white patches on the shoulder/wing share similarities with those of the House or Dead Sea Sparrows, but are different enough to confuse me. Is this a young bird, perhaps, or one in moult?

Do you know: what species of bird is that? Can you help me identify it? For, you see, with my kids, I always try to tell them exactly what species of bird they are pointing at when they bug me for an answer! And I shall fully expect them to be equally specific in my dotage when responding to my 21st query!

via youtube.com

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Net Neutrality - 15 facts, and why you should care about it!

via onlinemba.com

And if you care enough, listen to Al Franken's call and sign the petition to protect net neutrality:

via alfranken.com

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Really tiny frog discovered living inside pitcher plants in Borneo

Even as we continue to live through the decimation of amphibians around the world, with many species teetering on the brink of extinction - if they haven't bit the bullet already - here comes news of a new species being discovered! And its a tiny one. Living in rather cool habitat: the little "pond" inside the pitcher of the carnivorous pitcher plant. Here's the story:

via news.mongabay.com

One of the world's smallest frogs has been discovered living inside pitcher plants in Borneo, reports Conservation International, a conservation group that is jointly supporting a campaign with IUCN to search for some of the world's "lost amphibians."

The species, described in Zootaxa by Indraneil Das and Alexander Haas of the Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation at the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak and Biozentrum Grindel und Zoologisches Museum of Hamburg, is named Microhyla nepenthicola after the plant in which is was found, Nepenthes ampullaria, a species of pitcher plant from Malaysian Borneo. Many species of pitcher plants are carnivorous, relying on trapping of insects to supply nutrients otherwise not available in the resource-poor and acidic soils on which they typically grow. Nepenthes ampullaria instead subsists off decomposing organic matter that collects in its pitcher.

Microhyla nepenthicola lives in and around Nepenthes ampullaria. The frog deposit its eggs on the sides of the pitcher. When these hatch, the tadpoles grow in the liquid accumulated in the plant's insect-trapping cavity.

The new frog is a type of microhylid, a family of frogs under 15 millimeters in length. Adult males of the new species range between 10.6 and 12.8 mm or "about the size of a pea," according to Conservation International (CI), which notes it is the smallest frog yet discovered in Asia, Africa or Europe.

The small size and obscure habitat of the the frog has left it unknown to science until now, although museum collections contained specimen that went unrecognized as a new species.

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The latest "Yellowbill", Fresno Audubon's newsletter, is now available

The September 2010 Yellowbill is now available on the Fresno Audubon web site. Or you can also read it right here, below the fold.

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You win some and you lose some - but too bad the environment is not a zero sum game!

Two news items today, of some significance in the ongoing battles between big multinational corporations vs. those speaking on behalf of the environment and indigenous human populations. Do you want the good news or the bad news first? I suppose convention says I should lead with the bad, end with the good so you don't go away feeling depressed. But when it comes to the planet's ecosystems, we're not playing a zero-sum game where a win in one place balances out a loss elsewhere! So in what may be the environmentalists' tradition, I can't have you go away happy thinking all is well with the world after reading this post now, can I? So let's start with the good, shall we?

The Hindu reports that the long-eared blue-skinned eco-smurfs have beaten back the mining corporations at least this once, with help from the Indian government, no less, who have an Environment Minister increasingly gaining my respect with his recent actions. Let's see how long that lasts - but enjoy this while it does:

After a long-drawn consultation process, the Union government has finally pronounced its verdict against Vedanta Alumina's $1.7 billion plan to mine bauxite in the Niyamgiri Hills of Orissa.

“There has been a very serious violation of the Environment Protection Act, Forest Conservation Act and the Forest Rights Act,” said Union Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh. He blamed Vedanta, the Orissa Mining Corporation, and the State officials for the violations. “The clearance stands rejected.”

Mr. Ramesh accepted the recommendation of the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) to withdraw the Stage I forest clearance, granted in 2008, and reject the Stage II clearance that the promoters had applied for. In the light of this, the environmental clearance will also become invalid.

In a further blow to Vedanta's plans in the region, the Ministry will investigate the allegation that the bauxite for Vedanta's Orissa refinery is being sourced from 14 Jharkhand mines, of which at least 11 do not have a valid environmental clearance.

The Ministry is also issuing a show cause notice, threatening the cancellation of the licence given to the refinery itself, which has illegally grabbed village forest lands and carrying out a six-fold expansion without permission. The appraisal process of the expansion has been suspended.

via thehindu.com

Elsewhere on our planet, the UN has decided to pardon the Shell corporation for 40 years of pollution, human rights abuses, and environmental malfeasance in the Niger delta. I bet BP is feeling pretty stupid right now for trying risky oil drilling off the coast of the US instead of some poor developing nation. Its far easier to blame the impoverished victims there, and to get away with almost anything. I'm sure BP'll bounce back, though, as these big corps always seem to. And no doubt Shell shareholders are rejoicing.

A three-year investigation by the United Nations will almost entirely exonerate Royal Dutch Shell for 40 years of oil pollution in the Niger delta, causing outrage among communities who have long campaigned to force the multinational to clean up its spills and pay compensation.

The $10m (£6.5m) investigation by the UN environment programme (UNEP), paid for by Shell, will say that only 10% of oil pollution in Ogoniland has been caused by equipment failures and company negligence, and concludes that the rest has come from local people illegally stealing oil and sabotaging company pipelines.

The shock disclosure was made by Mike Cowing, the head of a UN team of 100 people who have been studying environmental damage in the region.

Cowing said that the 300 known oil spills in the Ogoniland region of the delta caused massive damage, but added that 90% of the spills had been caused by "bunkering" gangs trying to steal oil.

His comments, in a briefing in Geneva last week, have caused deep offence among the families of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the eight other Ogoni leaders who were hanged by the Nigerian government in 1995 after a peaceful uprising against Shell's pollution.

via guardian.co.uk

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Avian Anatomy, v.2.0?

via birdandmoon.com

Glad my students in Birds and Reptiles last semester didn't find this chart of avian anatomy! I'd have been even more hard pressed to grade their labs...


Tip o' the ole speed fin to Coyote.

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So how will you party on 10/10/10?

via youtube.com

Bill McKibben's 350.org, the folks behind last year's planetwide day of climate action, are calling for a Global Work Party. Here's your formal invitation, if the above isn't enough.

And, to get you in the mood, here's a more extended conversation with McKibben on Point of Inquiry (one of my favorite podcasts) from last June, where he talks about his new book Eaarth (sic, and pronounced the way Governator Ahnold Schwarzenegger would!), and how we are really already living on a new planet and must wake up to face that reality.

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Overlooking the familiar in cataloging biodiversity

via myrmecos.net

Familiarity, they say, breeds contempt. Or, even if we aren't actually contemptuous of the familiar, we often simply ignore it. It is not surprising, then—although it should be—that Tapinoma sessile, the odorous house ant of North America, the very same little brown one that is pictured above, and that you may well have swept off your kitchen counter today, remains relatively poorly studied! It is so widespread and common across a variety of habitats in North America, it seems, that entomologists haven't really bothered to study it all that much since it was first described by Thomas Say, considered a father of American entomology.

So much so, that they even lost track of the original type specimen used to describe the species. How odd is that, for a widespread species not to have its identity securely moored to a type specimen enshrined in a museum somewhere? Almost like a nation's President not having a birth certificate!

When I accepted the offer of a faculty position in my current department here at CSU-Fresno six years ago, among other items on the startup list of equipment for my laboratory, I had (only half-jokingly) requested an espresso machine to boost my productivity. Hey, it had worked for my last postdoc advisor! But my then department chair, Dr. Fred Schreiber, only got a chuckle out of that one, and we moved on. A couple of years later, Fred called me up one afternoon to ask if I still wanted that espresso machine! A graduate student working in his lab had left one behind while moving on to the next stage of his career, and Fred had no use for it. That Starbucks Barista has since sat on a counter in my lab keeping me caffienated enough to get tenure and keep a research program afloat.

It so happened that, Chris Hamm, that graduate student who is now in the Ph.D. program at Michigan State University, had been studying the common odorous house ant, that same rootless species, for his masters thesis. While collecting specimens in California, he discovered a two-toned (or bicolored) variant that looked similar, yet rather different from the descriptions of T. sessile. So he carefully measured the two different morphs and compared their morphologies to find that they differ consistently (and statistically significantly) across a range of characteristics. So much so, that the bicolored morph must be recognized as a new species of ant!

A brand new species that was being trod underfoot daily in households across California, but had apparently never been looked at all that carefully by any entomologist in a region full of so many biologists! And we fret about losing biodiversity in remote corners of the world.

Chris has honored Fred by naming the new ant after him. Tapinoma schreiberi will forever mark the legacy of the man who has mentored so many in our department (including me as a greenhorn faculty member) over the past 3+ decades. How fitting that the paper was published the very year that Fred has taken early retirement, as of last week.

In the process of searching for the identity of this new ant, Chris also discovered the shaky foundation upon which rested the identity of T. sessile—and has done his bit to correct that injustice as well. He collected a new type specimen, from near the grave of its original discoverer, Thomas Say, to fill that huge hole in its taxonomic origin, even as he was giving it a new cousin! Alex Wild has more on that story at Myrmecos.

Now I find myself looking closely at ants around here, even as I sip my espresso and thank Chris for a good story, and for my morning/afternoon cuppa joe!

Reference:

Hamm, C. (2010). Multivariate Discrimination and Description of a New Species of Tapinoma from the Western United States
Annals of the Entomological Society of America, 103 (1), 20-29 DOI: 10.1603/008.103.0104

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The Ecology of Climate Change in the Boreal Forest - a brief video intro

via youtube.com

This is part of a series of video Science Bulletins produced, and now shared on YouTube by the American Museum of Natural History.

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Ode to a non-endangered species that deserves to go extinct...

via youtube.com

More on that magnificent mid-Pacific community this species belongs to in one of my earlier posts. And this even earlier post, I ended with a lovely video clip of this species that may be among the first to capture its beauty in visual poetry!

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Colorful glimpses into life in the Russian Empire a 100 years ago...

via boston.com

Yes - you're looking at a color photograph taken a hundred years ago!

This, and other stunning images, in The Boston Globe's Big Picture feature this week, restored from original color photographs taken a century ago by Sergei Mickhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, a photographer of the Russian Empire. Check out the other 33 selections, they're really something! And more images and information on the photographer can be found here.

The above image, taken circa 1910, shows a nomadic Kirghiz family (presumably) on the Golodnaia Steppe which now lies in present-day Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. How many people still live this lifestyle? Will some be forced to return to it in the next century?

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Scientia Pro Publica #37

Welcome to the 37th iteration of Scientia Pro Publica, the carnival that brings together a selection of writings from the blogosphere on the environment, human health, and various other sciences. This week we have a whole new gamut of essays ranging across the spectrum of disciplines, so I won't keep you long before you can start sampling the goods. Just remember to leave a comment to let the authors know what you think of their writing. And note that the next edition will be hosted by Dr. Shock on Aug 30th, so don't forget to submit links to blog posts that catch your eye over the next couple of weeks.

Journeys through space and time

Let us start the journey at the biggest of scales, shall we? Ever wondered what a Galaxy is, really? Astro Basics offers a comprehensive overview of what a Galaxy is, and what it has meant to us, astronomers and laypersons, through the history of astronomy. Staying with history, but closer to home, Romeo Vitelli at Provedentia shares an interesting tale of extreme, you might even say pathological, denialism in the 19th century when Alfred Russell Wallace took on John Hampden's Flat Earth Wager looking for some easy cash but ending up with more than he had bargained for. There a lesson in there somewhere for the current "debates" between scientists and denialists of various sorts, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, Matthew Willis of Backyard and Beyond takes us on a journey from Iceland, home of the infamous Eyjafjallajökull that had our tongues atwist earlier this year, all the way to his neighborhood of Brooklyn, the Hudson river valley and the Palisades, while ruminating on volcanoes, their power and their effects on human history. He has a wonderful way of connecting the global with the local and personal both in geology and history. On a lighter, more (or less) poetic note, Sarah Zielinski at Smithsonian's Surprising Science blog is on a quest for bad poetry about geology. And she would like your help deciding which couplet she's discovered is the worst, so go vote in the poll at the bottom of her delightful post!

If you still in the mood for travel, you have two wonderful excursions to share in, virtually. Kazimierz Lebowski of Science and Soul takes us on a class trip through the cloud forest and montane landscapes of Costa Rica, illustrated with beautiful photographs. Over at eco logic, Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi shares a more adventurous expedition to the Hidden Fortress of Gya, the tallest Himalayan peak in Himachal Pradesh, in search of the snow leopard and the blue sheep.

Of human glory and folly

This business of science has led us on some amazing journeys, from the galactic to the molecular scales. At Reciprocal Space, Stephen Curry tells us the fascinating story of an amazing molecule without which we would not survive, a molecule of life and death! Akshat Rathi at the Allotrope tells us how far we have come from the discovery of that critical molecule, to becoming molecular architects, for we have mastered the art and science of constructing complex naturally occurring molecules in the laboratory from easily available raw materials! How's that for human achievement?! Or hubris? Because we still don't fully understand how many of the more complex molecules, such as proteins, fold into their three-dimensional functional forms after being transcribed from their DNA code. Which is why scientists have to turn to gamers for help, with Foldit, a game reviewed by GrrlScientist who is now at Scientopia.

It is difficult to escape humanity's influence in even the remotest places on earth, as both the travel essays above also indicate. We humans have a tendency to start and get into all kinds of trouble, for ourselves and for other species on this planet. Patrick Clarkin has tried to unravel one of the biggest knots in this human tendency to self-destruct, the biology of war, by exploring the connections between war, health, and evolution. Much to think about in that there post!

So what does make humans tick, then? Eric Michael Johnson, in a guest post at Neuron Culture, reviews a recent paper to discuss how in Great Apes and in humans, simple games that children play often prepare them (us) for the complex social skills they will need as adults. Michelle, entertaining as ever, reviews the role of menopause (that human oddity) as an evolutionary strategy, and tells us of more research in the "duh" category demonstrating how sex, like exercise, can reduce anxiety!

We may be getting a better understanding of the brain, but, are we any good at testing our mental abilities? - asks Andrew Bernardin at 360 Degree Skeptic. While on the subject of mental abilities, how can one not think of Sara Palin? Bob O'Hara at This Scientific Life over on Scientopia has a review of a recent study of the Palin Effect - how much did she actually help John McCain lose the election?

From understanding the evolutionary roots of how our brains work, to developing ways to make them work better when they don't: Sharpbrains has an insightful interview with Dr. John Docherty on the value of technology as a missing link to enable a brain-based model of brain care. While on brain care, David Rabiner, also at Sharp Brains reviews the long-term effects of neurofeedback treatment for ADHD. But if you are under such novel medical care, or any sort of medical care at all, wouldn't you like to be able to access your own medical records electronically? An experiment in allowing such access is under way in Massachusetts, reports Pascale Lane in her Stream of Thought.

Not only are we tinkering with molecules in the lab, we have also messed with a variety of ecosystems, often by moving species around for sometimes odd reasons. Brendan Locke at the BioNode gives us a quick overview of what invasive species are, and why we should care about them. But sometimes, not matter how much you care, it is already too late - for Bambi has already run the Bears off the island all the way to extinction, says Anne-Marie Hodge of Endless Forms, with a surprising tale of a species introduction that went horribly awry.

If you think, however, that wildlife conservation is a simple matter of removing undesirable introduced elements from an ecosystem, especially elements of human disturbance such as invasive species or cattle in national parks, Pavithra Sankaran's post at eco logic should serve to dispel you of such notions. She shares troubling and intriguing lessons (but not entirely clear ones) from experiments to mitigate conflicts between two sets of desperate neighbors: the endangered wildlife of Bandipur Tiger Reserve, and the rural poor who eke out a marginal existence at the edges of that park. What drives the people to take their cattle grazing into Bandipur, despite ongoing low-intensity trench warfare against the official forces that make this one of the best protected Tiger Reserves in India? The answer may surprise you. Just as a lasting solution continues to elude.

David at Southern Fried Science reviews the literature to give us an excellent overview of what it will take to conserve sharks. In a separate post, he also offers a review of television's Shark Week, which apparently is getting better in terms of not exploiting the sharks for entertainment. Long way to go still, but any steps by the media towards helping rather than exploiting endangered species is to be welcomed.  Back on land, Lab Rat has a look at the hidden effects of forest fires on organisms less visible than trees.

So is there hope for biodiversity? Well, we all have to do our bit, don't we? And so have the taxonomic splitters at the American Ornithologists' Union (of which I have been an itinerant member)! They have gone and increased the diversity of bird species yet again simply by splitting a number of former species into two (or more) new ones! How's that for reversing the loss of biodiversity?! All joking aside, this taxonomist's scalpel can actually be a valuable tool for conservation because it forces us to recognize the extent of genetic and evolutionary diversity within what we may think of as but one species. And so the work continues, says John Beetham at a DC Birding Blog.

If, like birdwatchers, you are into lists, here are a few science/medical lists that might be useful: 10 incredibly unlikely & inspiritational physical therapy stories at A Hearty Blog, 50 best psychology blogs worth following, and 100 best YouTube videos for science teachers! 

On the other hand, if you prefer to scratch your head or twirl your facial hair thoughtfully while pondering the broader implications of this business of taxonomy and classification, you may enjoy John Wilkins' essay on natural classification and the dynamics of science.

The lows and highs of doing science

Speaking of the dynamics of science, and of human folly, this last week plunged the animal behavior/cognitive science community into some despair when Harvard University announced that it had placed eminent primate behavioral psychologist Marc Hauser on a year's leave because an internal investigation had found potentially serious scientific misconduct in his lab. Of course this story is getting much play in the press, but I found  the perspectives of David Dobbs at Neuron Culture, Melodye of Child's Play at the new Scientopia blog network, and John Hawkes worth reading. Undoubtedly there is a lot more being written in the science blogosphere about this still unfolding situation, another bump in the road for behavioral science which has weathered a few such setbacks, and will no doubt emerge stronger from all the soul-searching engendered by this controversy.

But I can't leave you on that sour note now, can I? Not at the end of a science carnival? So let me turn you to a more uplifting story about the true joy of doing science, the profound sense of wonder and amazement about the natural world that propels us all on this shared journey to the ever expanding frontiers of science. Alistair Dove at Deep Type Flow shares the pure bliss of dancing with a giant!

May we all find such bliss!

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Ain't no such thing as a "living fossil" nor is any species "primitive"!!

This Sunday, let me share with you two excellent takedowns of silly terms too often used casually to describe species, sometimes even by biologists who ought to know better.

Lucas Brouwers recently handed a well-earned smack-down to the term "Living Fossil". As if any species could ever fit that odd description. And at the end of his post, he also links to another smack-down by Jonathen Eisen last year, of the term "primitive" used even more often (esp. sadly in the bio literature) to describe species that may, at best, be termed "ancestral", but more often simply have some ancestral traits!

Remember my own rant several months ago about evolutionary ladders?

Now go out there and tell all the kids to stop using so much bad language to describe the beauty of evolution!! Didn't your Mama (and/or your advisor) teach you any better?!

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On the economics and growing pains of farming and consuming organic foods

I had the radio on while on a prolonged cleaning mission at home yesterday afternoon (having run out of the usual podcasts I listen to under such circs). I had what seems like a small moment of cognitive disssonance when, while jumping back from, and then stomping out a nest of Black Widow spiders hiding behind a trashcan in a dark corner of the laundry room, I caught fragments of a conversation on the radio about earth- and biodiversity-friendly organic farming practices.

The show was a world of possibilities, something I hadn't heard before on our local NPR station. The fragments of conversation I caught were interesting enough that I had to go look for the whole hour online. And it turned out to be an hour well-spent, as I think you may agree too. Its about the growing pains of organic farming, especially in the current economic recession.

The second half of the program is particularly interesting when two organic dairy farmer from Northern California are interviewed. Fascinating if (like us) you try to consume organic foods as much as possible (or as much as the wallet permits), and even more so if you dabble in organic farming. We've been enjoying quite a harvest of veggies from our own, and several neighbors' urban backyard farms - which has definitely eased the pressure on our furloughed bank balance this summer.

The dairy farmers raise one important question in response to complaints about how expensive organic produce is: why do consumers never complain about the ridiculously high prices of the latest iPhone/Droid/Wii or other gadgets they line up to purchase on the first day, but don't want to pay a buck or two extra for food they actually put in their bodies? In a country where conventional industrial farming has been subsidised heavily to keep supermarket prices low low low, it has become rather hard for us to imagine - and pay for - the real costs of farming organically. The same advertising driven marketplace that plies us with cheap unhealthy foods also mesmerizes us with the shiny tech baubles to the point where our family budgets have become strangely skewed, with food eaten at home - which should be the very core of our lives - taking up a mere 7% of our paychecks on average, which is less than half what we pay to drive around our farflung suburbs! Take a look at this graphic of where the average US household paycheck is spent:

Where does the money go?
Click on the image (or here) for a larger version, courtesy of Visual Economics 

The other interesting question to ponder (and hope about) is whether the recession is changing people's priorities in ways that might actually lead to healthier eating! I raised a related question in my reconciliation ecology class when I last taught it two years ago, thus: will the recession encourage more people to start growing their own vegetables in their gardens? I think, tentatively, that we have the answer now in the growing urban farming movement around the US, with more and more people like us growing our own veggies, and more often organically than not. I think the scale problem of organic farming - that it doesn't scale up very well when you think of the mass market - actually works in our favor here, because we are scaling down to small yards where it is easier, and cheaper, to grow a healthy crop organically.

The recession may also give us some pause before plonking down the credit card for the latest non-food consumer items or gadgets. Although mainstream economists do not like that because they tell us we have to keep buying stuff in order to keep the economy running and growing again! And the sales figures of the new iPhone 4 (for example) don't suggest that such discretionary consumer spending is down all that much even now. But, if you do cut down on this part of your budget, is it likely that some of the savings may actually go towards healthier organic foods? After all, healthier eating should also lead to lower healthcare costs in the longer run. Is there any evidence that people are changing their spending patterns, especially on food, in this more rational direction? Or are our brains too irrational and too severely manipulated by advertising and farm subsidies to be swayed away from all the shiny and "cheap" unhealthy highly processed/industrial edible food-like substances (to borrow Michael Pollan's phrase) filling the supermarket aisles and food courts of America?

I'll stop rambling now and let you listen to the conversation on the show. Let me know what your thoughts are too.

Listen now

Downloads: 

128 kbps mp2 mono

160 kbps mp3 stereo

96 kbps mp3 stereo

Promo

Minicast

Cue sheet

Organic agriculture has grown up.  A once-marginal movement of plucky and slightly eccentric home gardeners has bloomed into mega-farms that ship around the world selling at premium prices.  In this program we’ll examine both ends of the organic industry food chain -- a mid-size organic farming family and the world’s largest organic food retailer.  We’ll see what growing mainstream has done for – and to -- organic farmers, and what remains to be done to give farmers and consumers the sustainable food system we urgently need.
This program is funded by listeners like you.

Guests: 

Blake and Stephanie Alexandre, Alexandre  Family Dairies
Walter Robb,  Co-CEO,Whole Foods

Credits: 

Host: Mark Sommer
Senior Producer: Gregg McVicar
Associate Producers: Naihma Deady, Matt Fidler
Production Engineer: Michael Schwartz
Music in this program: “The Sinking Ship” – Jerry Douglas – Sugarhill Records; “A United Earth I” - Alan Stivell and Youssou N’Dour - Putumayo World Music; “The Bounty Of The County” – David Gans – Perfectible Recordings; “Commodity Cheese Blues” – Wade Fernandez – SBW; “One More Cowboy” – Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks – Surfdog Records.
Duration: 55 Minutes

Original airdate: 

Tue, 2010-08-10

Listener action: 

http://www.organic.org/
http://www.organicearthday.org/
http://www.ecodairyfarms.com/

via aworldofpossibilities.org

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How about some alternative treatments for automobiles? And global warming too?

via wulffmorgenthaler.com

I'm sure the car will run just fine after it gets a colonic cleansing - no? Maybe I should try that with our van before the smog test it is now due for, eh?!

And how about a homeopathic approach to our fossil fuel addiction too? Just dilute that petrol a few million-fold and we simultaneously solve the Peak Oil problem and global warming! You car will run forever on a few ounces of occult gas, and the air will be cleaner and the planet cooler too!!

Think I'm being sarcastic? But surely, by the logic of homeopathy, if burning fossil fuels is causing global warming, then the antidote is surely to burn fossil fuels - but in extremely diluted amounts.
Aren't you glad we have such excellent logical alternative solutions available for our automotive and medical problems?


[Hat-tip: Arvind Says via Facebook]

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Bee-assisted wind pollination? Or daylight pollen-robbery by sweat bees?

via youtube.com

Grasses are all supposed to be wind-pollinated, right?! So what's this sideoats grama doing flashing its bright red anthers so flagrantly? Watching the sweat bees carefully at work collecting pollen from these grass flowers, in this languid hi-def video (check out the 720p version in full screen!), you can also see puffs of pollen being launched into the still air by the bees! So are the bees providing an assist to the flowers in their normal wind-driven sex, even as they steal pollen? Do the flowers actively attract the bees or are they mere victims of pollen robbery? But if the bees are helping, and the flowers want to attract them, what are they doing with bright RED genitalia?! Those are among the questions that come to my mind, and those of several commenters over at the Myrmecos blog of Alex Wild, the biologist behind the smooth hi-def camerawork in this video. You should also check out some of his other HD videos of insects in action.

What blows me away further is knowing that this wonderful cinematography comes through a proper macro lens on a digital SLR camera! Alex has one of the new Canon 7D model that can do HD video - and this clip now has me wishing for one to enhance my own amateur photography! Now how do I justify it on my next grant?! :-)

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Waking up to Nature (or resurrecting a blog post from before there were blogs!)

A reprint request came in the mail today, for a report and a paper from surveys I had done in Arunachal Pradesh early in my graduate career - two decades ago! Given that I wrote those articles some years before even Mosaic had made it to the Mac Classic in my graduate advisor's lab at UCSD, they remain, thus far, rather beyond the reach of Google's tentacles. I did have an electronic reprint from one paper, which had made the transition to digital form courtesy of the scanners at Interlibrary Loan (at Arizona State University; I think that's where I'd managed to obtain an e-print of that paper), despite having been published in a low-budget journal. The report was going to be harder to find, I told the young Indian grad student who had emailed me, prompting him to ply me with some more questions about the survey (which I may write about here at some point).

So I took the plunge into the deeper, darker, far less frequented neighborhoods etched on the whirling platters of my current laptop's (now a Macbook Pro!) hard drive, hoping to find a copy among folders that had been faithfully copied over from pc to mac to mac through dozens of upgrades (or sidegrades) over the course of two decades, give or take. And there, like tumbleweed blowing across a deserted Western town, what should flit across my screen but the following essay I had written around the same time, but had completely forgotten about!

So now that I'm completely distracted (no sign of that report yet), I figured it might be worth sharing this distraction with some of you. So if you're interested in reading one of my earliest blog posts (you know that's what it would've been if written today) from before there were blogs, read on below. Hey, just for you, I've even spruced it up with... um... what d'you call em?... links! (But I haven't changed anything else, not one comma; except for the double spaces between sentences - ugh!)

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WAKING UP TO NATURE

The white landrover picked us up at dawn from our hostel in Vasant Vihar. Dr. Johnsingh sat in the front, leading us six sleepy greenhorns on our orientation tour to Delhi Zoo and Rajaji National Park. It was the second week of WII's new masters program in wildlife biology. As we tumbled out of the Siwalik tunnel, Dr. Johnsingh was telling us about Rajaji and we were trying to stay awake. A little further on, when some white cliffs appeared to our right across a rao, he suddenly asked Navin to stop the vehicle and pointed at a ledge high up: Sambar! I jumped out along with the rest of us and put my binoculars to my glasses. What with my unfamiliarity with that instrument and my spectacles, it took me a while to scan the cliff and train the lenses on the ledge Dr. Johnsingh had pointed out. And there I saw it at last - my first sambar in the wild. Its large ears were glinting in the early morning sun as it browsed calmly at the edge of a precipice. I had read of this creature in some Corbett stories, but had little idea what one looked like: I had hardly ventured far from Bombay in my 22 year lifetime, and the only 'sambar' I was personally acquainted with usually came with idlis in it!

That was how I woke up that winter morning in the Siwaliks from a slumber I had been in not only since the previous night, but many years before that. The past year had been particularly nightmarish as I sleepwalked through one semester of an M.Sc. in Physiology from a Bombay college. Such had been the slumber of my undergraduate years that it had taken me all of 5 years to discover the Bombay Natural History Society which was just round the corner from my college or the cattle egrets that strode elegantly in the rice fields near my home in New Bombay. I joined Bombay University's M.Sc. in sheer desperation as there were no openings in ecology or conservation - which were the first academic fields to have really caught my imagination. But imagination is generally not a very good thing to have in our education system, and by October '87 I was thoroughly disillusioned: I nearly dropped out of college to join the "Save The Western Ghats March", and become a full-time environmental activist! But just then the clouds parted a bit and a letter from WII shone through, inviting me to apply to their new M.Sc. program in wildlife biology! I was barely aware of the existence of Dehradun and had impulsively written to WII the previous year after seeing an advertisement for some crocodile research project, I think. My letter had returned with a now familiar scrawl across it informing me that a masters program was being developed and asking me to write back in a year's time. Signed at the bottom was a rather unusual name: Dr. A.J.T. Johnsingh. Well, so this man Johnsingh had remembered! And here I finally was inhaling the crisp air of the Siwalik, marvelling at the remarkable eyesight of the same Dr. Johnsingh who had spotted that sambar a few hundred metres away from a fast-moving vehicle. The sight of that sambar in the early morning sun was enough to wake me up and shatter the blinkers of my urban middle class existence. This was truly a new orientation for me!

It was late afternoon about a year later and our class had been following a herd of Barasingha across Kanha meadow through the day. We had already spent a week in Kanha NP, and had seen all the large mammals including 6 tigers. It was a big day for us: it was exactly a year since the M.Sc. course commenced, and for the first time we were entirely on our own, not accompanied by any faculty member and with a jeep to ourselves! We were making group-scan observations on this herd as part of our behavioural ecology field class. The day had started with the rutting calls of the barasingha and had been uneventful as we followed our focal herd, apparently controlled by one adult male, across the meadow into a drowsy afternoon. As the sun approached the horizon we were stretching ourselves and preparing to get back in an hour or so, when things began to happen. The dominant stag had managed to isolate an adult female as the rest of the herd moved away, and started courting her assiduously: for half an hour he circled her, sniffing at her rump and mounted her repeatedly, but she always managed to slip out from under him. Finally she gave in, and they gradually drifted back towards their herd. As they passed through a copse of sal trees, we skirted around it to catch up. As we turned the corner, our path was blocked by two magnificent stags, bigger than the male we'd followed, sniffing the air and looking towards the mated pair. Before we realized what was happening they charged straight for the male and a full fledged fight broke out. The clash of antlers echoed across the silence of the meadow and the dust flew high as our male tried hard to ward off the two intruders and protect his reproductive interests. But as he was engaging one of the intruding stags, the second charged after the female and mated successfully! The herd moved on then as the intruders retreated. The golden dust was settling back softly on the grass and a herd of gaur was crossing the far end of the meadow, wonderfully back-lit by the setting sun, as we returned to camp for the night. What a spectacular first anniversary for the M.Sc. program!

The M.Sc. years were perhaps the best of my life, filled with the joy of discovering the natural world after an urban childhood. That joy and innocent enthusiasm has been draining out of me through the past nearly three and a half years as I struggle to come to terms with the harsher realities of nature conservation in India: a process that started during the latter half of the M.Sc.—during that Kanha trip actually—and has only become more painful with each passing day. Parts of Kanha were burnt down the year after we saw that barasingha fight; the white cliffs of Rajaji may soon become out of bounds as the plague of terrorism spreads through the terai and siwalik forests; the beautiful valleys of Dachigam in Kashmir where I did my masters thesis may never be the same again and we may have seen the last of the hangul there; the lowland forests of Arunachal Pradesh—that rainforest dreamland of my M.Sc.—might not even last the duration of my Ph.D.! How unfortunately lucky I have been: privileged to discover some of the most beautiful things on earth and watch them go up in flames!
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Update/notes: The above was written (for the WII newsletter) during the early years of my Ph.D., yet it resonates with my current soul. My despair has deepened, yet it is also now oddly tinged with some hope as I seek silver linings to the dark clouds over the environment (even as my own head has quite a silver halo now) through reconciliation ecology. Kanha recovered from the fires and the barasingha continue to bellow in their rut across the meadows there, although the tiger population in India has suffered a massive hit. The hangul are still around, and may even have benefited from two decades of armed conflict in Kashmir because people were too busy pointing their guns at each other to shoot the local wildlife! As for the lowland rainforests of Arunachal, they've been hammered, but hope lies in the work of a new generation of biologists carrying the torch in India now, like my young correspondent who is studying hornbills in those very forests; and has written me this week to compare notes as he retraces some of my fumbling steps all those years ago...

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How about a random walk through the Carnival of Maths this weekend?

The 68th edition of the Carnival of Mathematics is up online, hosted at Plus magazine, with a nice collection of mathsy posts on topics ranging from sports to poetry to infinity and everything in between. Enjoy reading!

PS: and I like how they call it Maths, not just Math as so many Americans do!

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Pinnacles National Park... now that has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

You'll likely agree, if you've ever been to Pinnacles National Monument, that it is a special place deserving protection. Especially now that it has become a new breeding ground for the endangered California Condors reintroduced to Pinnacles recently. You may remember my recent blog post with images and thoughts from a class trip to Pinnacles last spring, and about the ongoing travails of the newborn Condor chick and its parents. I haven't heard anything since about the status of the poor chick, but this bit of news just might be cause for some cheer.

Pinnacles National Monument, a 26,000-acre swath of spectacular volcanic rock formations outside Soledad, Calif., would be elevated to a National Park under legislation introduced Thursday by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)
Pinnacles is a nesting place for the endangered California condor, North America's largest soaring bird, with wingspans up to 10 feet. And it is a global destination for naturalists and outdoor adventurers attracted by the park's scenic views and unique rock-climbing landscapes. Making Pinnacles a National Park, Boxer said, would "draw even more visitors to this spectacular piece of California's natural and cultural heritage."
Rep. Sam Farr (D-Carmel), who introduced companion legislation in the House, called the area "packed with historical significance," adding that "its geological distinctiveness is second to none." A park designation, he said "would be a major boon to an economically starved area, a huge benefit for the state's Central Coast. Pinnacles is a hidden gem."
Pinnacles is a culturally significant area for several Native American tribes, and it served as a backdrop for John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" and "East of Eden." The monument was established by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908, and has expanded since.

via latimesblogs.latimes.com

So will a National Park prove a safer place to raise one's young than a mere National Monument? Will the upgraded designation offer any real added protection to a far-ranging raptor against more widely dispersed threats such as the lead in ammo used for "sport" hunting locally (not to mention poisons used more deliberately by the govt for "predator control")? Or is it (as the above article suggests, mostly about increasing tourism and economic opportunities for local communities? Lets hope this at least provides more momentum to ongoing efforts to ban the use of lead ammo more comprehensively. Otherwise, where's a young Condor family to go, if even a National Park isn't safe enough?

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