I’ve been a bit remiss at posting regular challenges, so I’ll try to pick up the pace. Who can tell me anything about this butterfly? The most you’re getting is that it is from the Western half of the US. Credit for family, genus or species andridiculouscredit for subspecies and where it is from.
Euphydryas anicia cloudcrofti
Tedmanaged to pretty quickly ID this lep with stunning accuracy for a beetle-guy. You lep-ers reading this should hang your head in shame for not jumping on it faster.
As mentioned in the comments, this butterfly only flies around the resort town of Cloudcroft, New Mexico in the Sacramento Mountains. For years they have been fighting to have this listed as an endangered species, but have failed at every attempt (the most recent rejection was August 2009). The town relies almost exclusively on winter ski resorts and developers have put up a successful fight against protection. The entire area is within the Lincoln National Forest, but they have only closed the area to butterfly collecting, not development. When asking the forest service about this butterfly they unequivocally state that the checkerspot is endangered (even though it’s not). Of course they do not want you to collect it – but if you offered a few million to develop its habitat, that’s a different story.
I sat rapt in front of my TV on Sunday watching the latest installment of the BBC/Discovery series “Life”. The first thing that comes to my mind… “WHY was Oprah chosen to narrate!?” Naturalmente, I waited for the insects special to air before I blogged about this, but having to listen to Oprah for the last few weeks has been scratching at the back of my eyes. I guess I could have gone out and purchased the BBC version with the iconic voice of Sir David Attenborough instead…
To get a better grip of just how obnoxious Oprah is, you can watch thesame clip on Discovery. I have never considered Oprah to be anything close to scientifically minded – and her lavishsupport of Jenny McCarthyproves the point. For those who are not up to date – McCarthy is the leading proponent of the anti-vaccination movement. You can even go as far as attributing her PR campaign topreventable deaths.I’ll have to return to this subject another time.
Back to the topic at hand. There was some incredibly stunning insect footage, and a few vignettes about insect life I might not have otherwise ever seen. It seems like the US version of Life has been slightly re-written with zero factual contribution. Basic lines are changed from “she was not in the mood” a “uh-oh, looks like a headache”. Seems like a step down to me, albeit a tiny one. I was also a little annoyed with the continual focus on vertebrates – birds that eat flies, bears that eat honey, lizards that mimic Carabids – and anthropomorphizing intention, por ejemplo. the ants “crowning achievement of large complex communities… the closest thing in nature to human cities”. While it may be true that giant ant colonies superficially resemble human cities, I wouldn’t call them the “crowning achievement of insects”. Mind boggling in complexity, sí – but overshadowing other non-social adaptations? This all boils down to a false premise that evolution is striving for human-like qualities and is directional.
But nothing to be overly critical about. Given the diversity and complexity of the insect world, I wouldn’t have even been happy with two weeks of solid footage. I would love to see what was left on the cutting room floor!
It was a beautiful day today in the bay area, so I headed up to Napa and the Pope Valley. I was scouting some new territory for a small flower moth, Heliolonche celeris, that apparently is waiting for more contiguous nice weather to emerge. This season has been a bit tardy because of all of the cold and rain, but I hold out hopes for a successful return visit in a few weeks. Sin embargo, I did come across a handful of beautiful microleps. All of these moths are in the genusAdelaand familyAdelidae (or some would sayIncurvariidae). They are commonly known as “fairy moths” because they appear to dance over patches of flowers – which apparently fairies love to do. It looked like males were defending a small area, with two to three at a time, twirling around each-other a few inches above the blossoms. I assume these dances were territorial because no mating was observed. While females have long antennae, the males take it to excess. I collected a nice series but Ihaven’t nailed down the species yet – how many do you see? Afortunadamente, all of theAdelidaewere covered in a 1969 paper by Jerry Powell, who also happens to live down the street from me.
After looking through the collections here at the CAS, and reading the monograph, it looks like most of these areAdela trigrapha. It is a common Adelid of the San Francisco Bay area and most of the coastal ranges of CA. Variation is noted to be considerable, with broken and unbroken bands as well as variation of the red on the crown. The other Adelid is easily ID’d toadela flammeusella.
Another installment of Genius of the Press, and perhaps a bit of a softball. (Yikes these are easy to find) Who can tell me whats wrong withEste artículo?
The clouds broke this afternoon in San Francisco and the sun began to shine. The upcoming warm weather induced an all too familiar feeling, one that I should be out collecting insects and not sitting indoors! While I have already been to a handful of places this spring, I have a long season of collecting ahead. Looking forward I couldn’t help but to reflect on the past two spectacular years the west has given me. To illustrate my addiction, here is a caption of my Google Earth GPS points.
Each flag represents a separate collecting event (disregard the yellow pins), between fall 2007 and winter 2009. I have not kept track of the miles for dedicated collecting trips (perhaps to avoid shock), but it must be approaching 30,000. My Honda Accord may not be a typical field vehicle, but it makes the distance substantially more affordable. Of course the two flat tires and cracked windshield don’t help. You can easily tell that I lived in southern California with that giant blob of flags. Most of those are focused in Santa Barbara county, which yielded two new species and dozens of county records. Arizona comes second with two 10 day trips with each night in a different location. I then broke free of the southwest last summer and drove a long loop through the midwest over the course of two and a half weeks. I pulled in around 4,000 lepidoptera and have just started putting the finishing touches on the last of the specimens. Hasta aquí, only one new species – a sole specimen of a small Acrolophidae from western Texas (determined by Peter Jump who is writing the MONA fascicle on the group). Plenty left to still ID.
On the board for this year: A trip to Leavenworth, Washington for the 2010 Lepidopterólogos’ Reunión de la Sociedad. The two week collecting trip will shoot north to Washington then loop east through Idaho, Utah and Nevada on the way home. But as always, Arizona and Mexico are beaconing. And now that I live in Berkeley I will have to get into the Sierra a few more times this year!
Realmente no logro comprender otro estudio de acupuntura positiva Eso fue tan bien diseñado como mi proyecto de feria de ciencias de octavo grado.. Concedido, Yo era un niño de la ciencia nerd, pero yo podría hacer un mejor trabajo borracho. Creo que debería realizar un estudio de seguimiento en el que pruebe la eficacia de los puercoespines arrojados a tu espalda.. Seguramente sería más divertido.; y lleno de casi tanto valor científico. Sin mencionar, los puercoespines son algo lindos.
Los verdaderos problemas del estudio.:
sin cegar
n=15. Sus pruebas x² pueden haber dado como resultado una respuesta significativa, pero en ninguna imaginación de ningún universo 15 igual a una muestra estadísticamente significativa de cualquier población, en cualquier lugar.
Sin control negativo. Trataron a todos sus pacientes con acupuntura o vitaminas.. El complejo de vitamina B es un tratamiento. (todavía uno muy mal apoyado), y solo un control positivo. ¿Quién puede decir que el olfato no mejoró naturalmente durante el transcurso del estudio?? Los autores no pueden.
Entonces mi pregunta es, ¿Cuál puede ser la motivación para este estudio?? Me imagino cómo se inventó esto., alrededor de los libros para colorear un día “Hola doctora julia, La acupuntura seguro que funciona, ¿eh??” “¿Por qué sí, compañero idiota?, Creemos un estudio realmente malo para mostrar precisamente eso.!”. Echa un vistazo a mi publicación de acupuntura anterior para obtener más enlaces y un poco más de discusión sobre por qué la medicina china antigua es una pérdida de dinero. Por supuesto si pruebas 15 personas con las que puedes conseguir un resultado positivo para casi cualquier cosa. Pero a medida que se empiezan a introducir estudios más amplios y mejor controlados, los efectos positivos empiezan a reducirse..
Ridículo. Y ahora que lo miro, Mi proyecto de feria de ciencias de octavo grado se llevó a cabo con dos conjuntos de controles., cegado, y tuvo un tamaño de muestra de 18 (eficacia antibacteriana de los limpiadores de cocina). ¡Gracias, Por favor, aceptaré ahora mi puesto en el Centro Médico de la Universidad de Colonia..
A continuation of the aquamoth series, this time withvideo from Science Friday! Sí, I have to link it because wordpress won’t embed… Gracias Ted, figured it out!
A few images from my weekend mothing trip down to Shell Creek, San Luis Obispo County. Early spring along the central coast is stunning, and the back roads were packed with flower watchers. There were dozens of cars occupied by families out for a weekend drive, many had packed lunches and sat to watch the flowers grow. While I am happy to see people enjoying the natural beauty, it is difficult to see the damage their trampling can cause. Sin embargo, if more people could get out to appreciate nature, perhaps it would be easier to protect. The flowers were so bright and dense it was difficult to focus on moths, and after a few hours I started to go a little snow-blind (or as it shall forever be now known, flower-blind). Here are a few feeble attempts to capture the beauty.
These pieces of art are the creation ofRobert J. Gracias. Es probable que si usted ha visto alguna origami loco de lo que eran a su creación. Sí, quienes se hacen realmente de una sola pieza de papel sin cortar. Él proporciona el patrón de pliegues para la mayoría de sus diseños, but actually folding something from that pattern has to be nearly impossible without knowing the sequence. It’s very impressive, but if you’re a bit lazier, you can cut and fold out your own simple insectsinstead.
For those who saw the FOX interview with MSU entomologist Dr. Cognato (Aceptar, for those who didn’t, here it is), you will be interested to hear his side of the story.
Take the time to register (lo siento, it’s annoying but I couldn’t find it anywhere else) and read a response to the interview by Dr. Cognato, aquí. In summary, he basically confirmed what was suspected, that they weren’t 100% straightforward with him in the first place and only gave him about six hours to prep. It is nice to hear that Tucker Carlson was actually interested in the entomolgy collection (although, perceived interest is a key tactic in the reporters tool-belt to disarm his interviewee…). sin embargo, Cognato did a good job battling off the mindless, anti-science, right wing, propaganda machine. It is clear that he was put in a difficult situation, FOX came to him and wanted to discuss the collection. He knew he wasn’t going to be the best prepared for the interview (I know I sure wouldn’t be either!), but had to stand up for the collection in fear that they might have trampled on it without any fair rebuttal. It is sad we have almost no source of unbiased news nowadays. If you followed this story you should take the time to read about how it really happened.
