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!?” Naturellement, 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” à “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, par exemple. 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, oui – 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!
Ce était une belle journée aujourd'hui dans la région de la baie, donc je me suis dirigé à Napa et la vallée du Pape. Je étais certaine engage des nouveau territoire pour un petit papillon de fleurs, Heliolonche celeris, qui, apparemment, est en attente pour plus beau temps contiguë à émerger. 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. Cependant, I did come across a handful of beautiful microleps. All of these moths are in the genusAdelaand familyAdelidae (or some would sayJencurvariidae). 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? Heureusement, 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 withCet article?
Les nuages ont éclaté cet après-midi à San Francisco et le soleil a commencé à briller. Le prochain temps chaud induit un sentiment trop familier, celui que je devrais être sur la collecte des insectes et non assis intérieur! Bien que je ai déjà été à une poignée d'endroits ce printemps, 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. Jusque là, 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 lépidoptères’ réunion de la société. 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!
Je suis vraiment à une perte pour la compréhension encore un autre étude de l'acupuncture positif qui a été ainsi conçu comme ma 8e année projet foire scientifique. Attribuées, J'étais un enfant de la science ringard, mais je ne pouvais faire un meilleur état d'ébriété de l'emploi. Je pense que je devrais réaliser une étude de suivi dans lequel je teste l'efficacité de porcs-épics jeté dans le dos. Il serait certainement plus amusant; et plein de valeur scientifique à peu près autant. Sans parler de, les porcs-épics sont plutôt mignon.
Les vrais problèmes avec l'étude:
Levée de l'aveugle
n = 15. Leurs tests de x² ont peut-être donné lieu à une réponse significative, mais en aucun imagination de tout univers ne 15 égale un échantillonnage statistiquement significative d'une population, n'importe où.
Pas de contrôle négatif. Ils ont traité l'ensemble de leurs patients avec l'acupuncture ou vitamines. Complexe de la vitamine B est un traitement (encore très mal pris en charge), et seulement un contrôle positif. Dont de dire odeur n'a pas naturellement à améliorer au cours de l'étude? Les auteurs ne peuvent pas.
Donc ma question est, ce peut être la motivation pour cette étude? Je ne peux imaginer comment cela a été imaginé, autour des livres de coloriage d'un jour “Hey Doc Julia, acupuncture sûr hein?” “Mais oui, il fait compagnon imbécile, Créons une étude vraiment merdique pour montrer à qui!”. Jetez un oeil à mon grand poste d'acupuncture pour plus de liens et un peu plus de discussion sur la médecine chinoise antique pourquoi est un gaspillage d'argent. Bien sûr, si vous testez 15 les gens vous pouvez ramasser un résultat positif pour à peu près tout. Mais comme vous commencez à introduire des études plus vastes et plus étroitement contrôlé les effets positifs commencent à se rétrécir.
Ridicule. Et maintenant que je le regarde, ma science de 8e année juste projet a été réalisé avec deux jeux de commandes, aveugle, et avait une taille de l'échantillon 18 (l'efficacité antibactérienne de nettoyants pour la cuisine). Merci, Je vais bien vouloir prendre mon poste à l'Université de Cologne Medical Center maintenant.
Une continuation de la série aquamoth, this time withvideo from Science Friday! Oui, Je dois relier parce wordpress ne sera pas intégrer… Merci Ted, figured it out!
Quelques images de mon voyage de mothing de week-end vers Shell Creek, San Luis Obispo County. Le début du printemps le long de la côte centrale est magnifique, et les routes secondaires ont été emballés avec les observateurs de fleurs. Il y avait des dizaines de voitures occupées par des familles pour un entraînement de fin de semaine, 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. Cependant, 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. Lang. Chances are if you’ve seen some insane origami than they were his creation. Oui, those are actually made from one single piece of uncut paper. He provides the crease pattern for most of his designs, 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 (D'accord, for those who didn’t, here it is), you will be interested to hear his side of the story.
Take the time to register (Pardon, it’s annoying but I couldn’t find it anywhere else) and read a response to the interview by Dr. Cognato, ici. 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…). Nonetheless, 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.
