मैं नियमित रूप से चुनौतियों पोस्टिंग पर थोड़ा आलसी किया गया है, इसलिए मैं गति लेने की कोशिश करता हूँ. कौन मुझे इस तितली के बारे में कुछ बता सकते हैं? तुम हो रही है सबसे यह अमेरिका के पश्चिमी आधे से है. परिवार के लिए क्रेडिट, genus or species andridiculouscredit for subspecies and where it is from.
Euphydryas anicia cloudcrofti
टेडmanaged 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.
मैं बीबीसी / डिस्कवरी श्रृंखला की नवीनतम किस्त देख रविवार को अपने टीवी के सामने मगन बैठे “लाइफ”. मेरे दिमाग में आता है कि पहली बात यह है कि… “क्यों द ओपरा बयान करने के लिए चुना गया था!?” स्वाभाविक रूप से, मैं इस बारे में blogged इससे पहले कि मैं विशेष हवा के कीड़ों के लिए इंतजार कर रहे थे, 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” प्रति “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, उदाहरण के लिए:. 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, हां – 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. हालांकि, I did come across a handful of beautiful microleps. All of these moths are in the genusAdelaand familyAdelidae (or some would sayमेँncurvariidae). 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? शुक्र है, 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.
सैन फ्रांसिस्को में आज दोपहर बादल टूट गए और सूरज चमकने लगा. आगामी गर्म मौसम ने एक बहुत ही परिचित एहसास को प्रेरित किया, एक कि मुझे कीड़ों को इकट्ठा करना चाहिए और घर के अंदर नहीं बैठना चाहिए! जबकि मैं इस वसंत में पहले ही कुछ स्थानों पर जा चुका हूँ, मेरे पास आगे संग्रह करने का एक लंबा मौसम है. आगे देखते हुए मैं मदद नहीं कर सकता, लेकिन पिछले दो शानदार वर्षों को प्रतिबिंबित करने के लिए पश्चिम ने मुझे दिया है. मेरी लत को स्पष्ट करने के लिए, यहाँ मेरे Google धरती GPS बिंदुओं का शीर्षक है.
प्रत्येक ध्वज एक अलग एकत्रित घटना का प्रतिनिधित्व करता है (पीले पिनों की अवहेलना करें), गिरावट के बीच 2007 और सर्दी 2009. मैंने समर्पित संग्रह यात्राओं के लिए मील का ट्रैक नहीं रखा है (शायद सदमे से बचने के लिए), लेकिन यह निकट होना चाहिए 30,000. मेरा होंडा अकॉर्ड एक विशिष्ट क्षेत्र का वाहन नहीं हो सकता है, लेकिन यह दूरी को काफी अधिक किफायती बनाता है. बेशक दो सपाट टायर और टूटी हुई विंडशील्ड मदद नहीं करते हैं. आप आसानी से बता सकते हैं कि मैं दक्षिणी कैलिफोर्निया में झंडों के विशाल बूँद के साथ रहता था. उनमें से अधिकांश सांता बारबरा काउंटी में केंद्रित हैं, जिसमें दो नई प्रजातियां और दर्जनों काउंटी रिकॉर्ड मिले. एरिज़ोना दो के साथ दूसरे स्थान पर आता है 10 एक अलग स्थान पर प्रत्येक रात के साथ दिन की यात्राएं. फिर मैं पिछली गर्मियों में दक्षिण-पश्चिम से मुक्त हो गया और ढाई सप्ताह के दौरान मध्यपश्चिम के माध्यम से एक लंबा लूप चला गया. मैंने अंदर खींच लिया 4,000 लेपिडोप्टेरा और अभी-अभी अंतिम नमूनों को अंतिम रूप देना शुरू किया है. अब तक, केवल एक नई प्रजाति – पश्चिमी टेक्सास के एक छोटे से एक्रोलोफिडे का एकमात्र नमूना (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 Lepidopterists’ सोसायटी की बैठक. 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!
I am really at a loss for understanding yet anotherpositive acupuncture studythat was as well designed as my 8th grade science fair project. दी गई, मैं एक nerdy विज्ञान बच्चा था, लेकिन मैं एक बेहतर काम के नशे में कर सकता है. I think I should conduct a followup study in which I test the efficacy of porcupines tossed at your back. It would certainly be more amusing; and full of just about as much scientific value. Not to mention, porcupines are kinda cute.
The real problems with the study:
Unblinded
n=15. Their x² tests may have resulted in a significant response, but in no imagination of any universe does 15 equal a statistically significant sampling of any population, anywhere.
No negative control. They treated all of their patients with acupuncture or vitamins. Vitamin B complex is a treatment (still a very poorly supported one), and only a positive control. Whose to say smell didn’t naturally improve over the course of the study? The authors can not.
So my question is, what can possibly be the motivation for this study? I can imagine how this was dreamt up, around the coloring books one day “Hey Doc Julia, acupuncture sure works huh?” “Why yes it does fellow idiot, let’s create a really crappy study to show just that!”. Take a look atmy older acupuncture postfor more links and a bit more discussion on why ancient chinese medicine is a waste of money. Of course if you test 15 people you can scrape together a positive result for just about anything. But as you start to introduce larger and more tightly controlled studies the positive effects start to shrink.
Ridiculous. And now that I look at it, my 8th grade science fair project was conducted with two sets of controls, blinded, and had a sample size of 18 (antibacterial effectiveness of kitchen cleaners). धन्यवाद, I’ll kindly take my position at the University of Cologne Medical Center now.
A continuation of the aquamoth series, this time withvideo from Science Friday! हां, I have to link it because wordpress won’t embed… धन्यवाद टेड, 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. हालांकि, 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. हां, 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 (अच्छा, for those who didn’t, here it is), you will be interested to hear his side of the story.
Take the time to register (क्षमा मांगना, it’s annoying but I couldn’t find it anywhere else) and read a response to the interview by Dr. Cognato, यहां. 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…). बहरहाल, 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.
