Ég hef verið dálítið remiss á að senda reglulega áskoranir, svo ég ætla að reyna að ná upp hraða. Hver getur sagt mér eitthvað um þetta fiðrildi? Mesta sem þú ert að fá er að það er frá vesturhluta Bandaríkjanna. Credit fyrir fjölskylduna, 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.
Ég sat rapt framan sjónvarpið mitt á sunnudaginn að horfa á nýjustu afborgun af BBC / Discovery röð “Life”. The fyrstur hlutur sem kemur upp í hugann minn… “HVERS VEGNA var Oprah valið að sagt!?” Náttúrulega, Ég beið fyrir skordýr sérstakt að loft áður en ég bloggaði um þetta, 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” í “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, t.d.. 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, já – 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!
Það var fallegur dagur í dag í Bay Area, svo ég hélt að Napa og Pope Valley. Ég var skátastarf nokkur ný landsvæði fyrir lítið blóm Moth, Speedy Heliolonche, að virðist er að bíða eftir frekari samliggjandi gott veður til að koma. 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. Þó, 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? Sem betur fer, 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.
Skýin braut síðdegis í San Francisco og sólin fór að skína. Komandi hlýtt veður olli allt of kunnugleg tilfinning, eitt sem ég ætti að vera út að safna skordýr og ekki sitja innandyra! Þó að ég hafi nú þegar verið að handfylli af stöðum í vor, 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. Hingað til, 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 dauð fiðrildi’ Samfélag fundi. 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. Leyfishafi, Ég var nerdy vísindi krakki, en ég gæti gert betur drukkinn. 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. Ekki að nefna, 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). Þakka þér, I’ll kindly take my position at the University of Cologne Medical Center now.
A framhald af aquamoth röð, að þessu sinni með myndband frá Vísindaföstudeginum! Já, Ég verð að tengja það því WordPress mun ekki embed… Takk Ted, mynstrağur það út!
Nokkrar myndir frá helgi mothing ferð minni niður í Shell Creek, San Luis Obispo County. Snemma í vor meðfram Central Coast er töfrandi, og aftur vegir voru pakkað með blóm áhorfandi. Það voru tugir bíla uppteknum með fjölskyldur út fyrir helgi ökuferð, margir höfðu pakkað lunches og sat að horfa á blóm vaxa. Meðan ég er ánægð að sjá fólk njóta náttúrufegurð, það er erfitt að sjá tjónið tróð þeirra geta valdið. Þó, ef fleira fólk gæti fengið út að þakka náttúrunni, kannski það væri auðveldara að verja. Blómin voru svo björt og þétt og það var erfitt að einbeita sér að mölflugum, og eftir nokkrar klukkustundir sem ég byrjaði að fara smá snjór-blindur (eða eins og það skal eilífu vera nú þekkt, blóm-blindur). Hér eru nokkrar lasburða tilraun til að grípa fegurð.
Þessi listaverk eru tilurð Róbert J. Aðeins. Líklega er ef þú hefur séð nokkur geðveikur Origami en þeir voru sköpun hans. Já, þeir eru í raun úr einni stykki af óskorinn pappír. Hann veitir hækka mynstur fyrir flest hönnun hans, en í raun þarf að vera næstum ómögulegt að brjóta saman eitthvað úr því mynstri án þess að vita röðina. Það er mjög áhrifamikið, en ef þú ert aðeins latur, þú getur klippt og brotið út þín eigin einföldu skordýr í staðinn.
Taktu tíma til að skrá (hryggur, það er pirrandi en ég gat ekki fundið það einhvers staðar annars) og lesa svar við viðtal við Dr. Brother Í Law, hér. 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.
