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
Trở cỏ để phơi khômanaged 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!?” Tự nhiên, 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” để “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, ví dụ. 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, vâng – 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. Tuy nhiên, 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? Thankfully, 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 withbài viết này?
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, Tôi có một mùa giải dài thu thập trước. Nhìn về phía trước tôi không thể không phản ánh trên hai năm ngoạn mục qua phía tây đã cho tôi. Để minh họa nghiện của tôi, đây là một chú thích của Google Earth điểm GPS của tôi.
Mỗi lá cờ đại diện cho một sự kiện thu riêng (bỏ qua các chân vàng), giữa mùa thu 2007 và mùa đông 2009. Tôi đã không giữ theo dõi những dặm cho các chuyến đi thu thập dành riêng (có lẽ để tránh sốc), nhưng nó phải được tiếp cận 30,000. My Honda Accord có thể không phải là một lĩnh vực xe điển hình, nhưng nó làm cho khoảng cách đáng kể chi phí hợp lý. Tất nhiên hai lốp xe phẳng và kính chắn gió bị nứt không giúp đỡ. Bạn có thể dễ dàng nói rằng tôi đã sống ở miền nam California với blob khổng lồ của lá cờ. Hầu hết những người đang tập trung ở quận Santa Barbara, 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. Cho đến nay, 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 Lepidopterists’ Society meeting. 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 và Mexico được Đèn hiệu. Và bây giờ mà tôi sống ở Berkeley, tôi sẽ có để có được vào Sierra một vài lần nữa trong năm nay!
I am really at a loss for understanding yet anotherpositive acupuncture studythat was as well designed as my 8th grade science fair project. Được cấp, I was a nerdy science kid, but I could do a better job drunk. 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). Cảm ơn bạn, 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! Vâng, I have to link it because wordpress won’t embed… Cảm ơn Ted, figured it out!
Một vài hình ảnh từ chuyến đi mua sắm cuối tuần của tôi xuống Shell Creek, Hạt San Luis Obispo. Đầu xuân dọc bờ biển miền Trung đẹp tuyệt vời, và những con đường phía sau chật ních những người ngắm hoa. Có hàng chục chiếc xe ô tô được các gia đình đi chơi cuối tuần, 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. Tuy nhiên, 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.
Những tác phẩm nghệ thuật là sự sáng tạo của Robert J. Chỉ. Rất có thể là nếu bạn đã nhìn thấy một số origami điên hơn họ đã sáng tạo của mình. Vâng, những người thực sự được làm từ một mảnh duy nhất của giấy uncut. Ông cung cấp các mô hình nhăn cho hầu hết các thiết kế của mình, nhưng thực sự gấp một cái gì đó từ mô hình mà đã gần như không thể mà không biết trình tự. Nó rất ấn tượng, nhưng nếu bạn là một chút lazier, bạn có thể cắt và gấp ra côn trùng đơn giản của riêng bạn thay vì.
Đối với những người đã xem cuộc phỏng vấn của FOX với nhà côn trùng học MSU, Tiến sĩ. Anh rể (được, cho những người không, nó đây), bạn sẽ thích thú khi nghe khía cạnh của anh ấy trong câu chuyện.
Hãy dành thời gian để đăng ký (lấy làm tiếc, điều đó thật khó chịu nhưng tôi không thể tìm thấy nó ở bất kỳ nơi nào khác) and read a response to the interview by Dr. Anh rể, đây. 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.
