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#sciencespark? Or #sciencefuel?

Recently my twitter feed has had a number of #sciencespark tweets roll through it – tweets in which people describe the moment(s) in which their love for science first clicked.

Frankly, I have had trouble identifying my own #sciencespark because as far back as I can remember, I’ve always had a fascination for nature. Perhaps one tweet of the many among that hashtag that I can identify most with is this:

 

 

…because, with some variation, that’s a reasonable summary of story as well.

Many of my childhood summer days were spent outside literally and metaphorically turning over rocks to see what was underneath, or trying out the latest gadget that I had cobbled together from Dr. Zed’s instructions in Owl Magazine. At one point I even attempted (unsuccessful) mark-and-recapture experiments with grasshoppers that I caught. Besides the fact that the overall population of grasshoppers during a typical Alberta summer likely overwhelmed my meagre releases, I’m sure that the black permanent felt marker that I used to color their forewings didn’t do my research – or the grasshoppers – any favors either.

I also kept more animals in the house than you can likely imagine. These included mice, rats, hamsters, gerbils, budgies, a cockatiel, canaries, a dove, cats at various times, tropical fish, goldfish, and even a very short stint with Mexican jumping beans. Usually my family’s house was home to several of these species at once. Of course I bred many of these creatures – or, rather, they just did they will do left to their own devices – resulting in lines of cages in our hallway. Gerbils produce a lot of babies when left unchecked, as it turns out.

Mom, if you’re reading this – and really, who else reads this blog anyhow? – thanks for putting up with that!

Throughout my young life there were so many so-called #sciencesparks that I’d be hard-pressed to name only one that sent me along this trajectory. So I think I’d prefer to call this process #sciencefuel, because a spark implies the lighting of something that is not on fire. Fuel implies the maintenance of an existing flame.

My family was one that encouraged curiosity and investigation. Like I said, my mom put up with rodent cage wood shavings all over the floor. My dad would encourage my science fair work and would help me to find materials for my various other projects. They aided and abetted one of my major hobbies – fly fishing – that also required natural history knowledge in the forms of entomology and limnology. And our family spent a lot of time outside in general – on my uncle’s farm; helping (or getting in the way of) my dad with his beekeeping hobby; or camping in some pretty amazing places like the redwood forests of California, Death Valley, Jasper, or the west coast of Vancouver Island.

These activities, and many others, represented ongoing additions of fuel to the innate fire if inquiry that I believe most kids naturally have in them. In other words, I suspect that for most people it takes more than a single moment to drive a passion for anything, including science. In the case of science it takes engaged adults, encouragement and opportunity to read widely, permission to just explore and make a mess, and good resources (e.g. books, magazines, museums, national parks, community programs, etc.). Kids who are provided with this #sciencefuel on a steady and continual basis will develop into inquisitive and broad-minded adults.

Of course, even with regularly dropping another log into the innate fire, not every kid is going to specifically become a scientist. But every kid who grows up in this atmosphere will become someone who is capable of – and who enjoys – making an honest inquiry into the things that truly interest them and into phenomena that they are tuned to observe around them. Ultimately, these are the kind of people that our world needs more of, particularly as we face myriad growing challenges.

So if you have children of your own, or know children, or have opportunities to take your science or other passion to children, make the most of it. Add some #sciencefuel to the fire.

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Beetle byte (18 November 2013 edition)

Some Beetle Bytes, a touch late but hopefully better for it. My excuse is that I was in Saskatoon for a good chunk of last week. While there I had the chance to tour the Canadian Light Source synchrotron, which is a very impressive. Seeing as it was a whirlwind meeting, I didn’t see anything else of the city other than the view from my hotel room window. I’ll have to spend more time looking around when I’m at ESC next year (coincidentally to be held at the same hotel conference center that I was cloistered in last week).

Huh?

The study, conducted by Mark Dingemanse, Francisco Torreira and Nick Enfield, closely examined variations of the word — defined as “a simple syllable with a low-front central vowel, glottal onset consonant, if any, and questioning intonation” — in 10 languages, including Dutch, Icelandic, Mandarin Chinese, the West African Siwu and the Australian aboriginal Murrinh-Patha.

 

A helmetless bike helmet

Design students Anna and Terese took on a giant challenge as an exam project. Something no one had done before. If they could swing it, it would for sure be revolutionary. The bicycle is a tool to change the world. If we use bikes AND travel safe: Life will be better for all.

 

We’re working for robots (infographic)

According to research compiled by HireRight, 144 people apply for each entry level position, on average. To handle the tidal wave of resumes, companies are increasingly turning to applicant tracking systems that analyze keywords, dates, titles and other important information to quickly evaluate a candidate’s eligibility. Because this filtering technology screens out approximately 75 percent of applicants, in order to get your foot in the door you’re probably going to have to impress the robot doorman.

 

Monarchs (excellent – and poetic – analysis by @GeekInQuestion)

It was sad and beautiful: starkly, vividly orange on top of the dirt and scattered brown leaves. It was also dead. I gathered it up carefully in my gloves and walked it home.

 

Global forests: some actual (moderately) good news

The study confirms that well-documented efforts by Brazil – which has long been responsible for a majority of the world’s tropical deforestation – to reduce its rainforest clearing have had a significant effect. Brazil showed the largest decline in annual forest loss of any country, cutting annual forest loss in half, from a high of approximately 40,000 square kilometers (15,444 square miles) in 2003-2004 to 20,000 square kilometers (7,722 square miles) in 2010-2011. Indonesia had the largest increase in forest loss, more than doubling its annual loss during the study period to nearly 20,000 square kilometers (7,722 square miles) in 2011-2012.

 

Old, older, oldest

This week, a clam was found to be 500 years old, making it the longest-living animal known. The clam, an Ocean Quahog, was 100 years older than previously thought. Researchers at Bangor University dated the mollusk to a ripe old 507. If you’ve ever had clam chowder, you’ve likely eaten flesh from this species — and that tasty bite may have been several hundred years old.

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Let’s go back to 1914

I am the editor of a small, regional journal called the Journal of the Entomological Society of British Columbia. Although it is a small journal – publishing a few papers and other items in a single issue each year – both the journal and the society that manages it have a deep history. The ESBC was founded in 1902, and the JESBC  has been around in one form or another since 1906 when it was called the Bulletin of the British Columbia Entomological Society.

That deep history combined with the fact that we currently publish excellent peer-reviewed reports that are of particular interest to entomologists working in the Pacific Northwest are what induce me to expend considerable time and effort on its yearly production. Our journal has been, and currently is, run mainly on volunteer efforts. It has always truly been a labor of love.

The JESBC has recently shifted to being completely open access. We are indexed on a number of major abstracting services. And our web editor has been spearheading an incredible effort to get all of our archives online and all of our citations over the years cross-referenced. In other words, our journal has always continued to evolve with the times, and we are working to ensure that trend continues.

As old issues have come online, I have enjoyed dipping into them to read some of the reports from the past. So, in what I intend to be a regular occurrence on this blog, I’d like to highlight a few of the items that I’ve read and that I hope may interest some of you as well.

Recently I was sampling volume 7 (1915), back when the journal was called the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of British Columbia (yes, we’ve had a number of name changes over the years). In it there are a number of articles that discuss a major “locust” infestation in the southern interior of British Columbia. From the reports, the insects involved were seemingly the migratory grasshopper, Melanoplus sanguinipes (called Melanoplus affinis in these reports) and the red-legged grasshopper, Melanoplus femurrubrum. Some very cursory research on my part found no other mentions of the infestation on the internet, so these reports may be the only easily accessible documentation of that event.

Here are some of my thoughts on several relevant articles from that issue:

Ruhman, M. 1915. Insect-notes from the Okanagan 1914. Proc. Entomol. Soc. British Columbia 7:7-11. LINK

This article is a survey of all of the recorded insect pest outbreaks in the Okanagan (southern interior) of BC. Besides being a comprehensive list with some very interesting and sometimes rather extensive notes on a variety of insects, the author mentions the grasshopper infestation briefly as follows:

…(the grasshoppers) are certainly plentiful enough to be taken notice of. Mr. Ben Hoy reports on the 14th that he visited a small orchard surrounded with range land practically defoliated by grasshoppers (species not identified) in Kelowna.

 

Wilson, T. 1915. The outbreak of locusts of 1914. Proc. Entomol. Soc. British Columbia 7:41-42. LINK

This paper outlines the geographical extent of the infestation and begins by particularly condemning the practice of “clean cultivation” – that is, removal of all weeds and alternate crop plants from near orchards and between the rows of trees – as a major driver of damage to orchards. In other words, maintenance of an orchard monoculture and the removal of alternate host plants for the grasshoppers meant that the grasshoppers turned to the fruit trees for food. This is, of course, an agricultural lesson that needs to be taken to heart even today.

Wilson also spent some time explaining the natural history of these insects and then lists what he feels are major reasons for the infestation:

The first reason I advance was the abnormally hot and dry season we have experienced, even for the Dry Belt. This condition was most conducive to the spread of these sun-loving dry-country insects. Second, the influx of settlers and the consequent diminution of the natural food of the locusts. Thirdly too heavy grazing on the range, or perhaps, more correctly stated, injudicious grazing on the range, has done away with the food-plants and forced the locusts to places where they would obtain the requisite amount of nutrition.

This is an interesting analysis, and one that provides a great picture of what was going on in the region at the time in terms of climate, culture, and biology.

 

Taylor, L.E. 1915. Notes on birds likely to be of service in the destruction of grasshoppers in the Nicola Valley. Proc. Entomol. Soc. British Columbia 7:43-45. LINK

Taylor provides an extensive list of birds that were likely to be present in the region at the time and gives estimates for how important they might have been as predators on grasshoppers. Besides being a potentially useful checklist of birds in the Nicola Valley in 1914, Taylor also vaguely mentions resources that he used to develop his estimates. It would be interesting to be able to dig up these reports and compare them to what, if anything, is known today about diets of various bird species.

 

Gibson, A. 1915. The Kansas remedy for the control of locusts. Proc. Entomol. Soc. British Columbia 7:45. LINK

This report is, frankly, frightening. But it is also a good glimpse into pest management back in the early-1900s. In this article, Gibson proposes experimenting with the “Kansas remedy” for control of grasshoppers. The Kansas remedy was comprised of:

Bran, 20 lb.; Paris green, 1 lb.; molasses, 2 quarts; lemons, 3 fruits; water, 3.5 gallons.

Most of the ingredients are identifiable. But what is that Paris green stuff? Well, it’s copper(II) acetoarsenite. As you might imagine, copper and arsenic make for a very toxic brew. And, being heavy metals, a persistent, toxic brew to be precise. I’m personally not a big fan of pesticides unless absolutely necessary, but I can say that I’m glad that what we do use today is safer than this.

I’m also curious to know if this concoction was ever tried in parts of British Columbia. According to the short article it was used in parts of eastern Canada. A bit of digging shows that it was also at least tested, if not used, elsewhere. If the areas that in which was used could be identified today, it would be interesting to survey longterm effects on biodiversity of heavy metals used in agricultural settings.

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Besides being an interesting glimpse into the past, these articles demonstrate the value of a longstanding, regional journal to the practice of science. I think that it is fair to say that without this journal (and others like it) reports like these would either never have been recorded in the first place or would have been buried in files somewhere and lost to contemporary analysis.

From these articles we learn that there was a substantial and damaging grasshopper infestation in the BC’s southern interior around 1914. We read some statements on the climatic conditions and the agricultural practices at the time that were thought to be partially responsible for driving this infestation. We are given a number of interesting natural history observations. We receive what amounts to a checklist of some birds in the region at that time (attention ornithologists!). And we are told about cultural and (sort of scary) chemical methods that were being proposed as pest management methods.

The JESBC, and other journals like it, are full of this type of information. Contemporary archiving, indexing, optical character recognition, cross referencing, and other means of resurrecting this literature are adding value to these fantastic resources. I imagine the value will continue to increase as imaginative people find new ways to sort through this kind of data.

In the meantime, we all now have the opportunity to use our own grey matter-based “technology” to learn from the past. I hope that as I pull out a few of these reports to highlight on this blog over the coming months you’ll also take some time to find some items that interest you.

If bump into anything interesting, feel free to share your finds here in the comments or on Twitter.

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Update (12 November 2013): Chris MacQuarrie pointed this out on Twitter:

Indeed, that is the case. Here is some more information on Norman Criddle and his mixture. Also of interest in that link is the mention of the Rocky Mountain locust, a once prominent species that ended up on the same tragic trajectory followed by the passenger pigeon and (very nearly) the plains bison.

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Beetle byte (8 November 2013 edition)

A couple of Wallace links to start off with, as this week marked the 100th anniversary of his death… then the rest of the regular half-dozen to help you start the weekend.

Something that I need to listen to

Selected items featuring the work of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), British biologist, anthropologist, geographer, environmentalist, and human rights advocate. The man who, independently of Darwin, arrived to the same conclusion on natural selection. In 1858 he corresponded with Darwin about his theory, prompting Darwin to finally publish the famous work, On the Origin of Species, in 1859.

 

A strange chapter in Wallace’s life

When Hampden advertised his infamous Flat Earth Wager in 1870, the terms were simple enough:  he would pay 500 British pounds to anyone who could provide absolute proof of a round Earth.  Given the size of the reward (which was a hefty sum in those days), Wallace was tempted enough to discuss the wager with Charles Lyell.  After Lyell suggested that “It may stop these foolish people to have it plainly shown them”,  Wallace accepted the challenge. As an experienced land surveyor, designing an appropriate proof seemed simple enough (but he should have realized the offer was too good to be true).  Hampden appointed fellow flat-earther William Carpenter as his referee while Wallace appointed science journalist J.J. Walsh.  Both Hampden and Walsh put up 500 pounds in a London bank for safekeeping and Wallace signed an agreement that he would repay Walsh if he lost the bet.

 

Ant patterns on fly wings? (via Morgan Jackson)

Putting everything together, it leads me to believe we may be choosing to see ants where they don’t actually exist. Much like how we see sharks in the clouds or Jesus in our toast (a psychological phenomenon called Pareidolia), I think we’ve become so conditioned to expect ornate patterns on wings to be mimicking something else that we’re forcing objects to appear everywhere, even if there’s no evolutionary or behavioural explanation for it. It’s important that we don’t let our human-centric points of view, emotions and opinions bias our interpretation of what’s really going on.

 

Your growing pile of unread books

And all I have to do is turn away from this computer, reach over, and take one of their books from a shelf of my private library.

 

Procrastination Part I (and Part II)

No, “avoid procrastination” is only good advice for fake procrastinators—those people that are like, “I totally go on Facebook a few times every day at work—I’m such a procrastinator!” The same people that will say to a real procrastinator something like, “Just don’t procrastinate and you’ll be fine.”

 

Sleepy?

…we didn’t always sleep in one eight hour chunk. We used to sleep in two shorter periods, over a longer range of night. This range was about 12 hours long, and began with a sleep of three to four hours, wakefulness of two to three hours, then sleep again until morning.

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The “most admirable character in the history of science”

Today, 7 November 2013, is the 100th anniversary of the death of the great naturalist, explorer, entomologist (of course I had to mention that), and scholar-of-all-trades, Alfred Russel Wallace.

Wallace is remembered by many as one of the two co-discoverers of what we today consider the foundation of theory of evolution. The other discoverer being the much better known Charles Darwin.

Wallace and Darwin were both products of their age – a fact that is inescapable if you read their works. But, aside from that and the fact that they both came up with the same idea, in many ways they couldn’t have been more different. Darwin was born into privilege; Wallace was not. Darwin attended some of the best schools; Wallace did not. Darwin formulated his ideas while traveling and then mulled them over for years after returning home from his Beagle voyage; Wallace began to notice patterns in the field and worked toward sharing his ideas quickly. Darwin was financially secure for his entire life; Wallace often struggled to make ends meet and, in fact, did much of his collecting in order to sell specimens back home.

What did unite these two gentlemen was a love of nature and the discovery of an earth-shattering idea born of keen observation, intense study, and soaking in the scientific milieu of the time.

It’s usually very hard to say how an idea develops and who has absolute priority. New ideas, large or small, develop over time and are a direct result of trying other ideas on for size. Look at just about any scientific paper today, and you will usually see several co-authors. It was the same for the idea of natural selection. Others – contemporary and near-contemporary – such as Lamark and Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus, were giving the topic deep thought and consideration. Observations of life around them, and specimens brought back by intrepid adventurers like Bates and Wallace, told a tale of… something. It took Wallace and Darwin to put a finger on what exactly that something was.

While Wallace’s writings are sprinkled through with the idea, his thoughts are often summarized in what is called the Sarawak Law from a manuscript that he wrote while in Borneo entitled “On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species”:

Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species.

These ideas, also discussed in an essay that Wallace sent to Darwin, prompted Darwin to get his well-developed thoughts down on paper. He and Wallace famously co-published the idea shortly thereafter, and then Darwin wrote and published his most famous book.

All this to say that while some continue to claim that “Darwin stole Wallace’s idea,” this could not be further from the truth. Both gentlemen were thinking along the same lines. Both, particularly Wallace, were open with their ideas and they engaged in discussion with each other on the topic. Both acted graciously toward the other during their entire lives. And both have an important place in history as the scholars who have helped to forge contemporary biology.

Over the past year or so, I have been reading Wallace’s “Malay Archipelago” a chapter or two at a time. What strikes me about his words, and what I believe is one of the biggest lessons that we should take from his life, is that sheer curiosity combined with a commitment to ongoing self-education and an ethic of hard work and focus will take you to intellectual places that no one has ever gone before. At some point, when I finally finish my slow read of his book, I plan to write a “review” (as if one is needed) of this literary masterpiece. Suffice it to say for now that besides his amazing observations of biological phenomenon, the reader can easily tell that Wallace was continually thinking about geography, geology, astronomy, social sciences, justice, culture, anthropology, economics, and on and on. He was continually observing, continually recording, and continually consolidating his thoughts. His scholarly example – and his gracious bearing and commitment to openness – is one that we need to foster more and more in our current era.

So, sometime over the next few days, why not spend some time dipping into a bit of what Wallace has written, and see how his scholarly and personal example might be important for our scholarly endeavors today and into the future.

Along with some of the links above, here are a few other resources to get you started:

As Attenborough says in his video:

For me, there is no more admirable character in the history of science.

It could not be said better.